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 1977, George Burns played God in the film Oh, God! Here he is, apparently, five years later, though strangely smaller and transparent. From The Lighted Pathway, 1982.
As if reading our minds that the story of David and Goliath has nothing to do with athletics, the yearbook editor came up with a fairly decent explanation for the caption. From Florida Southern's 1933 yearbook.
This is the only peppermint Bible mentioned on the web, not including false hits for peppermint tea bags that come with Bible verses. From Together, 1970.
We're more a prisoner of "didsts," but we hope that won't make you leavest. The headline reads, "Help! I'm a prisoner of the wasts and dosts." From Together, 1967.
This is the most chaste Eve we've encountered not wearing a fig leaf. Meanwhile, Adam's fig leaf skirt is rather rare in the Eden fashion line. From Nebelspalter, 1905.
Surprisingly, this page from a religious college's yearbook revises the Bible, changing "through a glass, darkly" (1 Corinthians 13) to "brightly," a revision used by anti-religionists. (There's even a book with this revision as its title: Through a Glass Brightly: Using Science to See Our Species as We Really Are.) Unable to control themselves, the yearbook editors ran with the revisionism and brought coffee into it: "Through a glass warmly." From Mount Olive's 1963 yearbook.