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 the record which the pupil makes, there may be a great future. That, at least, is what 'teacher' says. But no one ever finds it." From Talking Screen, 1930.
As if something out of a Philip K. Dick novel, this magazine (and others of its ilk) promised all sorts of inventions that never moved past the patent stage and into the general public's actual life; rather, these promises of high-tech utopia merely lulled the populace into getting through another drab day as slaves of the Powers that Be, with that elusive carrot of a better tomorrow always just around the corner. From Illustrated World, 1922.
That's how my folks were as I was growing up -- if I indicated that I had something important to say, they encouraged me to put it on a record. Alas, my vast record collection was destroyed by Hurrican Matthew, and now I hardly know what I think. From Time and Tigers by D. R. Amato.