Giggling at Graduation

You know how they talk about "church giggles," where something strikes you funny but you can't laugh because of the situation, and whatever it is seems funnier in part because you know you should not laugh?

Today at graduation I was looking at the prop diplomas they hand out. They use props for two reasons: for one, it's logistically far too much of a challenge to match names with people in any kind of efficient fashion, but also, grades aren't officially due until Monday, so it's possible someone who was teetering on the borderline could "walk" at graduation but not technically graduate.

I was wondering about the prop diplomas; my undergraduate school didn't use them (something like 1000 people graduated all at the same time as I did; essentially they told us to "stand up, now you have whatever degree it was that you earned." For both my graduate degrees, they gave empty diploma covers (like a fake-leather folder) that you could put the diploma in when it came in the mail). So I didn't know what might be inside the rolled-up paper.

And this is how the Internet has affected my brain: my next thought was "It would be really funny if there were a picture of Rick Astley singing "Never Gonna Give You Up*" in there."

And of course, that made me want to giggle.

(*That is NOT a Youtube link. It's a drawing, something I'd actually rather want as a poster. And perhaps would have wanted more circa 1986 (I might have had a small "thing" for Rick Astley back then...) but I still think it's clever)

Then, when they started up the recessional ("The Thunderer March," by Sousa. Perhaps an allusion to our team name?) I thought, "That's a lot better than 'Play them off, Piano Cat.'"

Yeah, I think my brain is slowly rebounding from the semester. I always picture it as being like the process of isostatic rebound, where land slowly rises back up after having been crushed under the weight of a glacier - so, for example, the area where Chicago is is rising a few fractions of a centimeter every year, and has since about 10,000 or so years ago when the Wisconsinan lobe left them.