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.
"The Satanic trinity: the Dragon (the 'Anti-God'), the Beast (the 'Anti-Christ'), and the False Prophet (the 'Anti-Spirit'). From Rightly Dividing the Word by Clarence Larkin, 1921.
It had been three years since we last donned our Third Eye sunglasses during a full moon to scout for fireballs in the night sky. In the first photo, the strange triangle of blue lights is the moon reflecting on the sunglasses lenses. The second photo is from 2017.
You've heard of the multinational conglomerate 3M, but what does it stand for? Monsters, Myths and Mermaids? Men, Martians and Machines? Mildew, Mudpies and Miracles? Weirdly, it's none of those things! 3M says it stands for honesty and integrity. Rather cheeky, though, not to have a single M word in their "What we stand for" section. One recalls the classic moment in The IT Crowd when Jen Barber can't say what I.T. stands for:
June: What does I.T. stand for?
Jen Barber: What does it stand for? What doesn't it stand for?
June: Yes, yes, but what does it stand for?
Jen: It stands for, it stands for commitment. It stands for audacity. It stands for courage in the face of...
What a mentality, to associate a graduation with book burning. We associate graduations with added shelves to one's library. Perhaps we shouldn't have attiributed a "mentality" to this illustration -- it seems more the product of anti-intellectual imbecility. From Hyde Park's 1895 yearbook.