This is by Liquor on alt.callahans.

Liquor wanders over to his unreserved and somewhat neglected spot at the bar. “Tell me” he says, to no-one in particular, “What do you think of when I say ‘Borg’?”

Various answers are given – most of which sound something like “It’s from Star Dreck”. Liquor notes that if you were visiting Sweden, or even just the local tennis courts, you’d probably get answers that included “Byawn Borg” (Ok, so I don’t have the accent). As a matter of fact, they’ll probably speak of him as “THE Borg”.

“Well, you may or may not be aware that Borg’s name has been used in business outside of tennis – and one of the products being made is underwear. Now underwear with a tennis player’s name on it should be comfortable, so the Borg group went searching to find the ultimate in comfortable, absorbent, and natural fibers, and indeed, find it they did.

“Now if you listen to the news, it might seem that some breeds of the lowly gnu actually can produce this very fine and soft fiber, but in fact, it comes from sheep.

“But I’ve worn wool – it’s itchy!” says someone from the back.

“Well, that’s because the fibers come from a Borg creation – the new ewe. When they were searching, they found that the occasional lamb would produce unusually fine, absorbent, and soft fibers. It was thin, and quite dry – sheep normally produce lanolin to keep their wool soft, and moisture repellent.

“It actually took years of research to find that it was not exactly a genetic thing – it actually was caused by a fever in the lambs – and those few that survived both the sickness, and the lack of the usual thick coat, produced this extremely fine wool. Furthermore, they found that the fever was induced by a reaction to a bee sting, at a specific location on the lamb’s neck.

They actually had to bring in an Chinese veterinarian – a specialist in acupuncture for animals – before they could even start to understand the mechanism involved. Even he could not reliably reproduce the effect, but eventually, they created program using a robot arm which could consistently induce this effect.

“Of course, now that they know the trick of it, there are herds of these new ewes out there, producing wool for the underwear, and they expect that sooner or later, they will have the world by the (tennis) balls…

“I’m just waiting for the press release to hit the headlines now, and I expect it to be something like:

“Gnus from the Borg! The Borg proclaimed: Ewe ill! Bee ass simulated!”