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.
Printed collections of Forgotten Wisdom diagrams are available: Volume I from Lulu and Volumes II, III and IV from Amazon. Selected posters are also available via Zazzle.
I saw a picture of a balloon suddenly and unexpectedly soaring and some people still holding onto the ropes connected to the balloon were suddenly jerked into the air and most of them didn't have the survival IQ to let go in time. Seconds later they are sixty, a hundred feet off the ground. Those who didn't let go fell off at five hundred or a thousand feet. A basic survival lesson is: Learn to let go. ...
Suppose you were holding one of those ropes? Would you have let go in time. which is, of course, at the first upward yank? I'll tell you something interesting. You would have a much better chance to let go in time now that you have read this paragraph than if you hadn't read it. Writing, if anything, is a word of warning.
"'Frankly, this is not cojones, this is cowardice,' she exclaimed — a line that outraged straitlaced diplomats." —Thomas Lippman, Madeleine Albright and the New American Diplomacy
A printed collection of A Fine Line Between... is now available from Amazon.com.
Printed collections of Forgotten Wisdom diagrams are available: Volume I from Lulu and Volumes II, III and IV from Amazon. Selected posters are also available via Zazzle.
* A manual for typographers published in 1917 acknowledged that there are many beautiful forms of the ampersand, yet it forbade their use in "ordinary book work." Extraordinary books are another matter. Our lavishly illustrated Ampersand opus explores the history and pictography of the most common coordinating conjunction.
Clue: This is according to an expert on Chinese history
Answer:Russians. The Germans are “less humorous than the Russians, less witty than the French.” (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)
Citation: Edward Harper Parker, China, Past and Present (1903), p. 323.
* Ellipses don’t merely omit superfluous words or mark pauses. Far from
it! In an astonishing number of cases, the ellipses illustrate a
narrative, inviting the reader to “connect the dots.” Learn more about Annotated Ellipses at Amazon.com.
I had a dream recently where I looked out of the window, and saw there were six moons, each at different phases of the moon's cycle. As I gaze up at the night sky, I see the stars stretching across it, and then bursts of colour, like celestial fireworks. I wonder how I've never seen this before, and feel filled with wonder at the world.
This reminded me of the dream that I had probably last week or so. I saw that I was on the highest building in the world and I didn't know what the time was ... evening or early morning ... it was still dark with tinge of blue ... and I saw the world round ... clouds enveloped the whole world ... and suddenly the moon in the sky fell down ... it was something that scared me a lot.
If you have a strange dream to share, send it along!
"If there's a problem, fill out complaint form and place it in an envelope addressed to the name of the hospital in which you were born." —Franz Kafka International, Prague's "most alienating airport"
—Christina Rossetti, ‘What Is Pink? A Rose Is Pink,’ 1872; quoted by Bruce R. Smith in The Key of Green, 2009.
* Though printed in black and white, great literature is bursting with vibrant colour. In this rebus-style puzzle, color words and parts of words have been replaced with colored boxes. Try to guess the exact hue of each. Roll your mouse over the colored boxes to reveal the missing words. Click the colored boxes to learn more about each hue. Special thanks to Paul Dean for his colorful research.
Printed collections of Forgotten Wisdom diagrams are available: Volume I from Lulu and Volumes II, III and IV from Amazon. Selected posters are also available via Zazzle.
How perfectly appropriate in Light of the evening's conversation regarding lightning, and the need for protection against the Brigand that is electrical Charge.
Clearly, you are illuminated!
Printed collections of Forgotten Wisdom diagrams are available: Volume I from Lulu and Volumes II, III and IV from Amazon. Selected posters are also available via Zazzle.
Thecolourofhercostumeschangefromwhiteinthecarefreebeginning,togreywhentheforcesoftragedygathermomentum,untilatlastsableblackwithallitsdarkmeaningappears.First,inanall-blackvelvetdressandlargeblackhatthatshewearsforherjourneytothecountry.Then,whenitseemsthatsheistobehappy,whiteagainincannilypicturesquelawndresseswithonlyablackcloaktoremindyouherfateissealed;blackagainafterherrenunciation—shimmeringblacknetwithsequins,butblack.Forherdeath,sothatyouarenottoomiserableandmayfindsolaceinsomething,awhitegown,ecclesiasticalinfeelingwithitsmonk’scowl,sendingyoutoreligion,theretotakecouragetobearit. —Cecilia Ager, Camille, 1937. From American Movie Critics: An Anthology From the Silents Until Now, edited by Phillip Lopate, 2006.
* Though printed in black and white, great literature is bursting with vibrant colour. In this rebus-style puzzle, color words and parts of words have been replaced with colored boxes. Try to guess the exact hue of each. Roll your mouse over the colored boxes to reveal the missing words. Click the colored boxes to learn more about each hue. Special thanks to Paul Dean for his colorful research.
* A manual for typographers published in 1917 acknowledged that there are many beautiful forms of the ampersand, yet it forbade their use in "ordinary book work." Extraordinary books are another matter. Our lavishly illustrated Ampersand opus explores the history and pictography of the most common coordinating conjunction.
Which is funnier: Tom and Jerry cartoons or ambassadors trying to out-dance and out-gobble one another at parties and conferences?
Clue: This is according to an author of speculative fiction
Answer:Ambassadors trying to out-dance and out-gobble one another at parties and conferences. (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)
Citation: Emerald, Revolution, the Greatest (2006), p. 463
"The One God can wait. The One God is TIME. And in Time, any being that is spontaneous and alive will wither and die like an old joke. And what makes an old joke old and dead? Verbal repetition." —William Burroughs, The Western Lands
Printed collections of Forgotten Wisdom diagrams are available: Volume I from Lulu and Volumes II, III and IV from Amazon. Selected posters are also available via Zazzle.
Printed collections of Forgotten Wisdom diagrams are available: Volume I from Lulu and Volumes II, III and IV from Amazon. Selected posters are also available via Zazzle.
* Ellipses don’t merely omit superfluous words or mark pauses. Far from
it! In an astonishing number of cases, the ellipses illustrate a
narrative, inviting the reader to “connect the dots.” Learn more about Annotated Ellipses at Amazon.com.
Printed collections of Forgotten Wisdom diagrams are available: Volume I from Lulu and Volumes II, III and IV from Amazon. Selected posters are also available via Zazzle.
"When a new mode of imagining erupts into literature, it dislocates the rhetoric of its time, and is of subtler stuff than that rhetoric—'the infinite arrives barefoot on this earth,' says Hans Arp." —Christopher Middleton's introduction to Jakob Von Guten by Robert Walser
I love the Hans Arp quote. Or was it Jean Arp? It must be hard to live in Alsace-Lorraine where one never knows one's true name or nationality.
Binary human beings should make a comeback.
I'm fairly certain one of my favorite poetry presses in America, Burning Deck, published Mr. Middleton's own poetry, as well as some of his translations. Unfortunately, I don't own those books, though I probably own a hundred other titles from that awesome press run by legends Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop.
I think it's cool to see you zero degrees of separation away from them with this post, Craig!
Loves it. I've loved Simple Minds since a wee lad, and used to drive to distant towns to get imports. Imagine how different life was in the 1980s. Just unfathomable to think now. No ABE.com to find that rara avis book in fifteen minutes; we would have had to roam to the ends of the earth to find it, and poked our head in every tiny bookshop (and good look with the hours!) No illegal downloads of every song ever recorded. Go find a record ship that stocks imports or can order it for you. Wait a few weeks then drive a hundred miles. I think I can now officially be Grumpy Old Man who (Dana Carvey's character) talking about walking miles through the snow to get to school and having to eat my own arm to sustain myself on the journey.
Sparkle in the Rain was my favorite. Just gorgeous mastering, that record. But I love the earlier, avanty stuff too. Empires and Dance is an awesome album. Singles like "Changeling" have incredible quantum shifts in them!
I think they gave more than the name to my favorite band of all time, the Cocteau Twins. How can Robin Guthrie's shimmering and chiming guitar not be somewhat influenced by how Simple Minds turned the guitar into a decadent instrument.
They achieved such a "large" sound on Sparkle in the Rain, grand without slipping into the grandiose ever.
There, I've "blown your comment box all up" as the kiddies say.
Comments are supposed to be one or two sentences.
The decaying corpse of Miss Manners will surely be after me tonight like a bad Raimi flick.
Printed collections of Forgotten Wisdom diagrams are available: Volume I from Lulu and Volumes II, III and IV from Amazon. Selected posters are also available via Zazzle.
The poet W. B. Keckler, of Sanskrit of the Body fame, called us a "logolater" (an idolizer of words), noting that logolaters "are the unicorns of the linguistic kingdom." Keckler is qualified to make such a statement, as "poetry invented the unicorn, the centaur, and the phoenix. / Hence it is true that poetry is an everlasting Ark" (Delmore Schwartz, "The Kingdom of Poetry").
My Dear Oddfellow, I collect Tamagotchi. Nobody wants them anymore and they thrive in thrift stores like your century flower. Especially the stuffed ones. Many of them are uncircumcized and can be worked in and out of a pouch they zipper down into. Their necks are Tamagotchi prepuces. They are known for their dearth of facial features which may be, alas, the future.
Now I will believe there are unicorns.
They lay their heads upon the laps of virgins.
Why are there no unicorns near me?
"They flee from me that sometime did me seek..."
Poets invented the unicorn, the centaur and the phoenix because they are the unicorn, the centaur and the phoenix.
* A manual for typographers published in 1917 acknowledged that there are many beautiful forms of the ampersand, yet it forbade their use in "ordinary book work." Extraordinary books are another matter. Our lavishly illustrated Ampersand opus explores the history and pictography of the most common coordinating conjunction.
Printed collections of Forgotten Wisdom diagrams are available: Volume I from Lulu and Volumes II, III and IV from Amazon. Selected posters are also available via Zazzle.
Printed collections of Forgotten Wisdom diagrams are available: Volume I from Lulu and Volumes II, III and IV from Amazon. Selected posters are also available via Zazzle.
* Ellipses don’t merely omit superfluous words or mark pauses. Far from
it! In an astonishing number of cases, the ellipses illustrate a
narrative, inviting the reader to “connect the dots.” Learn more about Annotated Ellipses at Amazon.com.
* A manual for typographers published in 1917 acknowledged that there are many beautiful forms of the ampersand, yet it forbade their use in "ordinary book work." Extraordinary books are another matter. Our lavishly illustrated Ampersand opus explores the history and pictography of the most common coordinating conjunction.
* A manual for typographers published in 1917 acknowledged that there are many beautiful forms of the ampersand, yet it forbade their use in "ordinary book work." Extraordinary books are another matter. Our lavishly illustrated Ampersand opus explores the history and pictography of the most common coordinating conjunction.
"All the poor alphabets by which one human being believes at certain moments that he is reading another human being." —Italo Calvino, If On a Winter's Night a Traveler (Highly recommended, by the way!)
Athanasius Kircher invented the "polydyptic theater," "in which about sixty little mirrors lining the inside of a large box transform a bough into a forest, a lead soldier into an army, a booklet into a library" (Italo Calvino, If On a Winter's Night a Traveler).
What is funnier than a sudden outspoken declaration of the truth?
Clue: This is according to scholar Northrop Frye.
Answer:Nothing. “In our world, there is the proverb ‘children and fools tell the truth,’ and the Fool’s privilege makes him a wit because in our world nothing is funnier than a sudden outspoken declaration of the truth.” (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)
Citation: Northrop Frye, Northrop Frye on Shakespeare (1986), p. 111.
Printed collections of Forgotten Wisdom diagrams are available: Volume I from Lulu and Volumes II, III and IV from Amazon. Selected posters are also available via Zazzle.
"There ought to be a book dealing with the kinds of questions that come from the unique and often magical perspective of children." —E. B. Freedman, What Does Being Jewish Mean?, 2003, p. xviii.
"The point is this: not that myth refers us back to some original event which has been fancifully transcribed as it passed through the collective memory; but that it refers us forward to something that will happen, that must happen. Myth will become reality, however skeptical we might be." —Julian Barnes, A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters
* Though printed in black and white, great literature is bursting with vibrant colour. In this rebus-style puzzle, color words and parts of words have been replaced with colored boxes. Try to guess the exact hue of each. Roll your mouse over the colored boxes to reveal the missing words. Click the colored boxes to learn more about each hue. Special thanks to Paul Dean for his colorful research.
Our friends at Musings from a Muddy Island found a "dangerous bank" sign in a marshland. Wasn't it Mother Nature who said "don't put all your eggs in one basket"?
![The Ghost in the [Scanning] Machine](/weblog/images/covers/ghost-scanning-machine.png)
This puzzle grid asks, "Is there life on marshmallows?" The grid contains several big words. Can you find them?
by 
