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.
Of Drinking in Remembrance of the Dead by Peter Browne, 1713. See also this collection of 112 cocktail recipes to be drunk in remembrance of the dead: Of Drinking in Remembrance of the Dead.
(Is it an ironic pairing of a best-seller with a non-starter? Or is it a visual joke, like "Alpha[bet] and Omega?) We recall Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair (with its charming, time-bending solution to the true authorship of the Shakespeare plays) in which a motel drawer features a Gideon Bible, the teachings of Buddha, Thoughts Of St. Zvlkx, and the complete works of the Bard (among other things).
It's been said that avid readers always have books at their fingertips, but the real die-hards have books on their fingertips. Our champion on the other side of the world just snagged five of our publications. That one pictured at the bottom left is extraordinarily rare, and we frankly can't imaging how he got it: Armchair Time Travel: How to Alter History, Today. He also got The Care & Feeding of a Spirit Board, A Snowball's Chance in Hell, If a Chessman Were a Word: A Chess-Calvino Dictionary, and the little-known Six Degrees of Jubilation(a.k.a. Posted Chestnuts).