…and this is a 
Boys and their penises
Category: Weirdness
Posted on: August 23, 2007 8:43 AM, by PZ Myers
If they aren't singing about the drugs they take to make them work, they're wondering why their ex-wives set them on fire. I think I have a new explanation for the Fermi Paradox: the aliens are out there, but they're so freaked out and baffled by human sexual behavior that they don't want to get any closer than the orbit of Pluto. Or maybe the reason the alien Greys are hoovering up people and giving them anal probes is that they've got this twisted idea that that is how we say "hello."
(Yes, I am aware that those are two contradictory rationales.)
Comments
Elvis said it best: "I've got a hunk-a hunk-a burning love..."
Posted by: Umilik | August 23, 2007 8:57 AM
Um... Isn't it "penes"??
SG
Posted by: Science Goddess | August 23, 2007 9:11 AM
Pity those misinformed aliens. Coming all this way to visit and the first contact they have is with a gay male couple making out...
But it could've been worse, they might have encountered Falwell and his ilk. Imagine what first impressions that would've left.
Posted by: Umilik | August 23, 2007 9:37 AM
wondering why their ex-wives set them on fire
There are some advantages to that. As Richard Pryor famously stated after running down the street, his head ablaze from a cocaine-freebasing accident: "People respect you, when you on fire."
Fermi Paradox: the aliens are out there, but they're so freaked out and baffled by human sexual behavior that they don't want to get any closer than the orbit of Pluto
I always thought it was the pro-wrestling and tele-evangelist broadcasts (specifically tammy fae), that spooked 'em.
Posted by: jeff | August 23, 2007 9:42 AM
Um... Isn't it "penes"??
SG
Not if you are speaking English, but it is the correct Latin. On that subject, the next person to use "viri" as a plural of "virus" will get hit with a large, semi-rotten, fish. That's not even correct Latin.
Posted by: Graculus | August 23, 2007 9:45 AM
I can just hear that Russian guy, minutes before his ex-wife pounced, singing to himself: "You know that it would be untrue / You know that I would be a liar / If I were to say to you ..."
Posted by: Martin R | August 23, 2007 9:50 AM
I don't think those are contradictory rationales so much as alternative hyoptheses. Both seem plausible to me.
Posted by: histrogeek | August 23, 2007 9:52 AM
Who says there's only one group of alien flying saucer flyboys? It could be that one group is freaked out, another is trying to say hello, and a third is laughing so hard we're mistaking them for gamma ray bursters...
I lean towards the hypothesis they have landed and nailed a guy to tree about 2000 years ago as a joke. The more recent visitors are just trying to top that.
Posted by: blf | August 23, 2007 9:59 AM
climax|penis, fire = extremely poor word juxtaposition
Posted by: Bruce | August 23, 2007 10:08 AM
Well, if aliens evolved shouldn't they have equally wierd reproductive mechanisms?
Posted by: Bobryuu | August 23, 2007 10:11 AM
Pity those misinformed aliens. Coming all this way to visit and the first contact they have is with a gay male couple making out...
But it could've been worse, they might have encountered Falwell and his ilk. Imagine what first impressions that would've left.
Posted by: Umilik | August 23, 2007 09:37 AM
Somewhere I have hidden away a John Zorn album where he and his band makes one minute bursts of music as cues for a Japanese gay scifi porno film. Never seen the film but according to the liner notes, aliens take on the guise of gay men and end up liking sex so much, they forget about their invasion of Earth.
This being John Zorn along with Bill Fissell and Joey Baron, the music is great.
Posted by: Janine | August 23, 2007 10:42 AM
The Kids in the Hall said hello multiple times in their anal-probing aliens skit. While I get mail every day from people concerned about the condition of my penis (and it's awfully nice of them to offer so many remedies for the assumed condition), I don't get spam from anal-probing aliens.
The aliens win.
Posted by: Zeno | August 23, 2007 12:24 PM
There was a comic strip a long time ago that had aliens arriving in a "typical" ("Christian") cemetery. They get out and look around at all the rows of crosses, and one alien says to the other, "If this is what they worship, can you imagine what their leader looks like?!?"
Now we know the strip was prescient.
Posted by: Moody834 | August 23, 2007 4:51 PM
Surely the denizens of Uranus fear anal probes more than earthlings.
Posted by: grasshopper | August 23, 2007 6:34 PM
Just another in a long line of penis envy threads. Congrats PZ, you've found your niche. lol.
Posted by: Jester | August 23, 2007 9:19 PM
Sure it is. I had 6 years of Latin at school, you can take my word for that. Although neuter, virus is an ordinary O-declension noun in -s.
ROTFL!!!
Posted by: David Marjanović | August 24, 2007 8:54 AM
Actually, I thought it was "penes" for multiple penes on a single individual, but penises for multiple individuals each with a single penis.
Kind of like "fish" and "fishes"
SG
Posted by: Science Goddess | August 24, 2007 9:13 AM
Naaah. That's simply the Latin plural. The other one was composed in English. That's the difference.
Posted by: David Marjanović | August 24, 2007 8:03 PM
What I find numbingly weird was this Russian guy, living in a house for years with someone he's *divorced*, and yet... he thought that sitting around watching TV naked was a good idea. (Especially in Russia. Yes it's summer but still.)
I mean, sure, setting him on fire was going a little far, but, um, well.
Posted by: Nix | August 25, 2007 1:48 PM
David Marjanović said in comment #16:
AFAIK, the Latin word virus, -i was singulare tantum, and the expected plural would be vira, -orum.
Posted by: AlexP | August 26, 2007 1:07 PM