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.
We applaud Jasper Fforde's The Eyre Affair (with its charming, time-bending solution to the true authorship of the Shakespeare plays) for the all-consonant St. Zvlkx, whose Thoughts Of is found in a motel drawer next to a Gideon Bible, the teachings of Buddha, and the complete works of the Bard (among other things).
Magicians (like Uri Geller) who perform spoon bending aren't necessarily religious, but they have a patron saint just the same. Here's the patron saint of magical cutlery, from The Saturday Evening Post, 1839.
"And make the puppy dance a jig, / When he began to quote Augustine." From Every-day Characters by Winthrop Mackworth Praed and illustrated by Cecil Charles Windsor, 1896.