There will be Boobies! Keep reading...

Here's a word to web people trying to sell to the kids.

Lay off the emoticons.

I'll admit to using smilely faces often enough. :) Occasionally I'll use a winky face - ;). And I do think that some of the things people do with the letters are imaginative, like this one which is supposed to mean, 'I am the Walrus" (:3=

Here's my point - there's no need for you to program in all kinds of functions and graphics which stand in for something someone can just type. And there's also need need for you to transform what I type to whatever you think it is. When I use a smiley face, I want it to stay as text - I don't want it to turn into something that could turn up in the next Forest Gump movie.

I can't tell you the sinking feeling I get when the smiley face I just typed starts to come alive, slowly twisting its head sideways like some mutating alien that has taken over my cat. It turns yellow, grows a head, and becomes some otherwordly thing - taunting me from the place I had used to actually type something meaningful. I didn't ask it to that. And it certainly didn't ask me.

And then there's those flashing banners which promise millions of 'em, available for download! Yay! People will finally be able to tell when I'm being sarcastic!

Just stop it. Yes, I know some people use them. But we don't go hanging 'paint by numbers' canvases in museums, do we?

If people don't have a list of predetermined emotions to choose from, maybe then it might be one small step towards people actually having to think for themselves. You may have noticed that there's no standard, yellow smiley face emoticon for "The consumer capitalist corporate system is stealing my soul."

Don't let 'em tell you how to feel.

And now, as a reward to my long time readers, I present you with some boobies. Enjoy the boobies!



(.)(.)


Nice, huh? ;)