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.
In the grand tradition of cannibalistic food mascots, here's a cranberry chef eating cranberry sauce. From Cranberries: The National Cranberry Magazine, 1951.
Why anthropomorphize a ham? Perhaps because "People don't like to think about where meat comes from" (Fabio Viviani, Fabio's Italian Kitchen). Yet the figure in this ad suggests cannibalism. Suddenly it all makes sense: "Human flesh tastes like pork" (Helen Tiffin, qtd. in Anatomies: A Cultural History of the Human Body).