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

Does anyone ever convert from the dreamer reading to the exceller reading? Conversions in the other direction seem somewhat common (me for one - I hear the dream reading as more natural now), but it seems like dreamers are typically entrenched.

It seems to me that the Simpsons accidentally created a memorable phrase that's very easily twisted from its original meaning, because its original meaning is almost wholly based on context. If you watch the Simpsons, you know who Ralph is, and you have the whole line and its context in front of you, then the most reasonable explanation for it is that Ralph dreams he's a Viking.

But if you get rid of any part of that context - who Ralph is, his mental capacity, the fact that Ralph is talking about sleep specifically - then "I'm a viking" sounds like it ought to mean "I'm good at." Not because "being a viking" actually = "being skilled" anywhere else in English usage, but because it sounds close enough to other phrases meaning "to be good at" or "to be bad at" that our brains instinctively make that leap.

So there's a high-context meaning to the phrase and a low-context meaning, and as we move farther away from the original context for the line, my guess is that the second meaning is going to seem more and more like the intuitive "right" meaning.

it’s like the tonic of “sweet home Alabama”, or Stewart copelad’s fucked up chords!

my thoughts on the use of the word "viking" follow, and don't really have anything to do with the og intent of the writers or anybody's take in this thread, but still:

to be a "viking" at some activity wouldn't just mean you excelled at it in isolation, like knitting in general (stacy really vikinged that puppy sweater), imo it implies a competitive realm in which you totally destroy all opposition, like the all-world knitting championship series (stacy really vikinged the belgian contestant so hard in the finals that the belgian didn't even show up for the medal ceremony).

otoh, if you are a literal viking, imo it suggests you have transcended trivial interpersonal comparisons over what you are and aren't good at, or how that positions you socially, because you are a viking and dgaf. you just have to be good at one thing, vikinging. if you are just a mediocre coder or can't play the net, does it matter? no, because what you do all day is crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women. if ppl are worried about dying at your hands they're not throwing shade because of whatever stupid thing they think makes them special and not you.

this is why dream resonates more with me than excel. ralph isn't jazzed that he's the best at sleep, he perks up because gets to be someone who doesn't care about who he has to be the rest of the time. that seems really dark, though, so maybe my vote is that the viking comment was just a silly non-sequitor that wasn't supposed to mean anything specifically.

I think he is saying he excels at sleep because he has dreams of being a Viking, whereas other people have dreams about less excellent things, or don't have positive sleep experiences.

Thinking that Ralph discusses his dreams with the rest of the kids, or at least that they tell him what they dream, doesn't seem likely. Nobody speaks to him, hence why he thinks Lisa is his girlfriend just because she isn't ignoring him.

I haven't seen this show in like over 20 years and even then, I watched episodes here and there, so ... unless we are completely divorcing the argument from the context of the show, I am probably the least likely to be right in my interpretation.

though speaking of shows that I am very familiar with -- The Wire -- notice, in this clip, the presence of "sleep" and the announcement of "being a viking" -- is this a reference to Ralph's Viking-ness?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph3ESERrdMU

I think I was in the "excel" camp because (and I'm sure someone has already said this in the previous 2000 posts) I misremembered the scene and thought there was an emphasis on "I'm". In my head all these years it's been "that's where *I'm* a viking", but it turns out that there is no such inflection, and what I've had in my head is just informed by the later "excel" reading. So now I'm a dream-excel hybrid.

the really fun thing about Granny's determined, viking-like rampage to stomp Doctor Casino into the permafrost on the principle of authorial intent is that Josh Weinstein did not write the line, and therefore has no more authority than the other writer in the room who tweeted that he thought it meant Ralph excels at sleeping.

Krusty also doesn't say "sex cauldron" as loud as you remember

Weinstein wasn't even in the room, for that matter (and in the 2021 round of tweeting about it specifically says people should be able to laugh at whatever they find funny).

oh boy, Facebook, that's where I'm a-liking
Oh boy, the public square, that's where I'm a-piking
oh boy, the football pitch, that's where I'm a-striking

Weinstein said he deferred to David Mirkin, who said this but did not explicitly say that he was the original writer or that he knew who was:

Simple: Ralph dreams he's a Viking. Ralph was never written with the ability to understand a complex & obscure metaphor like saying he is a Viking at something, meaning he is great at it. If I knew Scully had misunderstood a joke like that, I would have fired him instantly.

— David Mirkin (@DaveMirkin) December 21, 2020

I dunno, I kinda like the idea that Ralph would display this unexpected metaphorical idiosyncrasy when presented with an activity that he actually feels confident in.

Even granting that, I don't really see the metaphor as "complex & obscure" as much as "kind of dumb". Maybe if it was something like "that's where I'm a Pythagoras/Galileo", I could see it working in the context of a science class failure.

sic it's funny you think the "real writer" would say anything different than what Weinstein and Mirkin have. But yes shame on me for not investigating further, boy do i have egg on my face.

jesus christ you people are still talking about this

Guinness record within reach

New board description xp

Maybe when we ask why the chicken crossed the road we mean the chicken tricked or hoodwinked the road

no, the chicken was clearly passing into the afterlife after choosing to be hit by a car

so did this chicken actually have free will

well, ascribing anthropomorphic motives to poultry is clearly a bourgeois act of intellectual decadence and should not be tolerated

Brando to thread

it's funny you think the "real writer" would say anything different than what Weinstein and Mirkin have. But yes shame on me for not investigating further, boy do i have egg on my face.

100% of the people who have attested to actually being in the room at the time said something different than what Weinstein and Mirkin have. But obv I’m not going to tell you what is and isn’t funny!

why did the ilxor post on the thread?

Sic if you can't provide evidence that the writer intended something than what Weinstein and Mirkin have attested to than wtf is your point

Well it's true that we can't appeal to the authority of authorial intent (itself valid imo) without hearing from the actual writer or voice actor.

Weinstein and Mirkin have spoken for the writer
I will literally eat my own feces if it turns out otherwise

Insofar as these things are typically written by teams, Scully's take might carry some weight, if he was there and part of the team.

"If I knew Scully had misunderstood a joke like that, I would have fired him instantly."
-Mirkin

I will literally eat my own feces

how can you resist this offer?

"I have zero authority to weigh in on this, it's just my opinion"
-Weinstein

Hold on. Are vikings good at stuff?

they're good at vikinging

This thread is ilx's version of the bodybuilder days in a week argument

he said this in the same thread:

I was in the room when it was pitched and laughed because I thought it meant he was great at sleeping

— Mike Scully (@scullymike) December 21, 2020

but....

he just said he was in the room, not that he wrote it, and David Cohen is the actual episode writer, and Mirkin was the showrunner and his peers said that he ran writing sessions in one big room rather than splitting into multiple groups and worked late into the night. he also was the solo showrunner and had full creative control of the show, there's no way he wasn't in the room, so.....that angle don't work, sorry.

he was called "dictatorial" by many staff writers, wouldn't even be shocked if he was the type that nit-picked the actual wording of the dialogue itself.

guess Scully’s lucky that he didn’t get fired from that entirely serious retroactive threat

Oh I thought it was serious. Good on you for sussing that out!

lol there's nobody itt that took that comment at face value c'mon

Firing, that's where I'm a head writer

Do we have to start another thread to parse whether that obvious joke was a genuine threat or not

Lol xps

This thread is ilx's version of the bodybuilder days in a week argument

reader, I screamed

Not gonna try to load this entire thread to find out but does anyone know if Nancy Cartwright has weighed in? The writer's intent seems irrelevant in this situation where we all first experienced the joke through Cartwright's delivery. It's pretty easy to change the meaning of a sentence just by shifting the emphasis.

― Fetchboy, Tuesday, September 28, 2021 11:38 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Sleep is where Ralph is not a Suppressive Person.

I thought meant Mirkin meant he wanted to fire Scully from a canon. A man flying through the air to his death, that's comedy.

That joke is not canon.

omg I forgot about that bodybuilder thread, that shit is all time gold

Oh here comes that cannonball guy. He's cool.