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

RAGNAROK!

Oh, so this thing is still going on, huh?

ha not until you just posted

i almost want to count and see what percentage of those thousand posts are people going "800 posts!" or "i can't believe you guys are still posting!"

V few of them iirc.

Flush this question out

Don't misread my tone! I wasn't expressing dismay. I love that it's still going, tho I find it kinda suspicious that the evil option A people have all tried to divert our attention with their Cthulhu nonsense. Did you know that were it not for the Option A'ers, ILX would have won World War I?

yes. who was ilx fighting in WWI again?

The vikings.

think you mean the excels ats

Fuckin' biplanes all with wigglepuppies on 'em.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Thank God. I need to know!

so badly want to lock and delete this thread about 23 hours from now, but i am resisting total mod abuse

for now

so badly want to lock and delete this thread about 23 hours from now, but i am resisting total mod abuse

do this & send the receipts for the dinner you take your family out to tonight to me

run up a huge bar tab while you're at it, drink like a viking

uh the phrase is "The Bar? That's where I'm a Viking!" actually

run up a huge bar tab while you're at it, drink like a viking

dude you don't know what you're dealing with here

right or wrong, granny danger always comes across like a humongous cock

no one cares

I've read just about every post imaginable in this thread. I stayed up without sleep last night, even avoiding showers or going to work. I missed my band's gig tonight so I could take more time to ponder. I turned down three opportunities at hot under the covers action so I could wrap my head around it. I then ingested some of the most highly illegal drugs known to mankind, and a little gasoline.

And I still have no idea what the fuck dyao is talking about. Answer B, stop listening to Pink Floyd and smoking up so much. Next you'll be telling me Everybody Poops is an anarchist screed about bucking conformity.

But Ralph is like the guy from Memento, he can't remember anything that happened more than 10 seconds ago, now he's onto something new, taking a nap. And like everything else, he's exuberant: Naps are great. In naps you get to be a viking excel at something.

fixed. BTW, I know we're long past actually discussing this in any productive way but I do have one more wrinkle to throw in, which is that the Simpsons is/was written by committee, with a lot of the material getting added in during script reviews/dry runs and such. So, assuming even 1/6 of the population instinctively hears this joke as being an "A" joke, it's entirely possible at least one of the people who laughed at it and kept it in the script was, in fact, a Sleeper Of Vikings.

1029 new answers

you guys

MY EYES TASTE LIKE BURNING

I do not know what to do with the quickness with which I go from a detached and superior "lol that thread is still at the top of the page" to having to restrain myself from attempting the 1000-word post that makes B absolutists come to Jesus

Next you'll be telling me Everybody Poops is an anarchist screed about bucking conformity.

Everybody Poops (In My Viking Hat)

Ralf is a concrete thinker. He is does not use metaphors consciouslyat all. Therefore, he doesn't mean that he excels at something. He means he is literally a viking. However, he is wrong to think he is literally a viking. He is only a metaphorical viking, as sleep images are metaphors. Therfore, he has the capacity to create metaphors, but not the insight to know that is what he is doing: and what he is doing is creating an unconscious metaphor for a state in which he excels.

do i know what rhetorical means??

this is the song that never ends
it goes on and on my friends

I feel like people have been looking at this all wrong, trying to use other words in place of 'viking' to demonstrate the stupidity of one version or the other, but OK, think about this, A folks --

if the teacher told Ralph to go to lunch, and he said "oh boy, the cafeteria -- that's where I'm a viking!" or if she told him to go to recess and he said "oh boy, the playground -- that's where I'm a viking!" would you have laughed? would that have made ANY fucking sense to you? really think about this and be honest.

I lol'd

to be fair, some dude, the "excels" interpretation counts on it being something really lame and effortless - the idea of Ralph thinking he's really good at it is the joke. So going to the cafeteria doesn't really make sense.

OK, that was kind of confusingly thought-through, b/c obviously going to the cafeteria is kind of effortless, but do you get what I'm saying here? Like it matters that he's excelling at the one thing at the one thing where it's almost impossible to imagine someone being *bad* at it through any conscious choice of their own. Being a viking at it isn't even conceivable, unless you're Ralph and you're bad at everything but people praise you for your ability to sleep well!

I love this thread. It's where I'm a viking.

Being a viking at it isn't even conceivable, unless you're Ralph Doctor Casino/dyao/etc.

Like, I think if the "dream" theory is going to turn on issues of Ralph supposedly having these issues with bullies (wtf??? when was it ever part of Ralph's character that he gets picked on, or notices if so??) and working them out by being triumphant in his dreams, then I think it's fair enough that the "excel" theory can work on the notion that Ralph doesn't get praised for a lot of things (VERY PLAUSIBLE, RALPH IS A GRADE-A MORON) and takes a simple pride in the one thing that someone (Hoover? his parents?) have told him he does well at - - "you're a regular viking at sleep, Ralphie!"......

it doesn't turn on that at all. the idea of a little kid having fanciful dreams doesn't actually require that they need be an escape from or refutation of his waking life. you're overthinking this.

and again, your theory operates on the premise that there is some unseen person in his Ralph's life who coined "viking at sleep," which is a much bigger stretch.

regular viewers of the show know that chief wiggum is exactly that person. but smh at people who take comedy literally, maybe that's why anchorman got so many votes in the 00s poll.

what does that even mean?

it means what you want it to mean.

how is Anchorman the posterboy for literalist humor?

anyway Chief Wiggum isn't some silly fun dad who comes up with imaginative stories and turns of phrase to entertain Ralph, he's just a bumbling schmoe who marvels that his kid comes up with bizarre stuff like 'Wiggle Puppy.'

There are all kinds of stretches in the "dream" theory too though! Like why would Ralph dream about being a viking consistently enough for it to be a "thing"? Unless you are Tuomas this is not a common dream and certainly not a common RECURRING one. We have to imagine an unseen series of viking dreams that got him so accustomed to this that he actually gets excited for sleep specifically because he is near-certain he will dream about it again...wtf sense does that make?

There's also the weird misuse of "where," which is odd in either scenario, but this hurts the Dreamer position more because the argument against Excellers seems to come down to "the dream theory is so OBVIOUS and LITERAL in PLAIN ENGLISH." You have to be willing to accept the idea that "sleep is where" anything whatsoever takes place, which is just odd. Sleep is where I restore my body's strength for a new day? Sleep is where I dream about Tuomas's Vikings? No... sleep is HOW I do these things, at best. If the statement was "Oh boy, sleep! That's how I get to be a viking!" the Dreamers would have a much better case.

(Note that that would have just led to a DIFFERENT debate - does he mean dreaming, or "get to be" in the sense of "growing up to be," a la "Milk: It Does A Body Good"????)

I resent the implication that we're overthinking this.

i don't get why viking needs to be an established turn of phrase or a use of language on ralph's part that completely holds water

fuck my whole soul though

can really really easily see Chief Wiggum calling Ralph "my little Viking" about any number of things.

oh my god

I would have to rewatch Anchorman to explain why it is so bad and hated. just take my word for it that I bet all the people arguing for B also love Anchorman