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100 Best Things, Part 1 of 5
This month's Food & Wine magazine has a listing of 100 Best Things - essentially, a sort of semi random list of 100 restaurants, foods, wines, cities, drinks, concepts, techniques, or whatever, all with a common theme of food. Here's part one of my 100 Best Things, with a theme of "me". Not, I hasten to add, in any kind of order.
1. Evening Summer Sunlight: There's something about the way sunlight falls on a summer evening that is really good. The combination of the low angle and the warmth, but not the blazing noonday sun.
2. Greensleeves: I love this tune, in almost any form except tinny hold music, and even then I like it better than other tinny hold music.
3. Pachelbel's Canon: Baroque music is a big thing for me, and the Canon is the ultimate expression of it as far as I'm concerned. There are a few trumpet concertos out there that nearly match it, but it can't really be beaten.
4. Fire: Candles, woodfires, coalfires, bonfires, barbecues. As long as it's solid fuel, I love it. Heat and flickery things to watch.
5. D&D: Well, duh. I sorta-mean RPGs in general, but D&D seems to do more for me than any other, allowing me free reign in my own worlds.
6. Sushi: I'm really glad Aya opened in Dublin, because it's shown me what sushi is really like, not the lacklustre expensive stuff in Yamamori. And an all you can eat sushi deal is just the business.
7. Long coats: I dunno what it is about long coats. Possibly because I never really saw them when I was a kid, and they still look kind of exotic and cool. I have an ideal coat somewhere in my mind; it's long, slightly shaped - frock-coatish, say, and made of brocade. The colours of the brocade I'm not sure of - red and black? Red and gold? Black and silver?
8. Steampunk: The whole genre appeals to me like nothing else. It's partly the fusion thing I like, and partly pure visual appeal.
9. Neil Gaiman: Famous people who write really well shouldn't be so nice. If they weren't, you could get on with statements like "Yes, but he's an ignorant fucker." But Neil is just really nice.
10. Robin Wood: One of the best fantasy artists I know. She did a cover for Dragon magazine many years ago, and I spent ages looking at it.
11. Layers in Photoshop: The first time I got what layers could do, I nearly died from possibility overload. It still hits me sometimes.
12. The Coding Trance: There is a problem. There is a solution somewhere in the code. You go away, and the code flows through you, and then you come back and it's done. Very elegant, very zen, possibly very Tao. Doesn't happen often enough.
13. The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon: Essentially, an Imperial Japanese lady's blog. Fabulous stuff, with parts titled "Things that are elegant", "Things that are embarrassing", and so on. I need my own copy, and amazon.co.uk just can't seem to get hold of it.
14. Really good calligraphy: I'm thinking here of some of the exhibitions in the Chester Beatty Library. Things that you'd consider doing the jail time for stealing.
15. Monte Cook: Monte is my all time favourite game writer. He and his wife are also very nice people.
16. Peter Jackson: If Peter Jackson turned up tomorrow and said "I'm making another fantasy film. I need your kidneys.", I'd hand them over.
17. Asparagus: New season asparagus is very possibly the ultimate in vegetables.
18. Text: I love text. No, really. Plain, simple, ascii text. It makes communication pure, takes away distraction, makes things clear.
19. Snow: My favourite weather, and one I don't see enough of. I think I like it falling better than I like it already there, but I'd have to try it more to be sure.
20. Coffee: Sometimes I think I need coffee to live, and sometimes I think I can do without it. I drink it for the taste more than the caffiene. Black and sweet, the way the Gods meant it.
1. Evening Summer Sunlight: There's something about the way sunlight falls on a summer evening that is really good. The combination of the low angle and the warmth, but not the blazing noonday sun.
2. Greensleeves: I love this tune, in almost any form except tinny hold music, and even then I like it better than other tinny hold music.
3. Pachelbel's Canon: Baroque music is a big thing for me, and the Canon is the ultimate expression of it as far as I'm concerned. There are a few trumpet concertos out there that nearly match it, but it can't really be beaten.
4. Fire: Candles, woodfires, coalfires, bonfires, barbecues. As long as it's solid fuel, I love it. Heat and flickery things to watch.
5. D&D: Well, duh. I sorta-mean RPGs in general, but D&D seems to do more for me than any other, allowing me free reign in my own worlds.
6. Sushi: I'm really glad Aya opened in Dublin, because it's shown me what sushi is really like, not the lacklustre expensive stuff in Yamamori. And an all you can eat sushi deal is just the business.
7. Long coats: I dunno what it is about long coats. Possibly because I never really saw them when I was a kid, and they still look kind of exotic and cool. I have an ideal coat somewhere in my mind; it's long, slightly shaped - frock-coatish, say, and made of brocade. The colours of the brocade I'm not sure of - red and black? Red and gold? Black and silver?
8. Steampunk: The whole genre appeals to me like nothing else. It's partly the fusion thing I like, and partly pure visual appeal.
9. Neil Gaiman: Famous people who write really well shouldn't be so nice. If they weren't, you could get on with statements like "Yes, but he's an ignorant fucker." But Neil is just really nice.
10. Robin Wood: One of the best fantasy artists I know. She did a cover for Dragon magazine many years ago, and I spent ages looking at it.
11. Layers in Photoshop: The first time I got what layers could do, I nearly died from possibility overload. It still hits me sometimes.
12. The Coding Trance: There is a problem. There is a solution somewhere in the code. You go away, and the code flows through you, and then you come back and it's done. Very elegant, very zen, possibly very Tao. Doesn't happen often enough.
13. The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon: Essentially, an Imperial Japanese lady's blog. Fabulous stuff, with parts titled "Things that are elegant", "Things that are embarrassing", and so on. I need my own copy, and amazon.co.uk just can't seem to get hold of it.
14. Really good calligraphy: I'm thinking here of some of the exhibitions in the Chester Beatty Library. Things that you'd consider doing the jail time for stealing.
15. Monte Cook: Monte is my all time favourite game writer. He and his wife are also very nice people.
16. Peter Jackson: If Peter Jackson turned up tomorrow and said "I'm making another fantasy film. I need your kidneys.", I'd hand them over.
17. Asparagus: New season asparagus is very possibly the ultimate in vegetables.
18. Text: I love text. No, really. Plain, simple, ascii text. It makes communication pure, takes away distraction, makes things clear.
19. Snow: My favourite weather, and one I don't see enough of. I think I like it falling better than I like it already there, but I'd have to try it more to be sure.
20. Coffee: Sometimes I think I need coffee to live, and sometimes I think I can do without it. I drink it for the taste more than the caffiene. Black and sweet, the way the Gods meant it.
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17: totally agree. Just had some last night, simply with a knob of butter and a teaspoon of sugar in the water.
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Whoa, I thought I was the only person in world to love that one. People keep saying baroque is heavy, but I enjoy it. Though I enjoy baroque in all (excluding a few bits), canon was the first one I heard as kid and first one I truly loved.
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Coffee: milk (maybe cream) and brown sugar, or even better honey! The spirit to use with coffee is either rum or brandy.
solid fuel fire - I'm with you mate!
D&D: sorry no. Ars Magica is the name of the game ...
coder's trance: no idea. but working on a really knotty problem in sysadmin and solving it: yes!
Asparagus: the white stuff is not a vegetable but magic. the green stuff is a very nice vegetable.
steampunk: yep. Pity that LXG so fucked up after a promising start.
The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon
Re: The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon
Re: The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon