We crazy people are sublime and loyal.

Spy vs. Spy artist Antonio Prohias explaining to Miami New Times reporter Diane Montane that he went straight to MAD magazine with his portfolio after arriving in New York from Cuba in 1960 because of ‘that crazy name’. (From the recently published Spy vs. Spy Omnibus.)

If entropy had a gang and ordered a hit on a guy, light would feed the victim hamburgers until he died of organ failure.

This truly inspired analogy can be found in part nine of pinknantucket press’s series on ‘the enemies of books’. If you’ve ever wondered why the photos on the front of travel agency brochures sometimes look uninvitingly drained of life, here’s where you’ll find the answer.

I think Douglas Adams writing [Doctor Who] to order for the BBC in 25-minute instalments with this many sets and that many actors is very different from Douglas Adams the radio writer, or Douglas Adams the novelist. The stage directions are peppered through with things like, ‘As many explosions as we can manage’ or, ‘K-9 comes out at what passes for full speed’.

Gareth Roberts on his novelisation of ‘Shada’, a 1979 Doctor Who serial penned by (then script editor) Douglas Adams. The story was abandoned mid-production because of BBC industrial action triggered by a demarcation dispute over the operation of the Play School clock (yes, really), and though the extant footage has been released on home video (with linking narration by Tom Baker), this is the first time the story has been officially adapted in print.

The two other stories Adams wrote for Who — ‘The Pirate Planet’ and the classic ‘City of Death’ — are yet to be novelised.

(T)hose involved in the manufacture of the new phosphorus matches were afflicted with phossy jaw and other bone disorders, and there was enough white phosphorus in one pack to kill a person. Deaths and suicides from eating the heads of matches became frequent. Two French chemists, Henri Savene and Emile David Cahen, developed a safe match using phosphorus sesquisulfide that was patented in 1898. In the United States, the Diamond Match Company obtained the patent for sesquisulfide manufacture in 1900 for a sum of $100,000. President William Howard Taft then wrote publicly to the Diamond Match Company asking them to release the patent for the good of mankind, which they did in 1911.

That ought to silence you hippies out there complaining about those evil, selfish corporations destroying the world! It’s not all oil spills and overworked Chinese factory workers, you long-haired jerks!