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.
One of these ladies is wearing an imposter designer label. (Insert your own "fake news" joke. Having earned a degree in journalism, we bemoan the current degradation of the media. Granted, the press has never in history truly been free; it has always been a propaganda engine, but traditionally there was at least a pretense of objectivity. As La Rochefoucauld famously said, "hypocrisy is a tribute vice pays to virtue." Now it's bare-faced bias. Disgusting!) From Lustige Blätter, 1917.
Perhaps Archie McPhee might revive this classic trend: gargoyle tongues and shaggy mustaches as anklets. From Encyclopédie Méthodique, Recueil d'Antiquités, Deuxième Partie, 1804. Courtesy of La Biblioteca Universitaria de Sevilla.