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.
Is it true, as Momus
suggests, that there are "few tales which would not be improved by the
addition of the phrase 'suddenly, a shot rang out'"? Decide for
yourself as we alter the opening lines of . . .
One-half of the semicolon appears to be illuminated by the reading lamp. The fraction of the semicolon's dot that is illuminated is increasing. The right half of the semicolon appears lighted and the left side appears dark and cryptic. During the time between the New Semicolon and the First Quarter Semicolon, the part of the semicolon that appears lighted gets larger and larger every day, like an island rising from the depths. It will continue to grow until the Full Semicolon.
We have a new item for the running joke about how water and other things spin clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere. In New Zealand, the rotary phones went from 9 to 0. (The illustration is from Peter Jackson's horror/splatstick film Dead Alive.) Our insightful friend Tamara notes that in both hemispheres the zero is fixed at the bottom of the dial. Aha! That's why we sometimes put a slash through the zero — it represents the equator, angled in honor of the Earth's axis!
Q: Who sports better painted-on features: Vertigo's Kim Novak or Groucho Marx? A: Groucho Marx ... though frankly Kim Novak looks more ridiculous.
P.S. May we humbly suggest that anyone who considers Hitchcock's Vertigo a masterpiece hasn't seen enough films to posit an opinion. Hey, don't shoot the messenger.
June writes:
Kim was in a terrible industrial accident involving black permanent markers. Groucho painted his on on purpose.