CRAIG CONLEY (Prof. Oddfellow) is recognized by Encarta as “America’s most creative and diligent scholar of letters, words and punctuation.” He has been called a “language fanatic” by Page Six gossip columnist Cindy Adams, a “cult hero” by Publisher’s Weekly, and “a true Renaissance man of the modern era, diving headfirst into comprehensive, open-minded study of realms obscured or merely obscure” by Clint Marsh. An eccentric scholar, Conley’s ideas are often decades ahead of their time. He invented the concept of the “virtual pet” in 1980, fifteen years before the debut of the popular “Tamagotchi” in Japan. His virtual pet, actually a rare flower, still thrives and has reached an incomprehensible size. Conley’s website is OneLetterWords.com.

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Magic Words: A Dictionary
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Simple Answers
Breathing Circle
Loves Me? Loves Me Not?
Wacky Birthday Form
Test Your ESP
Chess-Calvino Dictionary
Amalgamural
Is Today the Day?
100 Ways I Failed to Boil Water
"Follow Your Bliss" Compass
"Fortune's Navigator" Compass
Inkblot Oracle
Luck Transfer Certificate
Eternal Life Coupon
Honorary Italian Grandmother E-card

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A Fine Line Between...
A Rose is a ...
Ampersands
Annotated Ellipses
Apropos of Nothing
Book of Whispers
Call it a Hunch
Colorful Allusions
Did You Hear the One I Just Made Up?
Do-Re-Midi
Don't Take This the Wrong Way
Forgotten Wisdom
Glued Snippets
Go Out in a Blaze of Glory
Hindpsych: Erstwhile Conjectures by the Sometime Augur of Yore
I Found a Penny Today, So Here's a Thought
Images Moving Through Time
Inflationary Lyrics
It's Really Happening
Last Dustbunny in the Netherlands
Neither Saint- Nor Sophist-Led
Not Rocket Science
Oldest Tricks in the Book
On One Condition
One Mitten Manager
P I n K S L i P
Peace Symbols to Color
Pfft!
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D-ictionary
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Letter Grids
Tic Tac Toe Story Generator
Which is Funnier
Restoring the Lost Sense
Rhetorical Questions, Answered!
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Semicolon's Dream Journal
Simple Answers
Someone Should Write a Book on ...
Something, Defined
Staring at the Sun
Staring Into the Depths
Strange Dreams
Suddenly, A Shot Rang Out
Telescopic Em Dashes
The 40 Most Meaningful Things
The Ghost In The [Scanning] Machine
The Only Certainty
The Right Word
This May Surprise You
Two Sides / Same Coin
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Your Ship Will Come In

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Abecedarian personal effects of 'a mad genius'
A Turkish Delight of musings on languages, deflations of metaphysics, vauntings of arcana, and great visual humor.
Today — January 28, 2012

Simple Answers (permalink)
An illustration from an 1882 issue of Frank Leslie's Popular Monthly magazine.


If this is not the answer you’re looking for,
click here for a different answer.
> read more from Simple Answers . . .


Restoring the Lost Sense (permalink)
An illustration from an 1869 issue of Harper's magazine.  The caption reads: "Heroic self-sacrifice."


[Inexplicable images from generations ago invite us to restore the lost sense of immediacy.  We follow the founder of the Theater of Spontaneity, Jacob Moreno, who proposed stringing together "now and then flashes" to unfetter illusion and let imagination run free.  The images we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.]
> read more from Restoring the Lost Sense . . .


Simple Answers (permalink)
Difficult Question? Here's a simple answer

"The answer is simple.  It begins with confidence.”

Kiplinger’s Personal Finance (Feb, 1950)

If this is not the answer you’re looking for,
click here for a different answer.
> read more from Simple Answers . . .


Is Today The Day? (permalink)
28
January 2012

“Today is the day to put it on.”

—Big Boom, How to Duck a Suckah, 2008

From the outrageous to the inspirational to the hilarious, here’s a daily reminder to break out of the old grind and do something unexpected, for the fun, the challenge, or the heck of it.

If today simply isn’t your day, click here to have a different day.


Music Box Moment (permalink)
Do you deserve a nostalgic breather?  Through the delicate workings of the music box, even the most dramatic compositions seem to play only for you.  You’ll hear even a very familiar piece in a whole new way.  Courtesy of home recording pioneer Ken Clinger, here’s today’s music box selection.  It will sound surprisingly good even through built-in computer speakers, and it will cut through the ambient noise of the office without being distracting.

Featured in Today’s Music Box:
String Quartet 1 movement #1 (Haydn)
performed by Ken Clinger

Today’s Color Palette: Diamond Anatomy (more info)
Diamond Anatomy is the name of the color palette featured today, created by Faded Jeans. The palette consists of the following colors:

• hex #F3E8ED — Frozen Silk
• hex #FDFDFF — Mosaic #2
• hex #EEEFF1 — Window Pane
• hex #D8E0E7 — Crystal Chronicles
• hex #E9F7F3 — Glass Eel

This scintillating color palette is in honor of my whimsical "Anatomy of the American Diamond" diagram.
> learn more about this palette at ColourLovers . . .


There’s a Signpost Up Ahead (permalink)
One's life path is marked by crossroads and signposts.  If you are confronted with making a choice today, perhaps the signpost displayed here will help to characterize your situation and guide you to make a decision.  If you need more guidance, refresh this page for another symbol.  If both signs are the same, perhaps any choice will lead to the same outcome.

The signs are inspired by a system of symbols entitled "Spiritual Diagnosis," developed by Dr. Robert McNary of Montana.  Dr. McNary actually creates nine-faceted mandala charts for people and interprets the symbols with uncanny accuracy.  Dr. McNary's web site is RockyMountainAstrologer.com.
> view a larger version of your signpost . . .
Yesterday — January 27, 2012

Restoring the Lost Sense (permalink)
An illustration from an 1895 issue of English Illustrated magazine.


[Inexplicable images from generations ago invite us to restore the lost sense of immediacy.  We follow the founder of the Theater of Spontaneity, Jacob Moreno, who proposed stringing together "now and then flashes" to unfetter illusion and let imagination run free.  The images we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.]
> read more from Restoring the Lost Sense . . .


Restoring the Lost Sense (permalink)
An illustration from a 1901 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine.  The caption reads: "Drawing a mystic half-circle on the floor."


[Inexplicable images from generations ago invite us to restore the lost sense of immediacy.  We follow the founder of the Theater of Spontaneity, Jacob Moreno, who proposed stringing together "now and then flashes" to unfetter illusion and let imagination run free.  The images we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.]
> read more from Restoring the Lost Sense . . .


Don't Take This the Wrong Way (permalink)
"Don't take this the wrong way, dude, but how do I know you're for real?"
—Mark A. Roeder, This Time Around
> read more from Don't Take This the Wrong Way . . .

January 26, 2012

Go Out in a Blaze of Glory (permalink)
We're beyond honored by the scintillating glories bestowed upon us for our discoveries of precursors to Disneyland's Haunted Mansion, by no less than an esteemed Doctor of Biblical Studies.  We'll diligently endeavor to live up to the praise, Doctor!  Meanwhile, be sure to lose yourself (as we have done countless times) in the doctor's delightful "Long-Forgotten" Haunted Mansion archives.
> read more from Go Out in a Blaze of Glory . . .


Restoring the Lost Sense (permalink)
An illustration from an 1895 issue of English Illustrated magazine.


[Inexplicable images from generations ago invite us to restore the lost sense of immediacy.  We follow the founder of the Theater of Spontaneity, Jacob Moreno, who proposed stringing together "now and then flashes" to unfetter illusion and let imagination run free.  The images we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.]
> read more from Restoring the Lost Sense . . .


Restoring the Lost Sense (permalink)
An illustration from an 1891 issue of The Strand magazine.  The caption reads: "Look!  Spiders' webs!"


[Inexplicable images from generations ago invite us to restore the lost sense of immediacy.  We follow the founder of the Theater of Spontaneity, Jacob Moreno, who proposed stringing together "now and then flashes" to unfetter illusion and let imagination run free.  The images we have collected for this series came at a tremendous price, which we explained previously.]
> read more from Restoring the Lost Sense . . .


The Right Word (permalink)
The Shakespeare Papers dedicated an entire issue to one-letter words, and here's one of the pages we contributed.


> read more from The Right Word . . .



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Original Content Copyright © 2012 by Craig Conley. All rights reserved.