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.
Dumped into the void by some sort of cosmic lawkeeper. Sounds about right. From The Lost Valley and Other Stories by Algernon Blackwood and illustrated by W. Graham Robertson, 1914.
We're honored that Vegas magician Creed talked up our Field Guide to Identifying Unicorns by Sound and our Magic Words: A Dictionary. We actually once attended a secret fire ceremony deep in the Nevada desert with Creed and, no kidding, we witnessed him reach out and seize one of the zillion stars in the Milky Way. (You sure can see a stunning number of stars from way beyond the lights of Vegas. Surely the Universe won't begrudge Creed's snatching one. It was a moment we'll never forget.)
This memorial would have been more poignant had the page actually been left blank and not filled with words. Then again, how is one to know when a page has been intentionally left blank? From George Washington's 1993 yearbook.