Interpretations:Haunted Floating Eye

It kinda sounds like the narrator hung out with a freak show till he killed someone. The floating eye was soe kind of atraction, but he was never allowed to hang out with him. This reminds me of the Aquabats album: The Aquabats vs. the Floating eye of Doom! - drworm818

(it's the floating eye of death) -J2

Haha that it is! I wasn't careful cause I felt like I could afford to make a mistake, I thought I was the only one who knew what I was talking about-drworm818

Remeber when you were a kid and there was this 'cool' kid that everyone hung out with except you because your parents wouldn't let you because he was really a 'bad kid' ? The narrator sounds like a naive little kid who only really wants to hang out with the Haunted Eye, but someone won't let him because of his questionable parents, worked as a swindler at a traveling show, and the fact that he killed someone. The narrator is too naive (or something else) to see that he is the reason he can't hang out with the Haunted Eye. Or maybe I'm going too deep and Haunted Floating Eye is really only a relative of Hovering Sombrero. :)--Hermy-o-ninny 22:26, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, in a quite frankly this song appears to be not about a haunted eye that floats, but simply an eye that is haunted. And here is the rub: the basic and disingenuous point of a haunted object is that it behaves by rules no man knows. So for instants, could not a haunted object (an eye?) fly or float of its own accord? Food for thought, says I. Food for thought. --WhatTheHeckLinnell 14:13, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

LINE-BY-LINE-ANALYSIS'D!

I'ma start off with the second verse, cause that's less confusing.

I was born in a crypt a hundred years ago

Okay, so the guy's an Egyptian mummy. He somehow got reanimated.

A spider was my mom

A spider was the only living thing in the room. He saw it, and it was his mom, much as a duckling is imprinted with the first thing it sees.

Workin' as a shill in a traveling show

He was taken to be quite an oddity and was given a contract in a sideshow, pretending to be an enthusiastic customer to rouse people's attention.

'Til I killed someone

He killed someone. See below.

I can't hang out with the haunted eye

The haunted eye is an Ancient Egyptian artifact supposedly embedded with dark magic. It possesses him and he goes on a rampage, killing some hapless bystander. See above.

Though I don't know why

He doesn't know why the haunted eye makes him angry, his zombie brain is too simple, and he can't explain why it makes him angry, it 'just does.

That's a wrap. Hehe, get it? Wrap, wrapping a mummy? Okay, you didn't get it. Whatever. --Homfrog 01:16, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

A lot of fun. I thing the whole song is basically geared around the sound of the chorus. I think the lyrics are essentially nonsense. The theme is loosely paranoia, but so daft is the narrators tale, we're not supposed to take it seriously. It should have made the Else proper. (Mr Tuck)

Referring to The Residents??

HINTS (though hardly proof) that this might be a SPOOF of, or HOMAGE to, the nonpareil San Francisco performance group THE RESIDENTS:

1. The title itself, and The Residents’ trademark eyeball masks, together with the unmistakable Residents aesthetic of disquietude and HAUNTING and spirits, fulsomely present in their music and lyrics both

2. The dissonant falsetto voices in the first 5 seconds of the song, and The Residents’ frequent use of similar choral voices, especially cf. “Sinister Exaggerator...” (of course, it also sounds much like the chorus in "I Know What I Know" from Paul Simon's "Graceland")

3. The lyrics “I was born in a crypt,” and The Residents’ alter-ego Cryptic Corporation

4. The lyrics referring to “a traveling show,” and The Residents’ album “Freak Show”

5. The instrumental break at 0:54 featuring atonal guitar chords with a spooky warbling synth... could TMBG be averring they’re not impressed with The Residents’ musical technique, or is TMBG admitting their attempts at mimicry utterly pale compared to The Residents’ mastery of their peculiar style?

WHADDAYA THINK?

okay maybe a stretch, but..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeGeGe_no_Kitaro gegege no kitaro is a comic from the sixties, extremely popular in japan. It is literally about a kid who hangs out with the haunted eye of his dead demon father, despite the protests of his adopted mortal father. also he is born in a graveyard, pops out of the ground, zombie style.

interesting coincidence if nothing else.

Monsters

Why has nobody said the obvious interpretation, that it's about two monsters. One is a haunted floating eye, and the other is some sort of spider-thing ("A spider was my mom"). The spider thing works in a freak show, until it kills someone. For some reason, it can't hang out with the eye.

I agree it's about monsters (Flansburgh has also sung about a cyclops in Cyclops Rock, and a ghoul in Darlings Of Lumberland). The protagonist is not necessarily a spider-thing, but as he was born in a crypt 100 years ago he is probably not a regular person. He can't hang out with the haunted eye because he is on the run for murder. Why does he not understand why he can't hang out with his friend anymore? Maybe, like Frankenstein's monster in the 1931 film, he doesn't understand what he did wrong and doesn't know why he is persecuted. -- Thread Bomb (talk) 23:19, 28 June 2020 (EDT)

A lot of people have said that the narrator worked in a freak show. It's a reasonable assumption, but it says that the narrator was a shill, or an assistant placed in an audience for magic tricks. Since the song does not specify a freak show, the singer might not have been in one.