Oh boy, ILX! That's where I'm a viking!..?

I agree in principle with your Lovecraftian interpretation, but I don't think Ralph is saying anything about a Silver Key. In fact, I don't think he's speaking English at all, rather than the ancient, forgotten language Lovecraft sometimes cited in his stories, such as in the incantation "Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn!". So Ralph's sdrawkcab sentence is not meant to be taken as a proclamation in English rather than a chant, an incantation. And this reminds me of another chant who's meaning has also been a subject of hot debate, that of Bob the One-Armed Man in Twin Peaks. Here's a quote from the Twin Peaks faq:

E25. What are the words to Mike (the one-armed man)'s poem?

According to the shooting script of episode 2, it is:

Through the darkness of future past
the magician longs to see
one chance out between two worlds
'Fire walk with me.'

However, the closed caption subtitles for the episode use
the word "chants" instead of "chance", igniting a
long-standing, never-resolved debate:

- "chance" implies there is only one way or method to escape
from "between two worlds".

- 'chants' is supported by both the Convenience Store scene
and Laura's dream/vision in FWWM, where recital of the
phrase is followed by passage to the Red Room.

Brad Smith (a07✧✧✧@gi✧✧✧.rs✧✧✧.b✧.c✧) attended the '93 Fan
Festival (see question P8 for the address for Fan Festival
info) and had the opportunity to ask Al Strobel (actor who
played Mike) about this:

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

When I was at the TPFF 93, I asked Al Strobel about
chants/chance. He said that he got the poem from David
Lynch's handwritten notes and it was chants. This would
seem to indicate that DL's intention was chants.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

This is further supported by an appearance of the poem,
using "chants", in David Lynch's photography book, "Images"
(see question P1).

However, because of the conflicting written versions, and
because both words help support peoples' different
interpretations of Lodge events, it is unlikely this will
ever be resolved to everyone's satisfaction.

Now, just like with Ralph's "Viking", it would be foolish to think that this puzzle exists in a way that only one solution is and can be correct. In fact, both solutions are part of the same spell. The magician "chants", and that gives him a "chance" to cross between the worlds, just as Ralph's "Viking" incantation crosses the bridge between
two worlds, the world we perceive as "real", and the "dream world" of Lovecraftian gods (of whom BOB is merely an earthly manifestation). Ralph is both a "Viking", in the sense that he excels in what he does, being able to bridge the two worlds with the sheer power of his will, concentrated in the magical chant, and a "Viking" in the sense that his incantation makes division between the real world and dream world irrelevant, therefore making him a literal Viking.

BS is SB backwards, just sayin

the missing 'i' is also a pun on the fact that when Ralph sleeps, he closes, or literally loses, his "eyes".

It's also worth noting that Odin sacrificed one of his eyes to Mimir's Spring in order to gain Wisdom. So Odin literally "lost an I".

the people who insist that A is way funnier, or that B isn't funny at all, and that's why it must be A, are the ones that really get to me.

Don't dwell on the dichotomy, we're already on our way past it, man.

Yeah, I like boys and girls, they're all great! There's really no difference is there, Mr. BBC?

It's also worth noting that Odin sacrificed one of his eyes to Mimir's Spring in order to gain Wisdom. So Odin literally "lost an I".

― Tuomas, Thursday, April 29, 2010 8:12 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark

very interesting. this revelation sheds new light on Ralph - perhaps the interpretation of Ralph as being a perpetual state of arrested development is wrong - the penumbra cast by Ralph's (quite obviously staged) imbecility conceals Ralph's true nature as being in a state of transition, of metamorphosis. in support of this, I present another utterance of Ralph: "When I grow up I want to be a principal or a caterpillar." Ralph is aware, whether as Ralph-as-Ralph or Ralph-as-Odn, of the process of transformation - indeed, a reverse transformation, perhaps, as Wisdom destroys - set forth by his exchange of one form of knowledge - vision - for another in the form of the water of Mimir. we may then believe, that for Ralph, sleep is not a metaphysical reality where he may assume a different form, but rather a state of transformation whose final stage is still unknown to us, yet to be revealed by the scribe David Cohen. but of what consequence is Ralph's awareness of this state of events - does Ralph still retain any agency of his own, or is he merely a palimpsest upon which further truths remain yet to be written?

One more interesting thing about Odin. According to Wikipedia:

In stanza 34 of the poem Hávamál, Odin describes how he once sacrificed himself to himself by hanging on a tree. The stanza reads:

I know that I hung on a windy tree
nine long nights,
wounded with a spear, dedicated to Odin,
myself to myself,
on that tree of which no man knows
from where its roots run.[11]

In the stanza that follows, Odin describes how he had no food nor drink there, that he peered downward, and that "I took up the runes, screaming I took them, then I fell back from there."[11]

* * *

In Rúnatal, a section of the Hávamál, Odin is attributed with discovering the runes. He was hung from the world tree, Yggdrasil, while pierced by his own spear for nine days and nights, in order to learn the wisdom that would give him power in the nine worlds. Nine is a significant number in Norse magical practice (there were, for example, nine realms of existence), thereby learning nine (later eighteen) magical songs and eighteen magical runes.

Now, it is generally thought that, while hanging from the tree, Odin enters a sort of Shamanic trance state, in which he discovers Wisdom and the eighteen Runes (the foreign alphabet of the Older Gods?). In Marvel Comics' Thor series, this trance state is called "Odinsleep". So sleep is definitely a transformative state for Odin/Ralph/Mike.

In The Simpsons, Ralph is often seen "accidentally" poking his own eye with his pen. This is generally thought to be a sign of Ralph's dumbness, but I think it really means Ralph is just mimicking Odin's Original Sacrifice of his eye/I.

Why is it that the Viking of Sleep people are willing to accept that the Viking in Sleep crew interpreted the line differently

because the Viking of Sleep people have been proven wrong conclusively but are only willing to meet the people who did so halfway

Also, in "Lisa the Vegetarian", just before Ralph's Viking line, when the class is about to dissect some earthworms, this is what Ms. Hoover says to the class...

Ms. Hoover: "First, pin them down, so they don't fly up and hit you in the eye."

I think the Ralph/Odin connection is more than obvious here.

because the Viking of Sleep people have been proven wrong conclusively but are only willing to meet the people who did so halfway

Can you point me to this "conclusive" proof then?

952 of them.

xpost T - fool me once, shame on you

fool me over a decade of "please explain it to me again," shame on God

Are you some older ILXor under a new name? Because I don't remember seeing you around before this thread?

Anyway:

Ad hominems don't weaken my argument.

― Tuomas, 28. huhtikuuta 2010 21:50 Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

― Tuomas, 29. huhtikuuta 2010 3:11 Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

huhtikuuta

Hi dere!

Are you some older ILXor under a new name?

yes, he is

also btw?

In The Simpsons, Ralph is often seen "accidentally" poking his own eye with his pen. This is generally thought to be a sign of Ralph's dumbness, but I think it really means Ralph is just mimicking Odin's Original Sacrifice of his eye

amazing

you can lead a huhtikuuta, but you can't make it drink

HI DERE is wrong about me - I am the man on the street, I just walked in here & met this guy Tuomas talking shit and was appalled

but you're like, 60?

that qualifies as "older ILXor" around here

hakuna matada

xpost oh - yeah, I'm 58 - made my first million explaining jokes to Finns but now that I'm retired it's just a hobby

met this guy Tuomas talking shit and was appalled

Tuomas this should give you a clue - "a paul"

FTR I am enjoying Tuomas, Dyao and Fetchboy's increasingly convoluted delving into the mysteries of Ralph. Just so long as it's settled that 'A' voters are disgusting savages who need to be permabanned.

A people's argument againt B: it's not as funny; the Simpsons is too clever of a show to have an obvious literal joke like that

B people's argument against A: it makes no sense to automatically leap to the conclusion that Ralph is making a metaphor, this is not how jokes are constructed and no one in the history of earth has ever used that saying (hi deej, wipe away the foam from your mouth). Sleep=dreaming=fantasy land, this is a well-established theme known by anyone on the planet including mentally-challenged schoolchildren.

A people's argument is way flimsier, relies on too many leaps of logic and assumptions. Also, Tuomas rapes babies.

http://blogs.chron.com/tubular/archives/Ouroboros.png

Oh boy, eating my ass! That's where I'm a Viking!

ugh

the horn helmets are ass-eating utensils

hook your feet in behind them, kind of thing? i can see that.

by the way, the fact that Ralph eats a worm before going to sleep is significant. the word 'worm' comes from the Old Norse word 'orm'. in Norse mythology, Jörmungandr was one of three children of Loki, and took the shape of a serpent, or 'wyrm.' depictions of Jörmungandr commonly portray him as being so massive that he is able to encircle the Earth by clasping his own tail. when he lets go, likely during Ragnarok, the world will end.

in a sense, then, Ralph is consuming the seeds of his own - and the world's - destruction.

gross

But at the ehd of vol. 2 of Marvel's Thor, Thor imitates Odin and hangs upside down from Yggdrasil for nine days, and thus reaches Odinsleep. And in his Odinsleep he finds out how the Asar of Asgard can escape the endless cycle of Ragnarok->rebirth->Ragnarok->rebirth of the world - and indeed they escape it. It should be obvious, then, that sleep is the realm of transgressive ideas, and within sleep Ralph/Odin tries to escape the endless cycle, the worm that bites his own tail (which, incidentally, just went up his nostril).

Btw, real Vikings didn't have horned helmets, it's just that archeologists assumed the horns they found were part of a helmet, when in fact they were what Vikings drank booze from (which is why Nordic people still use the phrase "drinking horn").

I thought they still used the phrase "drinking horn" due to the tragedy that is rampant alcoholism.

"horn" in "drinking horn" is actually an acronym - the full phrase is "drinking hell of rum nuts"

http://starsmedia.ign.com/stars/image/article/975/975962/line-o-rama-ralph-wiggum-20090423033812157-000.jpg

increasingly the A people are sounding like creationists who are just so shocked at how unwilling the scientific community is to take their theories seriously

ONE EYED TROUSER WORM

Just curious, to the people that think a literal interpretation of the joke is implausible or lacks humor, what do you think of the "My cat's breath smells like cat food" line?

it's never been one of my favorite ralph lines

"I bent my wookie", OTOH...

BTW, wookiee should have two e's.

My cat's breath smells like cat food is an ontologically nuanced statement. Essentially, everything eaten by a cat is 'cat food' and so there is actually no way Ralph could be lying in the construction of this assertion. Had the cat eaten pee, bullets, turkey gravy, an apple, Eleanor Roosevelt... and smelled of any of those things, Ralph would be irrefutably truthful.

can cats eat Eleanor Roosevelt? I don't think she'd be having any of it.