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.
An angel in the seventh heaven is said to have a rooster's shape (as per Romans de Mahon), but which is it — a rectangle or a triangle? From A Little Journey Among Anconas by Cecil Sheppard, 1922.
Carrier pigeons get all the glory as postal carriers, but we learn here that "chicken mail" required a self-addressed, stamped envelope. From St. Nicholas magazine, 1900.
Here are two strange incarnations of tamed cockatrice-like animals, each partially equine. The first appears in a child's nightmare (Punch, 1865). The second is ridden by a knife-wielding adult in broad daylight (Punch, 1858).
"So perhaps the answer is simply to collect all the facts, and then make a judgement. But is it possible to collect all the facts? You cannot, after all, talk to the chickens." —For Business Ethics (2005)