A Modest Proposal

In today's era of modern communication, there are many ways for people to communicate (big news, I know). Email, cell phones, text messaging. Most of them are fine. But there is one kind of communication that has a severly gaping hole in it, and lucky for all of you, I have a solution. That's right folks, I'm taking a swing at those annoying little yellow smileys that we call emoticons.

I have a love hate relationship with emoticons. They're sort of that visual cue that fills in for the lack of vocal inflection and body language that IM doesn't give you. I wouldn't really care about all that if it weren't for the fact that sometimes, you have to use them (ever wonder why Shakespeare is kinda boring to read but fun to watch? That's right, no emoticons). As I see it, emoticons must have been designed by 14 year old girls. They just exude a vibe of lip-gloss and glitter, and therefore, they aren't really all that suited to expressing male emotions.

So, now on to the solution. People have gotten pretty creative with emoticons. I can't count the times that I have needed an emoticon for:

Abraham Lincoln: =):-)=
The Pope: +O:-)
or Elvis : ~:-\

What we really need are emoticons like this:

Manly grunt: :|
Connery Laugh: `:-\|
or Magnum: >:-+

Now, these are only a sampling of what may come. Given the huge range of emotions that most males express, there could literally be thousands - nay, millions of manly emoticons. The only last suggestion that I would give is to eliminate some of the stupid emoticons that seems to crop up (especially in the MSN set) like dog face, cat face, and and wilted rose. I say we replace them with stuff like this or this. I think that would get the message across.