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.
At first glance, we thought he was preaching to large red deer, not to the grand lodge of a fraternal organization. From the Duluth Evening Herald, 1906.
What the elk? Ten whole years ago, London recording artist Fear of Tigers asked for permission to create an audio version of our popular Field Guide to Identifying Unicorns by Sound. Equipped with carte blanche contracts and hundreds of sound bites, Fear of Tigers led us down the garden path for an entire decade, only suddenly to release an album with a different horned animal on the cover. Again, we ask, "What the elk?" Perhaps, knowing that we uncovered the secrets to How to Be Your Own Cat, Fear of Tigers literally did fear us transforming into one. Luckily, we're not at all bitter, because in the meantime we were blessed with two spectacular soundtracks of our book by even more accomplished bands: one by the remarkable Cuddlebot and one by the extraordinary Wolfgun. It all goes to prove that artists with integrity are not quite as elusive as the legendary unicorn, after all.
The problem with meteorology exposed: weather satellites are set to receive elk transmissions. Image scanned by the San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive.