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.
"Painting, music, movies, sculpture, theater, everying—we can survive without it. You have to eat, or else you'll die. Food is the only obligatory emotion." —Michael Paterniti, Love and Other Ways of Dying
You've seen the three wise monkeys of "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" fame. Wise frogs, on the other hand, can hardly be bothered. From the Southern California Academy of Sciences Bulletin, 1975.
"Making idiots is one of the sea's favourite games. But when it tires of this from time to time, it casts up instead a supernatural being on an unwelcoming strand, who ever afterwards, spends his nights asleep at the bottom of some vast watery gulf." —Ithell Colquhoun, Goose of Hermogenes