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.
When a reviewer took the presumptuous liberty of identifying our one-of-a-kind book on Astragalomancy as our own "feet of clay," we recalled that "Clown stilts have feet of sand to make walking easy." From Popular Mechanics, 1925.
Well, of course learned doctors of The Medical Standard sought to perform an autopsy on a Ouija board, to literally get an inside scoop. But more fools they, as there is no "inside" to a Ouija board. They found nothing and celebrated their own genius. Sad. From 1921. See The Care & Feeding of a Spirit Board.
You've heard of having nothing else to do, but did you know you can have it and see it, too? And/or, you've heard of "division by zero," but did you know nothing could be thirded? Nothing Else To Do by Morris MacDonald Townley, 1916.
You may already know that a "ha-ha" is a ditch with a wall on its inner side below ground level, forming a boundary to a garden without interrupting the view. From Popular Mechanics, 1926.