How to deal with telemarketing calls. (H/T, Dr Westerhaus.) // Reposted by request: BT courtesy call goes horribly, horribly wrong. “Do you comprehend?” // Faces in places. // BBC TV idents. From the Fifties to the modern day. // Further to this, behold the future of re-entry. In emergencies. // Running countdown to fictional future events. Some overdue. (H/T, Grow-a-brain.) // World freedom atlas. Scan the world for freedom of expression, freedom of belief and individual rights. // Robert Spencer casts a critical eye over the “Islam is peace” PR campaign. // What does ‘jihad’ mean? “The 199 references in the most standard collection of Hadith all assume that jihad means warfare.” // The pearl of Allah. // Islamic comic book heroes. “Questions have been raised about the clothing the heroes wear.” // Nuns disagree. Things turn ugly. // A gallery of ejector seats. // How missiles work. // Exchanging Greetings and Introductions. (1960) How Earthlings greet. // Kavel Rafferty’s vintage record sleeves. (H/T, Coudal.) // Lava lamp packaging. The classic Century 102. // The American Package Museum. Gum, cocoa. tinned marshmallows. // The Birotron. Retro-electronica. It didn’t catch on. More. // Via Grow-a-brain, the, um, magnificent Belinda Bedeković. Video. Warning: it seems not to end. // And, via The Thin Man, Kathy Kirby gets groovy and bombastic.

Here’s a thing. Your very own moon. 

Photographed by Boris Bendikov. More. And. (H/T, Coudal.) 

Further to my rumblings about Professor Judith Butler and her obscurantist posturing, the fine people at Obscene Desserts have devised a new party game, juxtaposing her blathering, and that of her peers, with Communist propaganda posters. It seems to me the results would make excellent flash cards, and thus one could more readily memorise such gobbets of wisdom as,

“Libidinal dependency and powerlessness is phantasmatically overcome by the installation of a boundary and, hence, a hypostacized centre which produces an idealized bodily ego; that integrity and unity is achieved through the ordering of a wayward motility or disaggregated sexuality not yet restrained by the boundaries of individuation.”

Hours of fun. Related. And. Also. 

Brace yourselves, aesthetes. Via Marble River comes the mind-shattering return of the Ed Wood of comics, Mr Fletcher Hanks. A complete, and bewildering, adventure, first published in Fantastic Comics #1, December 1939, can be found here. “The Brain wants all Earth people destroyed.” And Dianna’s space belt won’t work.

More of Hanks’ unhinged dramas here and here.

The Fletcher Hanks anthology, I Shall Destroy All the Civilised Planets, can be ordered via Amazon and Fantagraphics. (H/T, Journalista!)

Further to Friday’s post on The Planets series, here’s another short extract, taken from the episode Atmosphere. In it, we follow Joe Kittinger’s 1960 balloon ride to an altitude of 103,000 feet (20 miles / 32 km), where, technically, he became the first man in space. Thanks to automated cameras, we also follow Kittinger’s unorthodox – and perilous – return to Earth. Extraordinary.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Parts one through six of The Planets can be viewed online here.

Related. And. Also. (H/T, The Thin Man.)