That's right, ladies.

Some terribly nerdy things that happened in our house in the last five minutes alone:

I said, "I need to find out more about the Prime Directive."

Steve said (aloud, in conversation), "REDACTED. My comment is redacted."

I said, regarding some drink glasses, "You are suffering from an unnecessary multiplication of entities."

And we had a conversation about Klingon penes. (Steve thinks they are probably barbed; I think that, when erect, they are probably VERY VERY hard.)

Comments

[nina]

What is the Klingon word for penis? I respectfully submit "klingam"

[kmkat]

Yeah, barbed -- just like tomcats. That's the Klingons for sure.

[redfox]

I should say that we both recognize that it is quite likely that they, the klingams (at this point Steve and I went on a brief learning adventure across the internet to find out what is the correct way to form a plural in Klingon. Body parts have a distinct plural suffix! so it would actually be klingamDu' or as Steve put it in his IM, not knowing about klingam, wangDu') are both barbed and adamantine.

[ben]

How certain is it, really, that Klingons have a body part distinctly recognizable as a penis? Sure, they appear to have eyes and noses and arms and legs and whatnot, but maybe they're reproductively more alien than they are facially.

[redfox]

Well, they can interbreed with humans, as I learned yesterday from "Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki."

[ben w]

Does that mean, though, that they can actually copulate with humans, or that their, you know, matter, when mixed properly with human matter, can mature into a fertile adult? "Can interbreed with" is not as transparent a relation as one might think!

Anyway, if it's the former, and we're talking about male klingons and female humans, I think that speaks against the barbed klingam, at least a little.

[redfox]

That is a good point you make there.

[joel hanes]

Klingon penes are quite small.

All the macho status competition and roaring and fighting with big blades is pure compensation.

I thought this was obvious to all viewers.

[finn]

This discussion really isn't complete without a mention of rishathra ("sexual practice outside one's own species but within the intelligent hominoids") in Larry Niven's Ringworld.