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.
You may recall that our very own Minimalist Coloring Book (2007) contains 89 images of white things, printed on white paper, inviting one to either fill in these images with a white crayon or let go of the crayon and practice the Taoist concept of wu-wei (actionless action). Nine years later, hilarious cartoonist Oslo Davis offers an empty ice cube tray to color, part of This Annoying Life, A Mindless Coloring Book for the Highly Stressed (2016).