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

http://www.amandinealessandra.com/research/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/zhuangzi.jpg

omg the line just isn't that funny either way. probably the unfunniest thing ralph ever said.

He might even know dreams aren't real, but that doesn't matter. He loves them. (See sad lulz above.)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2087/1931470865_52d749c05b.jpg

would love for this thread to take a turn to epistemology

If explaining a joke always makes it much funnier, then arguing about which interpretation of a joke is more lolworthy is clearly the pinnacle of excellence!

i could help with that but i aint coming back

xpost

http://home.wlu.edu/~mahonj/images/Descartes_ontol_pic.gif

I'm not sure how we could bring epistemology into it -- I guess there's how you know what it means, but that's seems like a hermeneutic question, not an epistemological question (beyond the extent to which hermeneutics are a way of creating epistemology?)

butts

buttology

Btw: People bitching about the argument are even more annoying than people stumping for option A imo. How boring to go on an ILX thread like this and make snide remarks about how useless the argument is, or how inane the discussion is. Thanks for the heads up, dude! Can I hire you as an ILX life consultant to tell me which threads are worth spending time on or what discussions are valuable?

"Hey, Molly's looking pretty angry! I wonder what I did?" said Tom epistemologically.

true but it's an ilx tradition that 3-5 people must snidely judge any good clusterfuck

and that those same people all have like 50 posts on the clusterfuck thread

Btw: People bitching about the argument are even more annoying than people stumping for option A imo. How boring to go on an ILX thread like this and make snide remarks about how useless the argument is, or how inane the discussion is. Thanks for the heads up, dude! Can I hire you as an ILX life consultant to tell me which threads are worth spending time on or what discussions are valuable?

― Mordy, Wednesday, April 28, 2010 6:13 PM (2 minutes ago)

how much money u got?

I mean, worse comes to worse, one day I fondly look back on this and remark that I once wasted some time arguing about the character of Ralph, what kind of person he is, and how audiences should be responding to the things he says -- and I lol at lol how stoned I must've been at the time. But like, will you ever be, "Guys, I once totally told off these dudes who were arguing about Ralph Wiggum. They thought they were having fun arguing a meaningless debate, but I totally showed them by making snide remarks and then posting the thread-link on the CLUSTERFUCK thread with a snarky description." Totally lame, imo.

now you told off those people so proud of their snide remarks.

but it's not ralph dreaming he's a viking in and of itself that's supposed to be funny. it's a)random viking reference mixed with b)dude is excited about getting to be a viking again and prob doesn't even know dreams aren't real.

But dreaming of being a Viking isn't particularly funny in itself, it's probably a rather common dream. And nothing in Ralf's sentence suggests he can't distinguish between dreams and reality. Many people talk about dreams like that: "in my sleep I was happy", "in my dream I float over the Atlantic". If Ralf is saying "in my sleep I'm a Viking" is no proof that he thinks he actually turns into a real Viking.

Whereas the alternative interpretation is funny because...
A) the teacher has just criticized Ralph for being dumb and unproductive, therefore it's funny that he feels so proud about his sleeping skills, and
B) Ralph thinking that "a Viking of sleep" is something you can use to describe yourself is funny in itself, because it's such an unusual metaphor, kinda like "a viceroy of sex" or something.

Oh shit I've fallen into the meta rabbit hole where I'm viking at telling people off at things.

Btw: Going back to viking thing -- whatever it originally means, I think it's awesome that it means something new now, and that's a wonderful contribution to the english language.

wait. WAIT.

Being a viking is a common dream, Toumas???

dyao that's your cue to post the mirror jpg
xps

I learn new things about Finland every day.

it's probably a rather common dream

for realz?

lol xp

I love the idea that in Finland it's common to dream of being a viking -- probably because viking'ness has seeped into the dreaming unconsciousness of the people of Finland and in some weird Jungian archetypical way they dream of being a viking like I might dream of flying, or swimming.

"I had that teeth falling out dream again."
"I had that raping and pillaging a village as a viking dream again."

ok tuomas now explain why the funnier interpretation should be the correct one

I dunno I'm still trying to chew Mordys assertion that there are ways of watching the simpsons where you're not trying to maximize the lols

tbh, when I watch tv, I just take the lols they give me unless I'm really stoned. I don't really go out of my way to hermeneutically produce new lolz that weren't intended. I mean, I agree with Derrida's assertion that texts are liberal producers of meaning, that they can't help but produce new meanings, but when I'm watching the Simpsons I'm generally not paying THAT much attention.

"too many lols... must minimize humor before diaphragm bursts..."

i call that "watching the current season of the simpsons"

xxpost

Being a viking is a common dream, Toumas???

It certainly isn't so unusual that someone saying they were a Viking in their dream is funny in itself, which was my point. If a friend of you said to you "I dreamt I was a Viking", would you burst into laughter?

mordy on a scale of 1 to ralf how stoned are you right now

Dying tickles!

Now is Ralph saying that the sensations associating with dying tickle, and the joke is that incidentally he's dying but is having the wrong reaction to it (he should be worried but instead he's digging the physiologically sensations of death?) OR is the joke that Ralph thinks tickles means something else entirely and he's confusing the word and dying doesn't actually tickle to Ralph, it hurts like hell, but he lacks the linguistic structure to distinguish verbally between pain and tickling?

Does that answer the answer? Xp

And nothing in Ralf's sentence suggests he can't distinguish between dreams and reality.

No, but everything in Ralph's character suggests that this is not implausible.

wouldn't burst out laughing but would def go "heheh that's pretty fucked up, dude". not "oh *yawn* a viking dream, heard that 1000000 times"

Maybe the joke is that Ralph is secretly Finnish.

I mean...

Ralph Wiggum: This is my swing set. This is my sandbox. I'm not allowed to go in the deep end.
[points to a large rock]
Ralph Wiggum: That's where I saw the leprechaun.
Bart Simpson: [sarcastically] Right, a leprechaun.
Ralph Wiggum: He told me to burn things.
Bart Simpson: [uneasily] Uh-huh.

Marge: Is that normal?
Chief Wiggum: No, he's just playing 'Wiggle Puppy'! That's a dog he made up who flies by wagging his tail. Heh, I tell you, that dog has had some amazing adventures.

tbh, when I watch tv, I just take the lols they give me unless I'm really stoned. I don't really go out of my way to hermeneutically produce new lolz that weren't intended. I mean, I agree with Derrida's assertion that texts are liberal producers of meaning, that they can't help but produce new meanings, but when I'm watching the Simpsons I'm generally not paying THAT much attention.

But it's not like we - or at least me - were actively and knowingly choosing the funnier interpretation. When I first heard that line, the "Viking of sleep" interpretation was the first and only thing that came to my head. Only years later, when I was reading some Simpsons fansite, did I find out that other people had interpreted the line differently.

I don't think you can produce any meaning whatsoever from any text, but here it would be best to observe the line in its proper context, i.e. something said by Ralph Wiggum in a 3rd season episode of The Simpsons. Now, by the 3rd season Simpsons was already well known for its offbeat, often surreal humor, and the character of Ralph was known for garbling the English language. This is why a viewer with some background knowledge on Simpsons in general and Ralph in particular may easily choose the more eccentric and less literal interpretation, because that's what he expects from the series and from the character based on his previous knowledge of them. On the other hand, in a more straightforward comedy show, said by a more straightforward character, the line "that's where I'm a Viking" could definitely be interpreted in a more literal way, because the context of that show would favour that interpretation. But in the context of The Simpsons, the "Viking of sleep" interpretation just makes more sense.

no it doesn't

stop posting

http://www.authorama.com/files/humpty-dumpty.gif

Tuomas, how is it possible that when hearing the line, "Sleep, that's where I'm a viking," you didn't think the meaning was that "I'm a viking in my sleep," which is the correct grammatical interpretation? Like, I understand making up a newer, funnier explanation, but brains process language in similar ways, and the natural way to read it the way the syntax has laid it out.

"Sleep, that's where I'm a viking," is syntactically synonymous with "I'm a viking in sleep." Now you could then say, viking is literal or viking is figurative language meaning an idiom (to be excellent at something) that doesn't exist outside the context of this sentence. But that's not the interpretation that makes more sense.

Ralph opened a can of worms
called

wait I'm missing somethign there

Also, "I don't think you can produce any meaning whatsoever from any text," what does this even mean?

Sure, Ralph is known for garbling the English language, but he's also known for having a rich fantasy life, which he is not always able to distinguish from reality.

I'll give you one more:

Ralph: "Um, Miss Hoover? There's a dog in the vent."
Miss Hoover: "Ralph, remember the time you said Snagglepuss was outside?"
Ralph: "He was going to the bathroom."

Marge: Is that normal?
Chief Wiggum: No, he's just playing 'Wiggle Puppy'! That's a dog he made up who flies by wagging his tail. Heh, I tell you, that dog has had some amazing adventures.

You forget that in The Simpsons, when someone dreams or imagines being something else, almost always we see them actually being that something - like in the above example. But after Ralph's line about being a Viking the episode doesn't cut into a dream sequence where he is a Viking, even though The Simpsons very often does exactly that when someone is imagining/dreaming of something. The fact that this doesn't happen would suggest that the Viking line should be interpreted differently, and that it isn't to do with Ralph imagining himself as an actual Viking.