The Simmons Site

I'll laugh, maybe, three times a month, here . . . this is one of those times.

Kudos.

 

Sumer is icumen in.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot does that mean?

 

Nobody here has Google?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumer_Is_Icumen_In

 

Yeah, I Googled it. Fine. Great. I'm now educated and can sit with the cool kids at lunch.

 

It's a pun. A pun never made anyone cool. Ever.

 

I had to google when I first read it, and thought, 'You make me google the first sentence, I'm not reading the second sentence.'

 

Thank you, 21.

Exactly.

 

What she said.

Hopefully I can join 21 at the table with the other uncool kids who would rather not Google lead sentences.

 

I didn't mean to imply that someone should have to Google as they read the piece. But having seen it and stumbled on it, that they Google before they go on a message board and ask it what means seems innocent enough.

I'm not defending the piece, by the way, it's a stinker, and a terrible thing to have used as a preview.

But when I read the letters "Sumer is ickumen in" I hear the sounds "summer is acomin' in" - so the meaning is still pretty clear to me at the beginning of a summer movie preview. It's more of a visual pun than it is a reference to medieval madrigal.

 

But to the vast majority of readers, there's no reference point for the pun; it's a misspelling to them, and an affectation by the writer.

 

Even if you don't know it has any other meaning, "summer is acomin' in" seems pretty clear at the beginning of a summer movie preview.

Whether or not it's an affectation is a fair debate.

But they certainly wouldn't hesitate to use it at McSweeney's or the Awl - and that's the target readership here.

 

Ah, wasn't very good, but it's rare -- no matter how much we all say it around here -- where I read a sentence, say, "I didn't understand that," and quit RIGHT THERE.

Second sentence told me what it was about. First sentence was then sort of clear from context.

Not defending it, but it's a device she tried, she failed, and then she got on with it.

Now, as for the rest of it ...