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

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

Don't libel me like that.

Like why would Ralph dream about being a viking consistently enough for it to be a "thing"? DO ANYTHING THE FUCK THAT RALPH DOES??

Jeez, people, if you are honestly making the argument of "most people don't do this, so why would Ralph?" then you are missing the entire. fucking. point.

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srsly gr8 thrd evry1

seriously amazed at the shitty logic displayed

i hate Anchorman btw. i do take your word for it tho that you bet against the truth yet again.

You have to be willing to accept the idea that "sleep is where" anything whatsoever takes place, which is just odd.

Results 1 - 10 of about 36,700 for "sleep is where". (0.21 seconds)

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?

if you think it's frustrating or unfunny for a cartoon character to act uncommonly and nonsensically by real life standards, then you're an odd fellow. I mean, a shit ton of cartoon humor hinges on the idea that cartoon characters can not and do not possess real human brains with real human psychological traits. Ralph is funny and absurd because of his logic-defying outbursts, not in spite of them.

in real life, unless you're a hardcore lucid dreamer, you can't will yourself to be a viking every time you fall asleep. it's a psychological lottery — one night you're a cowboy; the next, a blobfish; and the next, a caricature of yourself, naked, on Broadway. all you have to do is go with the flow and play with whatever random persona you happen to inhabit. and it's just as well: dreams are liberating precisely because they allow us to escape the boring, predictable egos we're burdened with throughout waking life. fuck cultivating a persona and being true to yourself when it's possible to be totally unself-conscious for a few minutes w/o any consequences.

in Ralph's made-up mind, the opposite is true. for one thing, in his "waking life" he doesn't have any ego to speak of; he's merely a vehicle for a certain type of juvenile humor that the screenwriters think up. and hey, if you're someone who lacks an ego, then I imagine that the ultimate form of escape for you would be to inhabit a dream world where for once you're entitled to a complex personality and true human motivations. that's exactly what Ralph accomplishes when he falls asleep and gets his viking on without Matt Groening and James L. Brooks directing his every move and utterance. in the solitude of his dreams, he gets to be "unscripted" and "off-camera" & can indulge in all sorts of behind-the-scenes hopes/goals/desires/emotions/axe-wielding/pillaging. it gives him great joy because the dullest viking in the world is way more engaging and fleshed-out than the average cartoon character.

a close comparison here is the Simpsons Halloween episode where Homer follows a wormhole into a 3-dimensional world and totally freaks out a at the surreality of it all. it's funny for us to watch a character for whom 2-dimensional existence is the norm, whereas the 3rd dimension is something out of the Twilight Zone. it's funny because it's so unlike the way we experience reality. if we walked into a 2-dimensional space, we'd freak out for the same reason Homer did, but the circumstances would be the exact opposite. the real world is a bizarro cartoon world, and cartoon world is a bizarro real world. simple.

in a nutshell, the viking gag is a clever play on the real world/cartoon word dichotomy, and he who laughs at it for other reasons is laughing at his own meathead.

unregistered your post works in favor of argument A, btw

Is it normal for non-arguments about obvious things to result in over 1000 replies? (serious question)

this is one of my fave ILX threads ever.

Ralph isn't smart enough to come up with a hipsterish turn of phrase like "being a viking" at some activity. That you're just assuming that the writers all of a sudden decided to retcon his character and have him be smart enough to come up with his very own catchphrase is absurd. He goes to sleep and becomes a viking, that's all he's smart enough to understand.

ARRRRRRRRRRGH

Surely this is a windup?

http://download.lardlad.com/framegrabs/1F08/024.jpg

l-r: b absolutists

Maybe if CHIEF Wiggum said the quote, I could see the differences in opinion, but this is Ralph for God's sake, the dude has a Nerf football where his brain should be. "Being a viking"=excelling? Tell that to Leif Erikson.

you are sleeping
you do not want to be a viking
you are sleeping

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.

You forget that sleep is both the place Ralph goes to and a verb describing the action (the teacher asks him to sleep). So "the cafeteria - that's where I'm Viking!" is not the equivalent to "sleep - that's where I'm a Viking!". A better equivalent would be "eating - that's where I'm a Viking!", and that would make sense to me exactly like "Viking of sleep" does.

more comparable if he said, "lunch, that's where i'm a viking," because sleep isn't actually the verb. the verb would be 'sleeping, that's where i'm a viking,' to be grammatically correct (i believe?), whereas 'sleep, that's where i'm a viking,' has to be the place he goes. with the cafeteria example it would be, 'lunch, that's where i'm a viking,' where to be a grammatically correct verb it would have to be, 'lunching, that's where i'm a viking,' (ie: parsing it as: i excel at sleeping, over, i excel at sleep)

Tuomas, you must know some Vikings.
Is there an equivalent reverse phrase used by them when a) they fail,AND/OR b) they dream of being Ralph?

(Speaking the unspeakable: how many of the fans of interpretation A are not native speakers of the English language?)

Jeez, people, if you are honestly making the argument of "most people don't do this, so why would Ralph?" then you are missing the entire. fucking. point.

Indeed. I don't quite get the argument that Ralph wouldn't use Viking in the sense of excelling in things, because it's such a weird use of language... Is Ralph really known as a normative user of English?

Ralph isn't smart enough to come up with a hipsterish turn of phrase like "being a viking" at some activity. That you're just assuming that the writers all of a sudden decided to retcon his character and have him be smart enough to come up with his very own catchphrase is absurd. He goes to sleep and becomes a viking, that's all he's smart enough to understand.

First of all, it's not necessarily a "hipsterish turn of phrase", just a weird way of using language - something kids do all the time. Secondly, IIRC there's been at least one episode where Ralph was indeed "retconned" to be surprisingly smart. It's not like Simpsons characters are always super consistent from one episode to another; the writers often just use them to tell jokes, even if the said joke might be somewhat against what the character was like in previous episodes. For example, in the same "Viking" episode it's also established that Lisa becomes a vegetarian, and whereas most later episodes take that for granted, in some episodes she's still shown eating meat. And it's not like Ralph thinking "Viking" means excelling in something requires a huge retconning of his character... Much bigger retcons have been done to other characters - remember the episode where Skinner was revealed to be a fake?