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.
"Making a book creates a midnight in which synaptic lightning illuminates our skull’s planetarium. It lets us peek into how we think we might work. . . .
"A book is a delivery system for a hallucinogen you ingest though the eyes and digest in the mind. A book allows one imagination to taste the inside of another.”
Which windy phenomenon is funnier: a hat blowing off or an umbrella turning inside out?
Clue: This is according to Fordham University’s Thought magazine
Answer:an umbrella. “An umbrella turning inside out is funnier than a hat blowing off because an umbrella is made to be opened, to change its shape when its owner wills.” (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)
Citation: Fordham University, Thought (Spring 1952), p. 59
We popularly say that ASAP is an acronym meaning "as soon as possible." But ASAP comes to us from the Greek storyteller ÆSAP, whose brief fables can be read on the quick.
The blogger at Grammar Tales recently encountered our One-Letter Words: A Dictionary at the University of Toronto library: "My first thought was that this must be a very short book."
"Somebody should write a book on 'Debunking the Debunkers,' somebody, that is, aside from the Freudians." —Ralph Tyler Flewelling, The Personalist, 1947, p. 435.
True or False: Vegetables are “as funny now as they have ever been, especially leeks”?
Clue: This is according to comic writer Terry Pratchett
Answer:False. Vegetables are “not as funny as they used so be, especially leeks.” (The answer is in black text on the black background. Highlight it to view.)
Citation: Terry Pratchett, The Truth (2001), p. 106.