My Life Is Better Than Everyone Else's, Full Stop [2012/10/13]

Is that a boasting title? That probably seems a bit braggartly to you, ducklings, but I'm sorry, I can't bring myself to take it back. I would ask if you want to know why, but let's be real here, I'm going to tell you anyone. I'm going to tell everyone, because [insert drumroll here] I MET TERRY PRATCHETT.

Well, okay, perhaps I should go back to the beginning of the week first, if my memories of this week haven't all been swept away by the glory and wonder that was meeting the inestimable PTerry. So let's see, what did I do?

...Homework. And thesis research. I finished Dragnet, moved on to other shows, and then got told by my thesis adviser that it would make more sense to not watch all nine of my shows in chronological order, which is GREAT, because now I can follow different themes across shows and don't have to work my way through twelve seasons of the original Hawaii Five-O before getting to the stuff that will be more pertinent to my research!

[Under the cut: How I met Terry Pratchett, and other stuff that isn't nearly as interesting to me but might be more interesting to other people who don't have my fanatical devotion to Terry Pratchett.]

So yeah, my thesis research is coming along — I actually followed a really cool thread the other day of just watching the episodes where one of the cops is accused of a crime that they didn't commit/didn't commit in the way they were accused of. So for example, in Dragnet and Hawaii Five-O (the original), Joe Friday and Danny both chased a thief holding a gun, and returned fire when the thief shot at them. Both of them ended up accidentally killing the thieves, and then for various reasons the gun disappeared and they came under serious investigation!

Then in Due South and White Collar, Ray Kowalski and Peter Burke were both framed — Ray K for shooting someone, and Peter for planting evidence, and both of them had to rely on their partner's preferred style of action in order to lift the charges. (In the former case, this involved Mounties; in the latter case it involved con artistry. MY THESIS IS GREAT, YOU GUYS.)

I'm not going to bore you guys by talking about what sort of analysis one can make of that, since I'm going to try to write six pages about it for my thesis seminar, but trust me when I say that it's really interesting to examine in terms of what it says about trust and the particular styles of the shows.

(I did explain my thesis to you guys, right? I'm writing about depictions of same-sex platonic friendship on cop shows. Occasionally I refer to it as the bromance thesis, but I've mostly been trying not to do that recently because then I run into A) people who don't know what bromance is, like my great-aunt, who misunderstood and thought I was writing about gay characters on television — an interesting topic, but not my focus, or B) people who for whatever reason take issue with the term bromance and initiate long conversations about why they don't like it. Those are cool conversations, and they're definitely useful for my topic and perspective, but sometimes I don't always have the energy for them. Especially since, now that I've really started school and research in earnest, I'm not getting nearly enough sleep.)

Other than that... I made cookies? Did some work on my next story for Intermediate Fiction, held a TA session for Commodity Consumption and the Formation of Consumer Culture (I feel so legit), practiced taiko... Pretty normal stuff, honestly.

And now it is fall break, and instead of staying in my room and doing work (as I probably should be doing) I took the Fall Break shuttle to New York yesterday and have crashed with Lovely Sister in her dorm room at Columbia Teacher's College!

I would just like to take a moment to appreciate HOW MUCH EASIER it is to see Lovely Sister now that she's in NYC instead of Providence. Connecticut does not like forms of transportation that aren't car-related, apparently.

So last night I got in and had some DELICIOUS late-night ramen at Jin Ramen:

[pic from http://www.chopsticksny.com/]

and then we trekked over to see a sketch comedy show at the Upright Citizen's Brigade theater, for which her boyfriend had co-written one of the sketches. (Luckily, his sketch was one of the funniest ones of the evening, otherwise it could've gotten a tad awkward.)



Today, meanwhile, we woke up, got delicious bagels, and walked around for a while, including a trip down to the Strand, where we met up with one of my friends who graduated last year and lives in NY. (The Strand, if you haven't been there, is fantastic. It's like a bookstore mecca — although if you wander in there to look for something specific, it can be somewhat difficult. On the other hand, if you go in willing to just let a book catch your eye and make you fall in love with it, you're probably going to walk out with your wallet considerably lighter.)

My sister had a book list and hadn't had much luck, so my friend Sara said, "Well, there's a Barnes and Noble on the other side of Union Square. ...Oh, and I think Terry Pratchett might be there?"

To which I went, "SIDGHLSDKFHNSLGKFHNLSKGFHLSIHFGKLSDFJGKDFHG YOU COULDN'T HAVE MENTIONED THIS BEFORE??????"

Ducklings, let me explain. I have been reading Terry Pratchett novels since I was a wee thing. Reading a new one, or rereading an old one, is like a religious experience for me. (All but one, at least, but I try to pretend that that one didn't happen.) If I were trapped on an island with the collected works of one author, it would be Terry Pratchett. I actually wrote an article for another website that I blog for about if they haven't already done so. I fangirl this man harder than perhaps any other human on the face of the planet.

Unfortunately, the event he was speaking for ended at 3 and it was at that time 3:30, so I resigned myself to merely knowing that he was in the same city as me, and moving on with my life. We went to the Barnes and Noble, Sara and I chatted and shmyed while Lovely Sister went to grab some of the books she wanted... and then as we made our way to the upper floors, who did we see but the man himself.



(He was even wearing the hat.) The event was already over and he was just taking a few last photos with people who had bought his new book — which I will be reading, as soon as it comes out in paperback — so eventually one of the staffmembers took pity on us and let us actually sit down inside the roped-off area instead of standing and staring from afar. After a while, the pictures finished, and Lovely Sister and Sara eventually bullied me into going over and telling him how much his books mean to me (in essence: everything.) Which I did, and then yet another organizer clearly took pity on me and my little overwhelmed self and suggested that the picture-taker take a picture of us.

No, seriously, I'm pretty sure they were able to recognize from about a hundred feet away the serious "!!!!!!!" vibes I was giving. Just for reference, here is an accurate picture of what I looked like during the entire fifteen to twenty minutes that we were there:

And you know what, I am totally okay with that fact, because I have a photo with Terry Pratchett and book recommendations from him. THERE IS LEGITIMATELY NOTHING WRONG IN MY LIFE AT THIS TIME. I don't know how anybody at Wes could be having a better Fall Break than I am.

[Original tags for this post: academia is whackademia,delicious food, fall break, LOOK I DID THINGS, my life: badly drawn in photoshop, TERRY PRATCHETT TERRY PRATCHETT TERRY PRATCHETT, thesis stuff]