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 it spans two pages, one might say this is a cracked hall of mirrors. It brings back nightmares from that time we, too, were trapped within a shattered hall of mirrors.
The world beyond the looking glass: "I feel that this is right for me; I know that this is wrong." From Boston College's 1998 yearbook, indexed as being published in 1913 over at Archive.org, thus proving that the book bends time.
You might have instantly seen the weirdness here -- the earth in the mirror isn't reversed, meaning that she's looking at a parallel world in which everything is flipped. From Rockford's 1914 yearbook.
We analyzed this photo with our custom Uncanny Detector app, and though the figure in the mirror is not a ghost, she is eerily not a reflection, either. In other words, she wasn't in the room opposite the looking glass. From Peace College's 1970 yearbook.
Can it be true, as the caption states, that "We all live in a women's dorm?" We subjected this statement to our usual battery of stringent tests, and it turns out that yes, in a way, we all really do live in a women's dorm. From UNC Chapel Hill's 1970 yearbook.
"Mirror's magic reflects moods, many meanings." Of course this is continued from page 2, because a mirror has two faces. From The Rotunda newspaper of Longwood College, 1961.
It's all too rare to see a student's mirror-world double appear in a yearbook. It's even rarer for the student and his mirror-world double to be up a tree (not to mention wearing matching capes). Due to the marvelous light flare, we'll never know what one of his faces looked like. From Guilford's 1976 yearbook.
When our new hall of mirrors was delivered, there were cracks … and we had to either process a return or face a shattered infinity. We chose the latter … but weren't prepared for what it actually entailed.
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Ken responds: "The mirror is cracked in an amazingly artistic way! Radiating heavenward, with occasional communication between the rays. Fortunately it wasn't right in the middle, which would have been "conveniently conventional", but not so far to the side, as to not draw attention to itself. Much more interesting and unique than if it had never been cracked. The video made my head swim, but I got a warm feeling from it."
