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.
"The way you can tell a fine pendulum is by the reflections of the lights. Do you see the lights? And do you see the colors? All the colors of the spectrum. Can you see the center? The exact center—do you see it? Keep trying. Look at the colors. See how they move. Watch them—they’re brilliant colors. They flash by. Try to find the center. Can you hear anything? The chiming of the hours?"
Yes, the mesmeric words are based on Dr. Julia Hoffman's hypnotic technique in Dark Shadows. We're looking the other way so as not to hypnotize ourselves.
The pendulum, with its reflective sphere in the middle, is from a haunted grandfather clock we are restoring.