Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder
At first I didn't understand what silly bit of my…
Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2002 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.
At first I didn't understand what silly bit of my sister's Leonard was referencing. Then I thought it might be the scene from Joe Klein's Primary Colors that Nandini and I imitate, where one person worries about keeping the left-liberal base and the other mocks such concerns by humming the All Things Considered theme.
I finally realized that the "ah ah ah" symbolizes the weird non-laugh laugh that Nandini makes in response to a pun. I think it's a mockery of my laughter or my parents' and uncles' laughter, but I'm not sure.
Now playing: "Fred Jones, Part II" by Ben Folds. I listen to Ben Folds' Rockin' the Suburbs a great deal. I like the CD, and (unlike with other albums) it doesn't force me to listen to it, yet it rewards attention. So I play it a lot. Benoit once said to me, "you know, there are other CDs," which reminds me of Leonard's gripes wrt Armageddon. "MIT is a fine school, but there are others."
