Klingon: The official language of town council

Indian Trail, N.C.: the final town council frontier. This was the last general meeting of council member David Waddell. His four year mission: to explore strange new conservative practices, to seek out new funding and new budgets. to boldly cut where no council member had cut budgets before.

I’ve heard of LARPing — live action role playing where geeks dress as other-worldly fantasy/action game characters and act out their game moves.

I’ve read about how avid fans of science fiction and fantasy books, comics, television series and movies dress up like they are inhabitants of those worlds, or are actual characters from those stories. (Before you start making fun of grownups playing fantasy-land dress up, think about the similarities with mainstream activities like the upcoming Super Bowl when fans will dress in their team’s jerseys sporting a painted face and bizarre wigs or other headgear. Sure they’re drunk at the game, but that dress-up decision was made with pre-game sobriety.)

I’ve seen seen photos of rabid fans of all sorts of subject matter getting married in costumes celebrating everything from Elvis to “Star Wars,” colonial history to Harry Potter, space explorers to Smurfs.

But I don’t think I have ever before seen a resignation from a town council member written in the made-up language of Klingon from TV’s “Star Trek.”

You know Klingons, right? The abrasive, aggressive, military types with long, black hair and pronounced ridges rippling from their foreheads down their noses. They are the human race’s enemies and allies and enemies and ... it’s complicated.

Klingons have their own alphabet and working language. They have entire websites and dictionaries dedicated to their words. They have grammar rules. And, apparently, they also have a translator on Bing — the online Google alter-ego, or arch nemesis.

ClarionLedger.com reports that when David Waddell decided, two years into his four-years in his town council term in Indian Trail, N.C., that he couldn’t take the crazy, over-spending ways of the council and was tired of fighting the system, he wrote out a lengthy resignation letter. It listed all his grievances and said adiós, suckers — in a professional way.

But Waddell also wrote a shortened version that said adiós, suckers, in a — let’s say — more casual way: translated into Klingon for Mayor Michael Alvarez, who is reportedly a “Star Trek” fan.

The article says that Alvarez was not amused. He did not approve of Waddell’s resignation style, but North Carolina voters may get the last say on approval because Waddell is apparently setting his sights on a run for state Senate as a highly conservative, third-party candidate.

Godspeed on your spaced-out adventure, Mr. Waddell.

(It’s a good day to write at [email protected].)