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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

"The Bible" as if there were only one, and only one version of it, without specifying further arguably leaves things open.

Cover of The X-Rated Bible by Ben Edward Akerley

cover of The Nuclear Platypus Biscuit Bible: A Spiritual Guide for the Disciples of Biscuitism

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Not even a creative logo, seems to me I've seen something similar...

Skywalker Sound lettering similar to Skydance lettering.

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Reporting sexual harassment by mere untenured professor, & department chair for refusing to put a stop to it, instead requiring students to be subjected to unwanted offensive behavior as condition of receiving degree in the department and graduating was scary. Fifteen yrs ago; still f'd up about it.

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I'm sure I'll watch ones from Algeria and Madagascar before the challenge is finished.

Detail of Letterboxd world map showing Africa, with some countries in green (indicating at least one movie has been watched for that country). Most of the countries are dark gray, indicating none have been seen. Nigeria is specifically highlighted.

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 13/07/2026

I saw this in North Kingston, Rhode Island. A whole wall!

AI slop wallpaper depicting a soda fountain/ice cream shop, with glass jars labeled with gibberish, ginormous sundaes with a multitude of odd sticks stuck into them and one that might be a bowl of organ meat.

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 03/07/2026

"Ten Little Fingers," 1880s, might have originally appeared in the Detroit Free Press:

Ten Little Fingers

Ten little fingers toying with a mine—
Bang! went the powder, and then there were nine.

Nine little fingers fixing rockets straight—
Zip! a kick backward, and then there were eight.

Eight little fingers pointing up to heaven—
Roman candle "busted," and then there were seven.

Seven little fingers, punk and powder mix—
Punk was ignited, and then there were six.

Six little fingers for a "sizzer" strive—
One went off with it, and then there were five.

Five little fingers loading for a roar—
Boom! went the cannon, and then there were four.

Four little fingers with a pack made free—
Crash! went a cracker, and then there were three.

Three little fingers found the fuse burned blue—
Bombshell too previous, and then there were two.

Two little fingers having lots of fun—
Pistol exploded, and then was one.

One little finger, fooling with a gun—
Didn't know 'twas loaded, and then there was none.

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

"This is my body," he said, "and this is how many servings you may have, along with such other facts as you may need."

Cropped version of a painting of Christ flanked by disciples, wine before him, holding bread, Nutrition Facts photoshopped into his upright hand.

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

These ones not directed by women. Old e-mail I'd sent to a friend: "gendery scifi TV episodes and films" February 17, 2012 at 12:13 AM

"Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Outcast (#5.17)" (1992)
While aiding an androgynous race who lost a couple of members in an unmapped region of space, Riker falls for one of them, which can lead to trouble if detected, since the alien race does not endorse gender specificity.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708815/

I Hate My Body (1974)
The brain of a man... the body of a woman... the sexual horror story of our time!
The brain of a male engineer is transplanted into a female's body. He soon finds it very frustrating to cope with the daily sexist discrimination most women deal with. For example, he is surprised when no one will hire a female engineer. When he is faced with dealing with female sexuality, he quickly begins exhibiting lesbian tendencies.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070467/

Taking Tiger Mountain (1983)
Militant feminist scientists brainwash research subject to assassinate the Welsh Minister of Prostitution. Meanwhile World War III is being fought and the USA has been invaded.
It is noted that after the thermonuclear war, a degree shift in the earth's axis has caused environmental breakdowns, and there is even a dilution of human gene pools due to the fact that the balance of the sexes has tipped, so much so that men are easily grafted (by choice or under duress, depending on situations) into women, and vice versa.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086409/

TTM, an adult movie written by William S. Burroughs, shot in Morocco and Wales, starring Bill Paxton?! Bwaaaa…!?

Interview with TTM director: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeBp41fvsOA&

Willis, Donald C. Horror and Science Fiction Films III. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1984:
SafariScreenSnapz004.jpg
http://books.google.com/books?id=HqzC5HaCupYC&pg=PA268

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

Jeepers. kingstonecomics.com/cdn/shop/fil...

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

And yet I'm not sure that's dialog from any movie. Possibly he's remembering his casino days, when someone might get 86'd from a table, & his own mob ties from those days, & he's getting things all mixed up. There's maybe one book with the murder meaning but it's an outlier w/unsourced entries.

screencap:
eighty-six. To murder someone or put an end to something, as in "Eighty-six him. I don't want to see him again."
Hendrickson, Robert. The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins. 2008.

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 29/04/2026

ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com/tag/zip-code...

postal zone numbers brooklyn, 2 digit codes

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

Odds seem good that he needed to have it explained to him first that she & his Macdonald triad offspring were not actually there. Should probably also mention that this man who often appeared on British and American television is not actually a military official charged with policing silliness.

Graham Chapman as The Colonel from Monty Python's Flying Circus

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Using other people's lists (that one's not mine) is handy. It shows you the percentage you've watched on others' lists, can fade out ones you've watched if you want, etc.

1000 Women in Horror Companion List by Wiccaburr on Letterboxd, showing some movies faded out (user has seen) and percentage of the total list watched.

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

Sailors famously on the lookout for troublesome witches.

Gold Key comic cover, Popeye the Sailor. He's punching out a giant, long-necked bird, as the Sea Hag standing on a beach looks frustrated in the background. Captioned "The Sea Hag creates a spinach shortage to get Popeye in her power!"

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 14/04/2026

Book will be one that I'll be buying! Do love Curse of the Blair Witch, Shadow of the Blair Witch, Burkittsville 7, Sticks and Stones: Investigating the Blair Witch and yes the soundtrack too (and Book of Shadows). Funnily enough never could get into BWP itself.

Cover for The Blair Witch Project Josh's Blair Witch Mix: An Absent Soundtrack Found book by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, white text on red, b&w closeup of stickman and Heather's face, from Channel Academic a BearManor imprint.

Small collection of soundtracks for horror movies directed by women from American Psycho to Trouble Every Day, Teiji Ito's Music for Maya, and (because of the fictional woman director of a horror documentary in the film) The Blair Witch Project: Josh's Blair Witch Mix, and Greetings from Burkittsville by Sisyphus.

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 10/04/2026

They have NO CARDS! No cards except ONE: controlling the Strait of Hormuz! And also being better at handling the media! TWO cards, they have TWO cards! Controlling the Strait of Hormuz, handling media, and PR. THREE cards, only three cards!

Michael Palin as Cardinal Ximénez in Monty Python’s Flying Circus' "Spanish Inquisition" sketch

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

People who don't belong to that church really seem to like the building and its location.

Church at sunset image from https://www.venedocia.org/salem/churcpic.html

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

"Epigraphs" by John Robert Colombo, 1977. Claudian: He who terrifies another is himself in continual fear.

EPIGRAPHS

Edmund Burke:
Things which are terrible are always great.

Claudian:
He who terrifies another
is himself in continual fear.

Miguel de Cervantes:
Fear has many eyes.

Virgil:
Horror everywhere alarms the soul,
and the very stillness is terrifying also.

Spanish Proverb:
What is evil lives forever.

English Proverb:
Every monster hath its multitudes

J.B.S. Haldane:
The universe is not only stranger than we imagine;
it is stranger than we can imagine.

Nathanael West:
Few things are sadder than the truly monstrous.
Colombo, John Robert. Mostly Monsters. Hounslow Press, 1977.
https://archive.org/details/mostlymonsters0000colo/page/n13/mode/2up

François de la Rochefoucauld:
There are heroes of evil
no less than of good.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:
Only the fantastic
is likely to be true
at the cosmic level.

James H. Nicholson:
Each time our monster
got his deserts,
we had actually enacted
a modern version
of the medieval morality play.
We had filmed Everyman.

Madame du Deffand:
Do I believe in ghosts?
No, but I am afraid of them.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
Do I believe in ghosts?
I have seen too many to believe in them.

Edgar Allan Poe:
Terror is not of Germany,
but of the soul.

Kenneth Tynan:
Assume the miracle:
assume the advent of a masterpiece.
There it crouches, a pink-eyed,
many-muscled, salivating monster.
Who shall harness it?

Jean Cocteau:
Astonish me!

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 21/03/2026

Alive... and killing it! Appreciated the 1000 Women in Horror documentary by @horrornonna.com very much - hoping now for physical media and a sequel!

1000 Women in Horror 1895-2018 by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas paperback book spine, horizontal (ex-library: shame on the county library for parting with it!)
above it A-B movies directed by women on blu-ray, DVD, and VHS: ABCs of Death Volume 2, Adventures of Prince Achmed, The Amazing Transplant, Amer, up to Banshee and Beauty Queen Butcher. Also seen: Deadly Advice, Deadly Dreams, Deadly Lessons, Death Games, Death in Small Doses.

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 20/03/2026

The name doesn't appear to have been indicative of his ancestry, just someone the family was honoring. But yeah, bad politics.

Against All Odds By Chuck Norris
Mom and Dad took me home to the farm where Dad worked, in Ryan, Oklahoma, a small town not far from the Texas border, about a two-hour drive from Dallas. The name on my birth certificate is Carlos Ray Norris. I was named in honor of Reverend Carlos Berry, my family's minister in Ryan. My middle name, Ray, is in honor of my father.
Genetically speaking, I am equal parts Irish and Native American.
On the Norris side, my paternal grandfather was Irish, and my paternal grandmother was a full-blooded Cherokee Indian. My mother's family name was Scarberry. My maternal grandmother, Agnes, was Irish, while my maternal grandfather was a Cherokee Indian from Kentucky.

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

Some of the reading for #WiHM : Lost in the Static: The Untold Stories of Shot-on-Video Horror Directed by Women and it can't rain all the time: the crow by @alishamgl.bsky.social I've seen 60% of the movies in the former. letterboxd.com/kevbonesy/li...

Lost in the Static: The Untold Stories of Shot-on-Video Horror Directed by Women and it can't rain all the time. the crow by alisha mughal on a wood counter. The former is colorful, showing color bars and an illustration of a redhead with a pink hoodie and a video camera, pizza, life preserver, VHS tape emerging from her head. The latter is a black cover with black, white, and grey text.

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

search your camera roll for hell Thomas Paine: "Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph." The American Crisis. December 19, 1776.

photo of printouts on a table of transcriptions of letters and texts by John Adams, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

Gallup says "We think you may enjoy being one of the first to be polled by an Al interviewer." The polling company is very wrong about that!

GALLUP®
GALLUP PANEL - BE HEARD
Gallup Panel Al Interview Contact Info Survey
Dear CHRISTOPHER,
We recently sent you an invitation to help Gallup test a new artificially intelligent (Al) interview system. We think you may enjoy being one of the first to be polled by an Al interviewer.
If you agree to take part in this study, you will receive a phone call inviting you to a short survey about several current topics. During that call, you will be asked some questions by the Al interview system. It should take you about 15 minutes to
complete the phone interview.
If you choose to participate, Gallup will send you a $5 reward (500 points) after completing the telephone survey.
Because this research is so important, we're first asking you to complete a short survey right now to consent to take part in this study, and to update your contact information so that we can reach you with more information.
TAKE SURVEY

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 11/02/2026

Curious now! Morton's "The Bed of Love" (1898) page 66 here from The Adult: The Journal of Sex: www.google.com/books/editio... and transcribed here www.bartleby.com/lit-hub/poet... But it's clearly not one of the more explicit, wherever they may have appeared.

[masthead]
The Adult
The Journal of Sex.
"What though the brood of Belial, the draft of men to whom no liberty is pleasing but unbridled and vagabond lust without pale or partition; will laugh broad perhaps to see so great a strength mustering up in favor as they suppose of their debaucheries; they will know better when they shall hence learn that honest liberty is the greatest foe to dishonest licence."—John Milton.
VoL. 2. No. 3.] APRIL, 1898. [THREEPENCE.
EDITOR - - - GEORGE BEDBOROUGH.
OFFICES:-
I6, John Street, Bedford Row, London, W.C.

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

One rather insulting thing that comes up when trying to do a search about word or phrase frequency across multiple texts (including possible instances of LLMs plagiarizing) - the inevitable Google accusation that you're a bot. I've gotten these for years.

Recaptcha checkbox prompt
I'm not a robot
reCAPTCHA
Privacy - Terms
About this page
Our systems have detected unusual traffic from your computer network. This page checks to see if it's really you sending the requests, and not a robot. Why did this happen?

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

There were several other reprints around the country.

reprints of Wallace John's poem "Football, By All Means" around the country according to newspapers.com:

Evening star
December 3, 1905
Washington, D. C.

San Antonio Express-News
December 4, 1905
San Antonio, Texas

The Burlington Free Press
December 11, 1905
Burlington Vermont

Los Angeles Evening Express
December 11, 1905
Los Angeles, California

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

La Setta AKA The Sect, The Devil's Daughter, and Demons 4 (1991).

White rabbit with red eyes on the floor, one paw on a TV/VCR remote.

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

Football, by All Means. Rah! rah! rah! who cares—do you— For a broken leg or a death or two? [...] —Wallace John to New York Globe. Syracuse Herald. December 30, 1905: 4 col 3.

Football, by All Means.

Rah! rah! rah! who cares—do you—
For a broken leg or a death or two?
Let the pimply youths on the bleachers root
For that manly hero, the Perfect Brute,
For shoulders and legs in the ghastly play
That maketh a college holiday!
While the pretty girl with the college pin
Adds her shriek to the general din,
While fond mamma and foolish pas
Split the sky with their rah-rah-rahs
As a man drops out with a broken knee
Or a crack in the upper vertebrae.

Rah! rah! rah! let's make a noise
And help the sport of these tender boys;
For love of college is doubly thrilled
When men are mangled and maimed and killed.
Each end they run, each yard they gain
Is done at the cost of blood and pain,
Making the noble game a sort
Of prize fight, bull fight, a cannibal sport,
A modern gladiatorial show
Where you and I and the world may go;
A Graeco-Roman burlesque
I'm fond of that sort of thing, aren't you?
—Wallace John to New York Globe.
Syracuse Herald. December 30, 1905: 4 col 3.

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 08/02/2026

Outdoor thermometer had enough last night with this upstate NY weather.

La Crosse Technology indoor outdoor thermometer at 12:30AM
Indoor 62.1ºF
Outdoor noºF

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 05/02/2026

The more recent dysfunction of the Google Advanced Book Search is weird. Regular search can turn up things from Google Books that ABS cannot. (Though even regular search denies exact search has any results before giving results that do fulfill the exact search.)

[Google search window, books tab selected]
"dayswork: a novel" "typee" omoo"
No results found for "dayswork: a novel" "typee" omoo".
Results for dayswork: a novel typee omoo (without quotes):
books.google.com>books
Dayswork: A novel
Christ Bachelder. Jennifer Habel 2023
FOUND INSIDE
books, paper, and art. His portrait hung above the mantel. The bread box containing Billy Budd sat on his... Typee, Omoo, White-Jacket, and Moby-Dick.

[Google Advanced book search results search window]
typee omoo intitle:dayswork intitle:a intitle:novel
It looks like there aren't any 'Books' matches on this topic

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

Jesus and the Children Frances Hook Print reproduction 17.5 x 12.5 cm. The Standard Publishing Co., 1962

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 29/01/2026

Heh, Det. Harry Hole from this movie.

Mister Police You Could have saved her I gave you all the clues.
[bad snowman drawing]
The Snowman
[movie credits on poster]

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 28/01/2026

No recent cat pics here just old ones. 🙁 Maybe this will be the year to find a new cat friend.

Bezoar the tabby in the sun on bricks by a flowering cherry tree stump, sedum, stones. Eyes partly closed. Purple cat leash with paws on it hooked to a harness. Background out of focus.

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

Going through my bookshelves and found this that I'd meant to send to a historical society years ago. I bought it at an antiques store in the Adirondacks cheap. Love the note on the cover. He'd been a Johnstown NY City Charter committee member & slightly resembled Arthur Conan Doyle in appearance.

Custom leatherbound copy of The White Company by A. Conan Doyle, gold stamped with that info and the note "The Property of, and said to have been read 20 tims, by EDWIN BAYLIES, L.L.D."

B&w photograph of Edwin Baylies, white male, short hair, full mustache, short cigar in left hand, right hand resting on chair arm, possibly wood paneling behind him.

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

I ran into it so often when collecting Christmas ghost story material. Tara Moore had written it's "a British phrase for releasing the ghost from whatever past crimes force it to roam the earth" but I've also seen it used in a debunking sense too. Not yet a naughty one!

Six panel cartoon from 1893 titled "LAYING A CHRISTMAS GHOST
OR, PROFESSOR NIGHTSHADE'S SPIRITUALISTIC FAILURE." - there's no real ghost at all but a medium and his confederate who get exposed as a fraud.

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

A movie with an A-hole at the center of it.

A title that centers an a-hole
[arrow pointing to the hole in the center of the central letter A]
A NEW FILM
MELANIA

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 23/01/2026

Punchy speaker! (Just dipped into a newspaper archive curious about other examples. I'm sure your book is very interesting!)

"Fourth of July at Abington." The Liberator. July 11, 1851. [Parker Pillsbury speaking]
'This is the day for orations and sermons; but our nation has preached a perpetual sermon since the war of the Revolution, and it has been, in the words of Jefferson, the most cruel and unrelenting tyranny. The Revolution itself was a failure; the Declaration of Independence was a failure; Washington himself was a failure, and so were Jefferson and Adams, and all the lesser men of their day. We are told that Washington fought throughout the war "without any compensation," and he has been lauded for his generosity and self-sacrifice. But did you ever think how many men and women toiled all that time for Washington without pay? Did you ever think that hundreds of slaves labored all that time, and before and afterwards, for Georgo Washington, and that he took by force the proceeds of their toil? How much honor is he entitled to for his generosity?
https://fultonhistory.com/Newspapers%2023/Boston%20MA%20Liberator/Boston%20MA%20Liberator%201848-1851/Boston%20MA%20Liberator%201848-1851%20-%200629.pdf

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

Surprised on some level there were two Rock Against Bush albums, listenable if perhaps not especially memorable, yet now...? But maybe there's some rough equivalent with a less obvious title?

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Xmas ghosts are stirring @toffph.bsky.social · 20/01/2026

Has www.donotcall.gov been killed? The page does not display like an active one should. Getting SO MANY calls from Ava from Consumer Transparency Group originating from all around the country, different number every time.

? [missing image]
Federal Trade Commission
Back to ftc.gov | Español
Resources | Privacy Act Statements | Home
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? [missing image]
menu
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