Just yesterday, I visited the website of an old friend from my New York and China days and was amused by a poem he wrote about an unusual place name. Lake Webster in Massachusetts, his website informs us, used to be known by its Algonquin name Lake
Chargoggaggmanchauggaggoggchaubunagungamaugg. I hope I got that right.
On first glance, one could easily mistake this for one of Obama’s sources of campaign funds. I refer here to the recent article in the New York Times submitted by Michael Luo and Griff Palmer concerning the Fictitious Donors in the Obama Finance Records.
My illustration for this is a drawing I did of Courbet’s painting of a freshwater trout. I imagine him feeding at the bottom of Lake Chargogaggmanchauggaggoggchaubunagungamaugg. Although the Obama contributor’s names were somewhat shorter, such as gggjtijtjtjtjtjr,AP, who ostensibly contributed $370.00, they are just as rich in consonants. Some of them are bizarre enough to rival Gogol’s Dead Souls. My favorite, however, is the contributor Jockim Alberton, who the article informs us listed his employer as Fdsa. Public records, we are told, cannot bring such an employer to life. So what is Fdsa? Perhaps it is the elusive Fraud Delivery Service Association.
With friends like these, who needs public financing?
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