Professors don't giggle

At what point during a person's development is giggling no longer permitted? I must confess that I still giggle... I giggle a lot! There are many moments nearly every day when I giggle at something I find amusing or slightly ridiculous. Yet, for many others the straight faced smirk or the open guffaw are really the only acceptable responses of amusement. Since when did these extremes take over as the binary opposition of humor?

I propose that we reinstate the giggle and take ourselves less seriously. I'm tired of getting the eye-roll or the straight stare when I giggle away. I think that's rude. I also find that giggling is one way for me to let out some of that stress that gets cramped up in my brain.

Perhaps, if I theorize the giggle... if I chose to describe the giggle as touch of the real, or as the theoretical glance, the pause of humor... the flirtation with the text... maybe then giggles would become as serious as guffaws and smirks. May be then Mona Lisa's "original" smile wouldn't seem as outlandish as critics might assume.

Sorry, but giggling stays. That's that. Even when I'm a crusty, old professor, I hope to giggle at the absurdity of my students' papers... or even at the absurdity of my own work.

What blogs can do...

I attended a guest lecture by R** T******... She is amazing. Unfortunately, I missed a lunch talk that she provided on blogs. She is using blogs as a new way to write theoretical essays. It's quite impressive, and it puts my blog (as well as many others) to shame:
Her Blog
(you'll know who she is after you click on the link and scroll around)

The use of the blog is not new to me, but I often lose sight of it as a scholarly tool. I mainly use it to vent my frustrations and fears or to poke fun at random things. But, to think about the blog as a site for intellectual development and fostering new ideas... well... I suppose that would be its ideal purpose.

But I don't think I could keep an entirely intellectual blog. The temptations of using the blog for its other, more common purposes would slowly creep in. True, that is what other blogs are for, but how often would I update this new, more scholarly blog? Would it naturally take a superior position over my personal blog, the one I barely update at this point? Am I deconstructing my use of blogs (gah!)? ....Well, I suppose that theoretical traces have now slowly creeped into the personal...

Of course, we still have the old question about blogs and blog spaces: they are public spaces that people use to reveal their private thoughts. Are we aware of how public our thoughts are as we write on blogs? Even if blogs are left in "private" or "for your eyes only" modes, there is still the possibility of a site administrator somewhere out there reading our every entry. So, what do we make of this public, yet private form of writing?