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.
An illustration from an 1897 issue of The Idler magazine. The caption reads: "From An Ultimate Dim Thule. (A Record of Dreams.) By S.H. Sime. 'I sat on the back of the Oonrouff-Wuff: he paused: sadness overcame him as he gazed fixedly into the fourth dimension and his tears dropped into the abyss. Then another Brain-cell broke, and something else became me.'"