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.
As reviewer George Struijker Boudier notes, "I'm a nut for off beat playfulness that balances between nonsense and seriousness. This book (as well as most book by Prof. Oddfellow) does just that. Obviously the 'One's elf/Oneself' is the running theme here. I can see how you can look at it as lame wordplay. To me it isn't. Something weird happens if you place your personality traits, ego and whatnot in the elf of your choice. One separates one's elf from oneself. Distancing yourself from yourself is always a good way to see bigger pictures and wonder about why you're behaving the way you're behaving. It opens up new possibilities and ideas." See How to Believe in Your Elf.
Here's a tip from The Care and Feeding of a Spirit Boardon how a clockwork spring placed upon a ouija board's "Farewell" will ring in the so-called fullness of time. (You heard it here first, folks.) The caption reads, "The talking board’s 'Farewell' implies its opposite: a welcoming. It bids farewell to darkness, doubts, wants, and fears, even as it welcomes light, assurance, fullness, and safety. Placing a clockwork spring at 'Farewell' formally rings in the hour, a so-called fullness of time in which we know not parting from reunion." The reconstructed text at the top reads, "The hands stretch thitherward, and the password is not 'Farewell' but 'Welcome the hour.'"
Here's a more formal way of writing the letter D. As B.J. says on Yelp, "There's no pomp anymore." Our fancy D appears in Dickinson's Hand Book of Farm Seeds, 1916.