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, a “monk for the modern age” by George Parker, 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.
From the mind of literary scalawag Jonathan Caws-Elwitt comes a spoof of slow-moving Gothic soap operas of the 1970s: it's Grave Mood Rings. Here's the debut of this weird intersection in the universe of Prof. Oddfellow's Penetralia.
A black magick incantation from Dark Shadows episode 762. "I call upon the flame to summon you. I call upon the raven and the bat and all the dark creatures of nature, upon the charred and blackened clouds that reigned at your beginning."
Gaze in a mirror on Christmas eve at midnight so as to predict the events of the coming year. From The Gates of the Future Thrown Open by Carlotta de Barsy, 1899.