Stolen meme

[ng_moonmoth]

Ganked from kyrielle :

Ask me for my top five favorite [blank] — any subject (but bear in mind that if I'm not comfy with it or it doesn't apply, I may get creative), and I will do my best to answer.

Comments

[teigh_corvus]

Top five tiny comforts

[ng_moonmoth]

I'm taking this to refer to "little" things that provide comfort out of proportion to their presence. I hope this is close enough to what you had in mind.

• A warm comforter on a chilly night


• Cat jumping up into my lap and chin-bumping as I settle into the recliner chair


• *Really* good dark chocolate


• Cuddling


• Soft, luxurious knits -- cashmere, angora, or similar -- against my bare skin

[mirrorofsmoke]

Might I have your... top five favorite textures?
-Trinity

And might Tsukasa and I have your top five favorite songs?

-An

[ng_moonmoth]

Thanks for waiting while I got the descriptions down to the right size.

Trinity, here are my top five favorite textures. "Texture" for me includes both tactile and visual textures; both are represented, along with some that are a mixture.

• Soft, warm, and fuzzy: cashmere, angora, or the like


• The fabrics that exploit silk's being soft and smooth without being clammy, slick, or oily-feeling like synthetics that want to be silk when they grow up. So, the flowing fabrics, not the structured ones. Another sort of texture that blurs the edges.


• Light, fluffy snow. The lighter and fluffier, the better. Sharp edges and boundaries disappear beneath it, and the boundary between snow and air seems similarly insubstantial.


• *Very* low relief. A subtle visual and tactile texture that may not readily reveal its presence. Jacquard fabric is a canonical example.


• The backsplash in our kitchen is made of orange glass tiles. When sunlight hits it, areas of it turn purple, due to an interference effect whose name I don't currently recall and haven't found. (Artificial light doesn't cause this effect.) Which areas are purple depends on the angle of the light and the position of the viewer. The changing pattern makes it much more interesting to me than anything representational, or solid blocks of color, would.

An and Tsukasa, here are my top five favorite songs right now. A later ask might produce a different set.

• "Acts Of Creation" (listen here)


• "Operation: Desert Storm" (listen here)


• "Somebody Will" (music link on the page)


• "Threes: rev 1.1" (music link on the page)


• "Wicked Girls" (listen here)
  

topping off

[callibr8]

If you're willing to share these, I would like to know about your top five favorite:

foods
places
memories

Re: topping off

[ng_moonmoth]

Foods:

• wild berries


• dark chocolate


• sweet corn, fresh from the field and blanched just enough to stop the sugar from turning to starch


• Japanese haute cuisine. "Food" mainly in the sense that one eats it, but a very pure expression of the central themes of my favorite foods.


• animal flesh untreated by high heat. Raw (sushi, shellfish; carpaccio, steak tartare); but also protein-fracturing techniques below body temperature such as cold-smoking (lox) or acid (ceviche).

The unifying themes that attract me to these are that they engage multiple senses, and offer transparency of ingredients. The quality of the ingredients is immediately and unavoidably apparent; there's no place to hide something poor-quality or "off".


Places:

• Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in ski season. You can ride the tram up nearly a mile of elevation to the top of the mountain, and look out over a vast panorama before spending the next hour or more skiing down to the base.


• The Philosopher's Path in Kyoto. Very little of the city of over a million people that you are walking through intrudes into the serenity. Small homes and shops, paths to temples, and some lightly-travelled streets; otherwise, you are surrounded by nature.


• London, England. Centuries of history, and the legacy of empire, all distilled and concentrated. I feel like I could spend a lifetime exploring there without exhausting it.


• The National Mall in Washington, DC. Including all the Smithsonian buildings. A potent reminder to me of what is supposed to matter to this country and its people.


• Yellowstone National Park, especially Mammoth Hot Springs (colors and structures you wouldn't believe existed if you hadn't seen them yourself) and the Old Faithful geyser basin (where it's not too hard to envision why early explorers thought they'd reached the Gates of Hell).

Memories:

• Walking into the Graduate Record Examination quantitative exam, finishing all the questions 45 minutes into the three-hour allocation, spending 15 minutes triple-checking the answers, turning it in, and leaving. The score seemed to indicate that I got all the answers right.


• Entering one of the most significant team events on the national bridge calendar with three friends, all of us capable and serious players but fairly small potatoes in that context; facing a team including multiple national and world champions, some of whose names grace nationwide bridge columns, in a daylong third-round match; and riding a super last quarter to a stunning upset.


• Being able to point to a popularly successful software product I had contributed to, say to my parents, "This exists because I helped build it. This sort of work is common where I am now, and virtually nonexistent near where you live. This is why I live and work here." (Silicon Valley), and having them finally understand and respect my decision.


• Our wedding ceremony. Personally constructed, officiated by a friend, and done in the place where we'd met.


• Bicycling up to the Salisbury Plain in southern England along a path through fields, and seeing Stonehenge emerge above the final ridge of the climb, from the top down until the entire monument became visible from the ridgetop.

Re: topping off

[callibr8]

WOW!!! Fascinating answers, and the detailed descriptions are exquisite! Thanks so much for sharing these!!

Re: topping off

[ng_moonmoth]

Glad you enjoyed the answers and descriptions. You're welcome, and thank you for stimulating my creativity.

[alatefeline]

Vegetables?

Internet-meme videos, songs, clips, etc?

Cat yoga poses?

[ng_moonmoth]

Vegetables:

• Asparagus. This is one way I know it's actually spring.
• Chili peppers. Elevates many foods from boring to tasty.
• Chocolate. Just because. Who needs any other excuse?
• Sweet corn. See above for how I feel about it.
• Tomatoes. Skip the commercial ones that are grown because they ship well rather than taste good, or the sports equipment (orange footballs, yellow tennis balls, pink ping-pong balls) that stores try to pass off as such out of season. I'll take the locally-grown kinds that actually taste like something.

Memeage: I'm not much on this, because there aren't many folks who do this much on my reading lists. But here are some things that have caught my eye.

• Haven't seen a good one of this Cthulhu meme yet: O R'LYEH? (cuddly)/IA R'LYEH (rampaging).
• "I CAN'T BELIEVE WE'RE STILL PROTESTING THIS SHIT"

Cat yoga poses: I understand this is a Thing, but, again, it's not a Thing I ever got dialed in on. But I've done yoga, so I just picked some poses I know that would be cool for cats to do.

• Cat Back - because they're cats
• Downward Dog - to demonstrate their superiority over dogs, who can't do Cat Back
• Crocodile - All teeth and claws, just like cats
• Pigeon - to fool the tasty birds into getting close enough to eat
• Savasana - because very few things are cuter and more skritchable than a cat sprawled on its back with its legs out

Hope you enjoy this.

[alatefeline]

Thank you! This was indeed fun to read. Feel free to toss some questions back at me!

Mmmmmmm...sweet corn is soooo goooooood...

For your viewing pleasure, some cats apparently doing yoga:
https://tse3.mm.bing.net/th?id=OIP.sziaXiNrPu2oC7bgDbcZrQEsDU&pid=15.1&P=0&w=300&h=300
http://img.xcitefun.net/users/2009/12/133643,xcitefun-yoga-cat-13.jpg
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/2f/23/8e/2f238e7172f7de71a1bbe21e2bdbba5c.jpg
http://media.gettyimages.com/photos/awkward-pet-portraits-picture-id486989659
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/62/84/90/62849085097ecec7d51b30b18331deab.jpg

And yoga WITH cats is a thing too...
http://purringtonscatlounge.com/home/p484/yoga/

I'll show you mine if you show me yours

[ng_moonmoth]

Webcomics?

Gender-affirmative sites? I'm looking for the places you go for reassurance that it's not only OK, but good, that your gender identity does not align with cultural expectations. Feel free to include information sites, Q&A blogs/Tumblrs/whatever, personal blogs -- whatever works for you.