The Emotiku, or “I’m a grouchy old man”

Inspired to greater things by this article in the Guardian, I put aside my metaphorical cloth curmudgeon’s cap, and donned my inventor’s chapeau (with built-in lightbulb, Red Bull cans and straw).

No longer would I impotently rage against punktuation, I would fashion a solution. Albeit to only a small part of the problem. The fate of the apost’ates will wait another day.

I loathe emoticons. They’re both trite and a tacit admission that I’m unable to communicate properly through the text itself.

Which is sometimes true, as email inhabits a strange twilight realm between spoken conversation and the written word. But it irks me, nonetheless.

Sometimes roadsigns are needed to help others navigate through my frequently rambling conversations and to convey things that tone or expression would in speech.

Unwilling to debase myself or sully my prose with the odd ; > or ): ( I was left with little choice but to forge a better, more elegant signifier, built from the ground up, solely for use on the internet.

To whit – the emotiku -

{Winking icon hides

Undying hatred for you

“Just kidding, ROFL”}

* * * *

{To profess love scares
Yet comedy masks intent
“Go together? LOL”}

* * * *

{Scholarly debate
Quickly degenerated
“U R like Hitler”}

* * * *

{Scatter now e-friends!
Deadlines approach, sleek, deadly
(I can haz more posts?)}

* * * *

{Frustration vexes
Pester me not with unjokes
Begone e-dullards}

* * * *

{Winking face online

May signify many things,

Clarifies nothing}

* * * *

{Your ideas bore me

Stop this incessant prattling

No really. Stop it}