Years and years ago, someone who’d read my Pathetic Life zine offered me a job. I worked for that man for five years, and I’d work for him again if he wasn’t dead. … [read more]

Don’t get me wrong — many things suck, many people are stupid, our leaders are generally crooks and/or imbeciles, and there’s never any shortage of things to complain about. … [read more]

Until the turn of the 20th Century, most newspapers intentionally mingled fact and opinion in their reports, pushing a political agenda, like Fox News today. Gradually, newspapers figured out that they could sell more ads and attract more readers if they tried a newfangled concept we now call ‘objective journalism’ — trying to present the news fairly, without taking sides. Objective … [read more]

Write Your Own Words #2
Having recently come out as a zine, not a blog, Mostly Words will now observe the sacred zine tradition of reviewing other zines.  … [read more]

Leftovers & links

♦ My department at work is being outsourced, and I’ll be unemployed on 1/1/2022, five months from today. In addition to my serious worries about finding
a job, I’m also amused/intrigued about the upcoming transition.See, … [read more]

Bad news update, a week later: It took me a while to notice, but there’s a real problem with what’s detailed below, and that’s lint. I thought the dryer just tumble-dried your clothes, but guess what? … [read more]

Here’s the thing about watching old movies: A lot of them stink. A lot are forgettable. Often I give up and click off.
But many movies from the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s are fun, even the bad ones — and many aren’t bad at all. … [read more]

There are so many good movies out there — a hundred years of old
movies, plus thousands of odd or artsy, foreign or forgotten or DIY
movies made just for the joy of making ’em — that if you only watch
whatever’s on Netflix or playing at the twentyplex, you’re missing out.   … [read more]

Sometime in the 1970s or ’80s, before I gave up on improving myself, I read a few self-improvement books. They didn’t improve me.  
Self-improvement is a wondrous thing, of course. … [read more]