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.
There aren't very many imaginary organ-griders in the literature. The caption here reads, "Do you not perceive an Italian organ-grinder over there?" (English Illustrated, 1900). In 1886, "Tom went to the window, called out to an imaginary organ grinder, pitched a copper, and ordered him to be off with his hideous music" (John Robertson, One of the People). In 2007, one Harrison Forbes blogged about traveling with an imaginary organ grinder's monkey named Ivan.
The General Dynamics 1964 Mercury Program and time capsule (to be opened in year 2464). Here's the artist's rendering and the monument being fashioned.
Here's an encounter with Bibendum, the Michelin Man, whom William Gibson has described as a stomach-churningly creepy, "weird, jaded, cigar-smoking elder creature suggesting a mummy with elephantiasis ... the rolls of his pallid, rubbery flesh like the folds of a partially deflated blimp, greasy and vile" (Pattern Recognition). From The Saturday Evening Post, 1920.