For the record

Yes, I am about to list my favourites and least favourites. Yes, I do this at the beginning of every major journal-keeping undertaking. Yes, I know this is not particularly interesting. Which is why I will try to make it more so by expanding on what would normally be a simple list. And I'm cutting out the silly ones like "least favourite country". Alors...

LANGUAGE
Préférée: If that doesn't say it all... c'est bien ça, le français!
Least favourite: Spoken Korean annoys me immensely for some reason.

CITY
Favourite: Nice is absolutely charming. And the tram is 1337. And Nice-Étoile is elegant despite being damn expensive. Okay, I'll stop taunting all of you.
Least favourite: Out of the ones I've been to, Buffalo. Then again, I haven't seen South Portland yet...

NAME
Favourite: For females, we have a clear winner: Aurore. For males, we have Évariste and Émile.
Least favourite: I have issues with certain African-American names (Tanisha), certain concept names (Charity, Felicity, etc.; this may seem contradictory since I like Hope and Liberty), explicitly religions names (Christian), and overused names (especially Mary). Mimi does not fall into any of these categories but irritates me nevertheless.

WORD
Favourite: Liberté (what else?!). In second place is volonté.
Least favourite: Hmm... sanctity. These days, it seems to me that it's an empty word used as an emotion-grabber and connotation-inducer... as in "sanctity of life" (d'après Ron Paul et al). Also, you know I'm atheist.

FOOD: MEAT
Favourite: Chicken heart kabobs at that Changchun kabob restaurant. No contest. This also qualifies as my favourite food of all time, since meat generally trumps everything else, carnivore that I am.
Least favourite: Generally, my philosophy is: "If it's meat, it's good." But I suppose if it's absolutely bland and/or prepared in a style I don't like, I won't have much of a taste for it. Oh, and I don't eat anything less than well done.

FOOD: VEGETABLE
Favourite: "Fuzzy beans"—I read their actual name in a magazine once, but I have since forgotten. I think it starts with an E.
Least favourite: "Yellow flower vegetable"—once again, I don't know the real name. This used to be cabbage, but my mother has been unearthing more and more unpalatable vegetables...

FOOD: FRUIT
Favourite: This is a tough call. I love certain kinds of peaches and hate other kinds. I also like cherries, but only if they're big, sweet, at just the right ripeness, and flawless in terms of bumps and scratches. Fussy fussy.
Least favourite: Banana held this infamous position for the longest time until my potassium deficiency and my laziness (it's so easy to peel a banana, and your hands don't get messy and citrusy!) reversed that. So... persimmons are pretty yucky.

DRINK
Favourite: Another hard one, since it varies widely depending on mood. On some days it's green plum juice, on others it's sparkling apple cidre, and sometimes I get a craving for really good lemonade (like the kind at Panera).
Least favourite: I HATE milk. Any kind, really, but if I had to choose the worst kind, it would be unflavoured warm whole milk. Thank pattern algorithms for calcium supplements.

ANIMAL
Favourite: Shall it be cats or tigers? Toygers!
Least favourite: Anything small that crawls, creeps, or scuttles. Somehow the ones that fly aren't that bad... except the cicadas in 2004.

NUMBER
Favourite: 7. As Évariste would be prompt to point out, it's prime.
Least favourite: I don't really despise any numbers, but I suppose things with lots of 4's in them... DEATH!

COLOUR
Favourite: (In this order) red, blue, white, silver... the correlation between these colours and those of a French flag soaked in unicorn blood is not coincidental... well, except for the unicorn blood.
Least favourite: Most shades of green. Ask me about the 2006 World Cup. Prepare to die if you support the country who has replaced the liberty stripe with a green one. (Okay, I'm not that hardcore anymore. But I didn't like green to begin with, and the post-2006 World Cup reaction has made recoiling from green things quite instinctive. Sorry, plants.)

PLANT
Favourite: Roses, especially red, pink, and white. I'm such a romantic, I know.
Least favourite: For all practical purposes (considering the minuteness of my chance of consuming a strychnine tree), poison ivy. I'm still not fully convinced that I am in the lucky 15% who are not allergic...

HOLIDAY
Favourite: New Year's Eve/Day. Auld Lang Syne in its many renditions also happens to be one of my favourite songs of all time.
Least favourite: Overtly religious holidays aside, I suppose the prize goes to St Patrick's Day, because of the green and the pinching for refusing to wear aforementioned green.

FRIEND
Favourite (best friend): Ah, I call her Grantaire. Grantaire, present yourself!
Least favourite (worst enemy): Perscheux. Runner-up is the person who almost caused Perscheux to kill himself. Strange combination, isn't it?

YEAR
Least favourite (yes, this comes first for a reason that will presently become apparent): 2008. See my first post.
Favourite: 2009. This is audacious, I know. But while the Fates decide what to do with me for so prematurely making that statement... could we please decree that 2009 started on 22 Nov 2008? ^_^