I tried writing several different introductions to this week’s piece of crazy news from the internet, and to be honest I just can’t really think of a damn thing that I could say which would make this any weirder than it already is. So here we go.
A guy from Minneapolis has only ever spoken Klingon to his son.
Klingons are… you know what? You know what Klingons are. Everyone does, even those pygmy bushmen in Africa who think an empty coke bottle is technology from the gods. “Ah,” they say “The large (click) bumpy headed warrior (click) race from Star Trek.” And they’re right, that’s what Klingons are.
What you may mercifully not know is that Trek fandom has embraced the Klingon ‘culture” with open arms, to the point where they’ve developed intricate caste systems and social hierarchies and even a spoken language, based on the few snippets of gibberish used in the show. There’s Klingon translations of Shakespeare and the Bible, if you’re chasing that guttural, phlegmatic feeling German just can’t provide any more.
People who learn Klingon and who speak it fluently are at the same time awesome and pathetic beyond comprehension. But that’s a choice they’ve made, probably the last in a series of bad choices, but still, they chose to do that. To learn Klingon. So they could have conversations in Klingon. Presumably in public, where people could see them doing this terrible thing.
The newborn baby did not, however, have a choice. d’Armond Speers spoke only Klingon to his child for the first three years of his life. Sure, he’s now in high school and speaks English fine, but this isn’t the sort of thing you’re supposed to just mess around with. Because his Dad is a bit of a weirdo, that kid could have been in the situation of experiencing every actual language on Earth as a second language, because all his hardwiring was based around a made-up language created by fans of a science fiction TV show.
The evil punchline to the whole thing is that the Dad is apparently not even that big a Star Trek fan. He just did it to see if it would work. I mean, you look in this guy’s high school locker, you’re going to find a few dead puppies, you know?
But the worst thing about all this is that when I first heard about this story, I thought “Holy shit, that is SO AWESOME. I wonder if he had a little bat’leth and some mini-dreds to go with it!”
I am a bad person.
Tags: The November Challenge, Weekend WTF
November 21st, 2009 at 19:14
Hahaha nice. For many years I’ve said that I would kind of like to have a child and just speak to it in a made up language and then suddenly start talking English. It’s probably good that I don’t have a child for this reason. I’m surprised Doyle hasn’t done this. I guess when you actually have a kid you start to show occasional signs of maturity. That being said I don’t think that children reek so much of responsibility when they are sporting a “Reduced” sticker on their forehead.
That video really kinda creeped me out. He’s got the psycho thing going. As does this guy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IM0bkGBuutg
November 21st, 2009 at 19:30
I need to take several showers after watching that.
November 21st, 2009 at 20:24
My wife and I have decided not to have kids but if we did the first one would be the control.
November 22nd, 2009 at 04:37
I’m pretty sure that, statistically, a child’s peers are more important in determining which language the child learns to speak most fluently than their parents are, and certainly more important than the father alone. As long as the child was exposed to English on a regular basis, which he probably was, I don’t think there would have been too much danger in terms of his ability to function.
Still, I could see the child being at a disadvantage when he started school if his parents only taught him the Klingon alphabet.
November 22nd, 2009 at 11:36
Oh man, Bronson, that Steve Sutton guy will haunt my nightmares! His face at the end, and that creepy laugh? Fuck. That.
November 22nd, 2009 at 15:16
@Camille Hahaha yeah I only saw that for the first time ever on Friday and it freaked the shit out of me. I used to think my biggest fear in the world was clowns but now Steve Sutton is my biggest fear. If I ever bump into that man I hope that I’m wearing my brown trousers.
November 23rd, 2009 at 15:35
This reminds me of a Paul Jennings story…
November 23rd, 2009 at 17:42
I know the one you mean. That was an awesome story.