I’m a geek, and I’m perfectly comfortable with that.  However, despite my self-proclaimed geekery, there are times in which my fellow geeklings go so far as to embarrass me.  Badly.  For whatever reason, this has been happening a lot lately in regard to Klingons.

Yes, Klingons.  The badasses of the Star Trek universe.  Klingons are, lately, extremely popular amongst that subset of geeks known as the Ubernerds.  There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it.  Yet, despite its apparently random nature, Klingons are red hot among the super nerdy right now.  Consider these stories, all of which have been in the news lately:

1.  The Klingons for Christ.  We’ve covered this story before – a group of Christian super nerds who believe that Jesus, the suffering servant, was totally and completely a Klingon at heart.

The Klingon Rite of Ascension requires that the initiate walk between two rows of warriors armed with pain sticks. This is sometimes called The Way of Blood. It is a test of a warrior’s commitment and courage. Christ satisfied this requirement and much, much more. And this act was no punishment for a criminal, as the Romans intended, nor was it a rite that had only a symbolic meaning. Christ did not run from this pain; he welcomed it. His sacrifice was an act of will. In this crucifixion, Christ defeated his enemies. And this is what makes him a suitable savior for the Klingon as well as the human and all races.

2.  The professional linguist who spoke only Klingon to his son for three years.  d’Armand Speers, who holds a Ph.D. in computational linguistics,  claims that, as an experiment, he spoke only Klingon to his little boy.

“I was interested in the question of whether my son, going through his first language acquisition process, would acquire it like any human language,” Speers told the Minnesota Daily. “He was definitely starting to learn it.”

We actually did a bit of digging on this one, and found out a couple of quirky facts.  First, Speer’s son is now 15; why is Speers seeking publicity, suddenly, now?  Also, Speers makes the rather outrageous claim that he isn’t a Star Trek fan.  This experiment was done purely for research purposes. Further, his story is chock full of moments that, to us, seemed completely made up.

As for Speers, who still gets nostalgic when he recalls singing the Klingon lullaby “May the Empire Endure” with his son at bedtime, the experiment was a dud. His son is now in high school and doesn’t speak a word of Klingon.

As you may have guessed, we here at Wandering Goblin are calling B.S. on Speer’s whole story.  During the course of his doctoral studies, did Speers never have a class in ethics?  You know, the idea that human experimentation might just be wrong?  No?  That seems unlikely.  Aside from the facts above, it’s simply implausible that a man who doesn’t like Star Trek, taught himself Klingon, then passed it on to his son as the boy’s exclusive language.  Further, it seems intrinsically unlikely that Mrs. Speers, wherever she is, would allow this bizarre experiment to happen to her child, and finally, this sounds suspiciously like a publicity stunt for the company Speer’s advises, Ultralingua.

3. There was also the “Klingons vs. Furries” bowling competition we covered some time back.  Nothing is weirder than these two groups settling their differences in a bowling alley.

Now, suddenly today, I find this on the intertubez – a country-western love song about Klingon women:

Which reminds me of the Klingon rapper we featured not long ago:

Which led to the discovery of some Klingon karaoke!

And the karaoke led, in turn, to something every red blooded man wants to see:  a Klingon beauty contest.

And even a Klingon baby, who’s speaking either Klingon, or typical baby gibberish:

People, I have to ask you:  does this ever stop?  Is their something about putting on a Klingon costume that, suddenly and inexplicably, makes one act like they are completely out of their minds?  And what is it, when Star Trek TV shows are now off the air, that makes being a Klingon so trendy right now?  And why is it becoming so darned odd?  You don’t see the Naruto anime cosplayers doing this kind of thing, now do you?

Somebody please explain this to us.  Please. 

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