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.
Q: "Paris is beautiful, is it not?" —Kings in Exile by Alphonse Daudet, 1889.
A: Not. (Sorry, Paris. You have great P.R., though! It's just that there's a name for how visitors get violently ill when they visit you, "Paris Syndrome," triggered by the extreme shock over how awful you are.)
Here's a precursor to "Paris Syndrome," the psychological trauma triggered by that city. The syndrome was first named in 1986, but of course it's nothing new, and this depiction of it in Lustige Blätter goes all the way back to 1900.
Here's a precursor to Paris Syndrome (first diagnosed in 1986), in which the filth and rudeness of that city puts romanticist tourists into a state of extreme shock (including anxiety, dizziness, tachycardia, vomiting, and hallucinations). "So this is Paris!" From Medical Pickwick, 1922.