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.
Boatswain: "What did you think of Cap'n Ahab's account of his quest for the Great White Whale?" Swabbie: "I'd've followed it better had he told it in chromonautical* order."
*Thanks to Codename Gimmick for coining this word and inspiring the pun.
Museum goer studying map with docent: "I've been through Impressionism, Expressionism, Deco, Nouveau, Bauhaus, Rococo, Byzantine, Renaissance, Cubism, Gothic, Minimalism, Greek, and Neo-Plasticism. But where do you house the Timeless art?"
The other day someone laughed when I nonchalantly described a miniature trellis as being ten clipboards high. I responded that, as a writer, it's only natural for me to define space in 8 1/2 x 11 inch units (though to use longer units would certainly be legal)!
A chair spiral by Tom Matthews. See full-sized version here.
The philosophy department at my university was so small it didn't have a chair. Of course, the department did have the Platonic ideal of a chair.
By the way, here's a picture of someone sitting on one of Plato's chairs. This blue chenille chair came up in my search for Plato's chair, but I doubt its authenticity.
Did you hear that Hollywood is doing another one of those movie mashups, like Alien vs. Predator? This time they're sending Indiana Jones into Flatland. Indy's going to be in search of "the arc of the covalent."