One of my favorite (and, until recently, unknown to most people) haunts is the Pop-Punk Message Bored, hosted by Knock Knock Records CEO and all around good guy Mark Enoch.
The Pop-Punk Bored is home to a dazzling array of cheerfully moronic time-wasting arguments; I am an eager participant in many of them. Most recently, Bored King Chadd Derkins innocently commented on a line uttered by the semi-retarded character Ralph Wiggum in an old episode of The Simpsons:
You know when Ralph Wiggum says "Oh boy, sleep! That's where I'm a viking"
I think I've been misinterpreted (sic) that joke for my whole life. Here was my interpretation: I assumed that "viking" was a figure of speech I'd never heard, that was synonymous with "pioneer" or "groundbreaker". So I always thought the joke was that Ralph was basically saying "Sleep is an area in which I excel". I never thought much of the joke, mostly because (I thought) it was based on a figure of speech I wasn't familiar with.
But I was just thinking about this joke, and I realized he probably meant that he has dreams about being a viking (in a literal sense), and he can't wait to go to sleep so he can be a viking again. That's way funnier. I am retarded.
The Bored broke out in a minor Civil War over it, with those of us on the side of reason and sanity taking the view that this line refers to Ralph looking forward to sleep because that's where he dreams he's a Viking, while those on the side of silliness insisted that "Viking" is a term for excelling at something and that what Ralph really means is that he likes sleeping because he's really good at it. 425 messages later the thread is still on topic.
The debate quickly spread to other message boards and radio call-in shows and by last night Bored members were overhearing strangers arguing about it at parties in Brooklyn. By this morning, Metafilter had picked up on it (and at least one commenter is wondering if this isn't just an attempt to drum up interest in the new Simpsons movie. For the record, I don't think the studios need Chadd's help. Besides which, I'm guessing that given the opportunity to hype something to this level Chadd would be far more likely to try to drum up interest in his new band, Short Attention {is "Freakshow" a great tune or what?}).
While it's obvious that the only funny way for the line to be delivered is in reference to Ralph's dreams, it would, as Metafilter notes, be nice if David Cohen (writer of the episode in question) were to clear up the mystery once and for all.
And once that's done, the bored can get back to settling which Screeching Weasel record is the best.