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.
"How on earth can you expect a fellow to do a picture, when this sort of thing goes on?" A sketch from Charles Rawson's diary, 25 August, 1871. Courtesy of the State Library of Queensland.
Here's an ad that actually promotes Stendhal Syndrome, a psychosomatic disorder in which you hallucinate that an artwork is speaking to you. The sketch says, "Draw me!" From Popular Mechanics, 1934.
Indeed, a magazine highly skeptical of mysticism and the occult encourages using shadows to trace grotesque, horned entities. From Popular Mechanics, 1928.
"Reflections of heavenly bodies are the same distance below the horizon as the originals are abovee [sic]," from Drawing for Beginners by Dorothy Furniss, 1920.