10 Things: Peak Basic B
My recommendations for what to look at, think about, sit with, read, watch, eat, buy, and do this week.
Hello! Thank you for your patience as I pulled this week’s list together. If you’re a free subscriber, I hope you’ll enjoy my recommendation for a good bird feeder (and yes, you need one). If you’re a paid subscriber, get ready for signs from the universe, the best way to sprout, and a good new Substack I’m reading.
Bird feeders.
What are you doing these days? Is your life dreary and dismal? Then I bet you’re not using a BIRD FEEDER. And if you are using a bird feeder, are you looking at it enough?
Here’s the deal, friends: the birds are hungry. They want to eat, and their supply is dried up. Whoever stayed around in your ecosystem for this mid-winter period deserves a little love. I’ve never been able to make those stick-on-the-window bird feeders work, but my gf Kat has one, and they are always sending me photos of birds glutting themselves at it, so I tried again. The secret is to: clean your window, warm your window up, and wash the suction cups in soapy water. I put mine up two days ago, and ALREADY, CARDINALS. They got scared when they saw me, but they’ll be back.
If you’re not into bird-watching yet, let me just briefly say this. We are on the earth in these bodies for such a short time, in the grand scheme of things. And somehow, miraculously, we are CURRENTLY SHARING EARTH with CREATURES whose BODIES FLY. They are around all the time! If you’d never seen a bird before before, and I showed you one, you’d be like, “Holy shit! I cannot believe what I am seeing! What IS this thing?” Every bird — even the humble sparrow, maybe especially the dazzling pigeon, and definitely the over-wintering chickadees — is interesting. A little movie to watch in your own yard. There’s so much to observe about even the commonest of birds. And it’s not like you have to. But there they are! So why WOULDN’T you?
Microwavable rice.
If you were with me on that last one, I’m sure that you’ve already dismissed this one as being ridiculous. And I have to tell you that one day several months ago, I saw a woman buying pre-cooked, frozen, microwaveable rice at Trader Joe’s, and I hated that such a product existed enough that I KIND OF HATED THE WOMAN. I went on an internal tirade about if I ever became the kind of person who didn’t HAVE THE TIME TO MAKE RICE, then I would have to really re-examine my priorities. In that impossible hypothetical, someone would have to sit me down, and maybe bonk me on the head.
And yet, I am often making lunch just for myself, and rice takes such a long time to cook. And then I refrigerate it, but I don’t ever get around to eating the leftovers, or even remember they’re there. And it’s hard to get rice right. You can overcook it, or not cook it for long enough, and it’s crunchy and hard… I basically never want a ton of rice, but I ALWAYS want a little rice, and plus, rice is difficult. Then, I was doing a Costco order the other day and saw this:
I sort of thought, “That is something that would go with most salads that I make for myself. Why not just see how it works for me?” (I forgot, for the moment, the Trader Joe’s rice of yore.) For a few days, I used it every day. One day, I used it in a meal that I made for Luke. Luke said, “That rice you made was perfect. How did you get it that perfect?” And the answer is I didn’t. Seeds of Change did. And yes, this a lot of packaging for some rice and quinoa that you could absolutely make yourself. And YES, it’s more expensive to buy individual packets of rice than it is to buy a big old bag of it. And YESSSSS, the amount of massive privilege I experience when I choose to buy a bulk order of microwaveable, pre-made brown rice with quinoa in it is ASTRONOMICAL. But all that might pale in comparison to how good this rice is and how much stress it alleviates.
I’ve dawdled on recommending this book, because it’s for a specific kind of person. It is about the etymology of the language of the Internet. It is deeply nerdy and incredibly upbeat. If you love language and feel like numbing your brain in a warm soup of delicious pwn3d and l33t and the number of “g”s in omgggg in a typical text message of the 2020s, then I recommend this!
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