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.
Preannouncement: A sound designer from the Danish video game developer IO Interactive asked us for a Neons Gone Mad cover of a song from PlayStation's Dissidia Final Fantasy, for an album of Square Enix video game franchises music. Along the way, we anagrammed every phrase of the original lyrics so as to decode a second song hidden within. Here's a peek at the result.
All-too-rare to see lobsters fighting eagles, yet it's all part of nature's pageantry. Which would you wager to win? From Sporting Yarns by Andrew Haggard and illustrated by Griff, 1903.