Monday, March 12, 2007

What's worse than a Mainiac?

I beg to differ with this story on New Jerseyites, Michiganders, and the like from Governing magazine's Web site:
Massachusetts residents, so far as I can tell, are the only Americans without a dictionary-recognized name that's a variant of their state's name (I even tried a dead-tree dictionary). "Bay Stater" is all they've got, which is lame (I'm from Virginia and we also have a bay). Some people have tried Massachusettsan, but it seems too clunky to catch fire. I prefer something sleeker like "Achu" or "Chewy."
I think we've come up with something a little more concise -- and scatological -- than Bay Stater. And I'd hate to associate it with "chewies." But I do like "Achus." It makes me think of Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz's pun-filled song "Rhode Island Is Famous For You", which features such gems as "Pencils come from Pennsylvania/Vests from Vest Virginia/And tents from Tents-a-see." Now we can add the line "Sneezes come from Mass-achu-setts."

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