[fannish brain dump]

[hackthis]

We all know I'm a fannish raccoon. If it's shiny to me, I will write about it until I find another piece of foil. Doesn't matter if it's brand-spanking (have I done a spanking fic? Wait, digression!) new or hanging out in the garbage. My current lust is the Olympics. Yeah, I know they over. In fact, let's have a brain dump about this

Comments

[alethialia]

I think it's going to be a trilogy. Maybe I'll call it 'I'll Be on the Water' after the Akron and the Family song.

Fuck, yeah! (Also, that link ain't workin' for me. ::pokes it:: Nope. Getting a 404 error.)

I don't see much hardship in 'Oh look, I haz pictures of (mostly) naked men! Let me show you them!'

No, no apologies necessary. Though, porn...I wouldn't object to that.

People, come and talk to me about Gainesville, Florida. (Stop doing the victory dance [info]alethialia).

Please, you know you like it. ::does happy dance:: Also? LOVE the questions.

I have nothing to offer you except moral support. Also, I'm writing Australian GK porn, but that's not done yet.

Ooh, ooh, love those stories. I'd read the first two, but not the third...so I read that and promptly died.

Ryan complaining loudly about not seeing sharks for most of it, and making repeated references to flogging the dolphin when he wasn't.

::dies some more::

Oh, wait. I have something for you! Nathaniel Fick to speak at the DNC on Thursday in Primetime. Pet.

[hackthis]

a) Song link fixed. Thanks for the heads up.

b) I've done some preliminary research on Gainesville (I have some mental notes), but I would really like a ground's eye view. Even if it's little things like the grass is always brown or the trash gets picked up on Wednesday.

c) GK PRON!

d) I'm glad you liked the stories! I've been trying to stay away from other people's stuff, because I don't want it clouding my characterizations, but when I thought I was done, before somebody was all SHOWER SEX! I had to see what else was happening in the world.

e) Nate's going to be at the DNC? But... but... Bill's speaking tonight. And I have to go running! And and... oh, poo, fine.

[alethialia]

I've been trying to stay away from other people's stuff, because I don't want it clouding my characterizations, but when I thought I was done, before somebody was all SHOWER SEX! I had to see what else was happening in the world.

Psha, shower sex is, like, good for the WORLD. Obviously that unknown person was doing you a FAVOR.

As for the rest of the stories...when it comes to the boys writers are all, like, serious and holds-hands-y and shit. I just kinda scratch my head and think, 'wha?' 'Tis very weird.

But... but... Bill's speaking tonight. And I have to go running! And and... oh, poo, fine.

Well, Nate's speaking tomorrow night so you can space it out. Though I'm sure someone'll have a link if you don't want to watch real-time.

Off to read more about Aussie military slang. To wit: He copped a beasting off the Sergeant Major. It doesn't mean what you think it means!

[hackthis]

As for the rest of the stories...when it comes to the boys writers are all, like, serious and holds-hands-y and shit. I just kinda scratch my head and think, 'wha?' 'Tis very weird.

Oh my god. Dude, I don't.. and it's like, what? The stories I recommended really stood out to me because it was boys being boys and not being all... well, girls. I actually got a lot of people saying 'I wish they'd kissed' (including you, missy) but sort of understanding why it didn't happen. One of the reasons I'm doing a wrap-up is that I want to point out that kissing can be really intimate, but you can fuck anybody.

For some reason I thought today was Thursday, dude, wait. NATE'S SPEAKING BEFORE BARACK? Do you realize how huge that is? Holy shit! I hope he realizes how huge that is. Holy shit!

[silentfire]

The Gainesville Regional Airport is roughly the size of a postage stamp! It has only two runways, and only a small fraction of their daily flights are commercial airlines. I think there are three baggage claim carousels, and they're located right across the room from ticketing/check-in. They offer daily shuttle service to and from several cities, including Atlanta. There are no parking structures, just a parking lot. From the front, it looks like nothing so much as a branch of one's local library.

When I visited a few years ago, Gainesville seemed to be a very typical college town. Though I didn't see much of it, what I did see didn't make much of an impression. I'd wager, though, that there's been a fair amount of construction and change since I was last there, so hopefully someone else can give you more details on that.

[hackthis]

See, now this, this is the sort of stuff I want to hear about. Thank you!

[berreh]

Hey, starfishchick pointed me in your direction as both a native of Gainesville and a lover of Michael. :D I'd be happy to fill you in on what I can, but it's hard to get specific b/c I don't know much about Lochte. The Gainesville experience is very different depending on if you're a preppy/frat type, scene kid, hippy, geek, student, non-student, or that rarest of minorities, middle-class families who have nothing to do with the university. Now that I've been out of college for 5 years, the UF student ghetto is a different world. It doesn't help that they're building something new every 30 seconds.

Tell me what typical houses are like.
We have everything from trailer parks to student ghetto shacks to suburbia to mansions. I don't know where Lochte lives, but lots of jock types live in the luxury condo places, or frathouses, or 10 guys crammed in a concrete block ranch house from the 50s.

Where do people skateboard?
Everywhere. >_<

What's the weather like?Hot and muggy as hell. The reason Gainesville is nicknamed The Swamp is because that's

[hackthis]

Okay, hi, I love you, thank you for doing this. Seriously. Now I will ponder what you've said. I'm kind of going back and forth at the moment, because Ryan went to UoF and he said he's got a house there, but he trains with a Daytona Swim Club, so when you tell me it's not within commuting distance I'm kind of like huh. I mean okay, it's commuting, but not the kind of thing you'd want to do if you didn't have to. *ponders hard* *double checks

[berreh]

I was just telling my husband I've become Resident Gainesville Consultant, and he's like, "Romantic slash set in Gainesville? Now that's talent!" :D The thing is, Gainesville is very liberal privately but very conservative publicly. We have Gay Pride Week, but only one gay club (that contains mostly straight people). In regular bars, two girls making out would be totally bitchin yo, but two dudes would be get-a-rope time. You rarely see real same-sex couples showing PDA, if ever. It bums me out. :( But at parties or raves, or at UC (the gay club), or in the bathrooms of straight clubs, or on campus, heck yeah, especially with the younger crowd and their crazy bandom ways. :D I only bring that up so that you didn't have them making out at Denny's or something. That probably wouldn't go over so well

[hackthis]

a) Your husband seems, like, kind of awesome. Rock on

[thisisbone]

If it helps, wpadmirer lives there and has forever. I'll give her a heads-up that you're looking for a G'ville local and send her this way.

I visited there once, and it was, hands-down, honest-to-God, the hottest I've ever been in my entire life, and I've lived in both Orlando and Memphis. Like the previous poster said, nothing moves, there's no breeze, and the air comes in thick and sits on you. Mosquitoes the size of Big Macs don't help, either. The light is white in the summer because there's too much moisture in the air for blue sky -- summer skies in Florida tend to be white and gray, then black mid-afternoon when torrential rain sheets down for twenty minutes or so. Then the streets literally steam as the moisture tries to evaporate. Gainesville's very Southern, especially compared to, say, Orlando or anywhere farther south. In Florida, the souther you go, the norther you get. Gainesville is still considered "north" Florida

[alethialia]

The light is white in the summer because there's too much moisture in the air for blue sky -- summer skies in Florida tend to be white and gray, then black mid-afternoon when torrential rain sheets down for twenty minutes or so.

That is the most BIZARRE thing I've ever heard![Yes, hi, am stalking hackthis' LJ...but she invited me, so.] The sky is WHITE? Like, as if there were clouds? Or are there clouds? 'Cause now my brain's going through, like, light spectrums and this does not compute.

I recall, from my one trip to Florida, the rain that comes out of nowhere and pours down so hard you have to pull over because it can't flow off the streets fast enough and tires can't get any traction, only to then disappear in twenty minutes. But white skies? Weird.

::cleaves to socal with its 75-degree weather year-round::

[thisisbone]

The sky washes out from the glare of the sun and the heavy moisture in the air. Everything looks kind of fuzzy around the edges, indistinct. You can get blue sky days in summer, but they're not as common as the build-up of high grayish white.

The rain effect on the roads is called "ponding" and it can kill you! I did a 180 across a four-lane highway once in Orlando -- thank God nobody was coming the other way at the time.

[alethialia]

The sky washes out from the glare of the sun and the heavy moisture in the air. Everything looks kind of fuzzy around the edges, indistinct.

That is disturbingly cool. To see, not to live in. To see once and then run far away.

The rain effect on the roads is called "ponding" and it can kill you!

Jeebus. Ya know, I might have been in Orlando. ::mulls:: Is that where NASA is? (Oh, shush. I was Very Young and not driving and also, transfixed by sheets and sheets of torrential rain coming from nowhere to try and kill me. Personally.)

[lifeinwords]

Another Gville resident chiming in with other factoids: Nothing delivers past 10 PM but like, 5 Star Pizza, which is not great but suffices. On game days (football), you can't get through the traffic surrounding campus, and it's seriously insane--honking, screaming, banners everywhere, very Southern (think FNL).

From Wednesday night to Sunday night if you want to take University (the street spanning the top of campus and the most central one as well) you'll see drunk kids wandering around until 3 AM--the sorority girls toddling in high heels, the frat boys running through traffic. Tons of skateboards, people on bikes, and scooters--all without helmets, usually. Scooters are
very big here. You can't really find parking on or around the campus most of the time unless you're willing to pay for it, but it's easy to live within walking or biking distance. The city buses are okay, and the campus has its own eight or so bus lines, one just going around campus from the commuter lots

[hackthis]

Okay, first of all, THANK YOU. Fuckin' A my flist is awesome. I think Ryan has a scooter, actually I'm 90% positive that he crashed it at one point. Maybe it's in a heap in the front yard I wouldn't be surprised.

I like the summers are a ghosttown thing, except school is back in session yes? So, back to the crazy. 60,000 people though? That's... I've never lived in a college *town*; everything for me is a major city. UF has horses on campus? I feel like we got mixed up here. ETA: I am taking a virtual UoF tour! I see the alligator sanctuary! I was telling strawberryelfsp" that this is totally Ryan's idea of a destination spot. As long as you stay in the car

[lifeinwords]

This is a cracker house. made of wood, one story, longer than they are wide, set up off the ground so as to avoid the flooding (no basements in Florida, man!), big front porch. There are tons of them in the yet-to-be-gentrified portions of town; you'll drive by and see the whole family outside because there's only four rooms inside and eight of them.

Since there's an agricultural school and animal husbandry and whatever, there's a small fenced in area south of campus with actual horses in it--I have no idea why. I mean, bat sanctuary. Tim & Terry's is a cracker house, with a porch, a small front area with a bar on the left, cold lane for beer on the right wall, and a narrow walkway between. You can get burgers there too, even a garden burger. Through the entryway (wood floors, low ceilings, narrow halls, old-style building) and past the bathrooms is a slightly more open area clogged with amps and other music equipment, some chairs. You go out the door and down some wooden steps to the patio, with metal tables and chairs, umbrellas

One last question

[hackthis]

At Tim & Terry's do you get wait service on the patio or do you have to go inside to order food?