Entry tags:

blather, story: senateverse

Before starting on "Stay" (on the Senateverse table of contents), I decided to keep a record of all the links I clicked in the name of research.

Since I love it when other authors give background/commentary for their fics, I figured I'd share the list. Includes a few notes, because my wildly nonlinear thought process needs some kind of explanation.



http://www.cheapflights.com/airports/district-of-columbia/?source=intl-CFUS-flag-NZ
http://www.mwaa.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan_Washington_National_Airport
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Dulles_International_Airport
Trying to figure out which airport Stephen would leave from, and where it fits into the map of the DC area.

http://gawker.com/news/chuck-schumer/but-does-chuck-schumer-have-roommates-229582.php
http://www.cfif.org/htdocs/freedomline/current/in_our_opinion/Dingy-Dirty-Really-Disgusting-Harry-Reid.html
http://www.nysun.com/editorials/reid-of-the-ritz/41662/
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-10-17-reid-christmas-bonuses_x.htm?csp=34
http://www.startribune.com/templates/Print_This_Story?sid=22887159
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2008/10/29/kennedy_returns_to_dc_residence/
http://www.northjersey.com/news/njpolitics/Lautenberg_still_lives_in_NJ_says_campaign_manager.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Schumer
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgetown,_Washington,_D.C.
http://www.ritzcarlton.com/en/RealEstate/Residences.htm
All of this was an attempt to answer the question "what would be a realistic place for Jon to call home while he's in DC?" A lot of senators have large expensive houses nearby; some actually have housemates; some stay in residences. (Future story idea: Jon and Stephen buy a house together? Or would that raise too many eyebrows?)

Chuck Schumer is the senator whom Jon displaces in this AU, thus why I was looking at him specifically. I ended up putting Jon in one of the residences shown off in the very last link.


http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=27
Kept this open for a while, to calculate all the time differences.


http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-09-03-Iraqcongress_N.htm
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0106/p01s02-usfp.html
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,98494,00.html
Stories about Congressional tours in Iraq. I obviously watched (and re-watched, and re-watched) TCR's Iraq episodes for a lot of the material, but these talked about things a senator would do that a comedian wouldn't.


http://community.livejournal.com/little_details/2329174.html
Figuring out how a soldier would respond when asked "But you approve of DADT, right?"


http://twitter.com/StephenAtHome/statuses/2126748784
Never used this, but it was lulzy.


http://www.nofactzone.net/?tag=operation-iraqi-stephen
NoFactZone: source of a ton of Fun Details To Work In that didn't make it to the final show.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jon_Stewart%27s_2009_criticism_of_CNBC
Now we get to when I actually started writing, and wanted to keep the background of Jon's Cramer-dismantling straight.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googlebomb
I think I was trying to figure out the proper grammatical usage of "to googlebomb". Why, yes, I am a nerd.


http://washington.bizjournals.com/washington/business_travel/guide/restaurants.html
http://www.toprestaurants.com/dc/Wash.htm
http://www.toprestaurants.com/dc/CityZen.htm
http://www.mandarinoriental.com/washington/dining/cityzen/
http://www.mandarinoriental.com/washington/images/cityzen.pdf
What sort of restaurant would a couple of rich power players visit in the DC area? (I wanted to make a pun on the name of the restaurant, but never got around to it. Call it an Easter egg.)


http://thomas.loc.gov/
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/bills/search.html
Trying to find a bill related to the protection of satire/comedy/censorship that Jon could have been involved with. (In this way, he paved the way for The Daily Show/The Huckabee Decree, and thus "made Stephen.") Another twist that never made it in.


http://www.farecompare.com/flights/Baghdad-BGW/city.html
http://www.fly.com/flights.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erbil_International_Airport
Calculating Stephen's flight over and back - leading to a slightly panicky "oh, hey, I need to build in time for thirty hours of air travel" revelation.


http://www.gertzfile.com/gertzfile/ring041604.html
http://theharrowdownhill.blogspot.com/2007/08/statistics-of-day.html
Figuring out just how many senators have been to Iraq, anyway. (It's most of them. Thus, Jon would have been.)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Odierno
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Colbert%27s_AmeriCone_Dream
Checking Odierno's rank, and trying to find out some way to slip AmeriCone Dream into the story. Have forgotten why I was looking up Obama. (Military bases have lots of flavors of ice cream. It's one of those little-things-that-perk-up-morale.)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_Minister_of_Iraq
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_National_Assembly
http://www.parliament.iq/
Figuring out the structure of the Iraqi government, and where Stephen and the deputy PM would meet.


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/04/09/politics/p155714D98.DTL
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/world/middleeast/03mccain.html
Checking on the "outdoor market in Indiana" line.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hart_Senate_Office_Building
http://landrieu.senate.gov/about/staff.cfm
Trying to figure out the size of Jon's office staff (and a rank for Demetri to hold).


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIE
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LHR
http://www.iphonealley.com/news/3g-data-coverage-map
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=259
Background for Stephen's layover in Vienna.


http://community.livejournal.com/fakenews_fanfic/743115.html?thread=14080715#t14080715
The name of correspondent Mike Huckabee's Daily Show spinoff.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Williams
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBC_Nightly_News
http://dailynightly.msnbc.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anderson_Cooper_360
Checking on whether Jon could talk to BriWi and Cooper in the same night. (Their live broadcasts air at very different times, so yes.)


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condo
I think I was trying to figure out the subtleties of the word "condo" versus "apartment".


http://www.schoolhouserock.tv/Bill.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Congress#Legislative_procedure
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVutDHPlSxU
Making sure I had my details of legislative procedure straight. The first two were pretty general; it's the last one, which is actually a video of a bill being introduced, that gave me the dialogue to use.



And, as a completely random bonus, have the ad hoc chart I kept going back to while trying to match up "here is what Stephen's doing at any given point" with "will Jon be busy at the time, or at home with insomnia getting caught up?"

Preparing sites for a congressional visit can involve from 200 to 300 soldiers. Members' days begin at 4 or 5 a.m. and go on past 11 p.m. They spend the night in Kuwait and generally return for a second day. (Source)

................Eastern time....Iraq time (+7 hrs)
Dinner..........Mon
Departure.......Tue, 4:00 PM....Tue, 11:00 PM
Arrive Iraq.....Wed, 9:00 AM....Wed, 4:00 PM
Tour starts.....Wed, 9:00 PM....Thu, 4:00 AM
Day 1 ends......Thu, 4:00 PM....Thu, 11:00 PM
Tour ends.......Thu, 9:00 AM....Fri, 4:00 PM
Depart Iraq.....Fri, 10:00 AM...Sat, 5:00 PM
Arrive DC.......Sun, 5:00 PM....Sun, 12:00 AM