Shakedown #91"
By: Favor, Medic / Morale Officer, [PST]

Stardate: 58203.2 0800

To: All USS Zion Crew

From: Ensign Favor, Morale, Welfare, and Recreation

Subject: Risan Anthropology

Good morning. I'm melancholy, baby. Consider yourself warned.

* * *

Ancient Risans believed that the sky was held up by mountains at the edges of the land. And they didn't have fermented beverages then, either. Just sticks and stones, and the hot sun, and they ate lizards, and skinned their little reptilian lunches and used the skins of them for underwear. I swear I'm not making this up. It took seven lunches to get enough skin for one pair of underpants, and that's where the Risan term, "Change Them Weekly" originated, did you know this?

But the Lesser Tribe has always better, about the sky, and the mountains. The Lesser Tribe has always known that the sky is held up by other people's money. Without it, our atmosphere crashes and burns, and we go back to living as we did 10,000 years ago, when we were merely naked savages. No more good times, no more weekend hooch monkeys, no more fluid wealth.

Risa is a liquid planet in more ways that one, people.

* * *

Someone recently reminded me of home. Do you ever get homesick for things that you never even had? I do. Do they make a pill for that?

I miss the rookery of downy fey-chicks that nested along the cliffs that dropped down to the Sea of Tieran. Their adult feathers are the most vibrant purple shade. Children collect their dropped plumage and sell it to tourists. I did, in my girlhood. Those purple feathers were worth a lot of money, and I wish I had one of those feathers now. It's a liquid color, like you could dip your fingers in and paint the world.

Speaking of plumage, I shaved my head. Did any of you notice? I missed a few spots in the back, I was told. It looks a little patchy. "C'est dommage," I murmured when I saw it. I must say I have complete sympathy now with men who are compelled to comb their thinning hair over, creating (only to themselves) the illusion that they still have any.

So anyway, I went to the replicator. "Computer: Wig me," I said. And you should have seen the blonde fake thing that popped out! "Dammit Jim, I'm a medic, not a hooker," I muttered under my breath (my replicator is nicknamed "Jim").

Jim never gets things right. I swear this is why I never married. Why get married when I can just bicker with Jim about these things?

"Computer: Is this haircut flattering?" I ask him. "Do these pants make my butt look big?"

"Negative," he says. "Affirmative."

Sometimes I wish I could spill a cup of coffee right on you, Jim, I think. Hot coffee.

"Well, Jim," I say, "At least I can grow my hair back. You don't even have any to begin with."

Ha! That'll fix him!