Emoticons: enhancing your conversations... whether you like it or not!

An extremely well-referenced and highly reliable spam mail reads, 'It takes 17 muscles to smile and 43 to frown, so smile more you lazy-ass douchebag[1]'. I disagree, for they both require 2 keystrokes. Also, pardon my rephrasing ;)

You may not have realized it but emoticons are taking over the world :O, one chat-window at a time. Try to recollect the last time you engaged in a chat conversation without a yellow furball displaying perfect teeth or pouting like this handsome young gentleman. Never, right! It's like, OMG, I use it, like, all the time and you know, never realized it, like OMG!

Not unlike super-villain Agent Smith, they have found their way into e-mails and even handwritten letters. I know what you are thinking... but they are restricted to casual conversations, right? Wrong! I have seen official e-mails with emoticons. Even my boss appends a smiley to my task-list.

The day is not far when they will spread to face-to-face conversations as well. Soon, you will say something sad and shove the appropriate emoticon into others' faces. What a lovely conversation that will be!

However, to be fair, they do enliven the conversation. How many people do you know in real life, who smile, frown, drool, express shock or anger as expressively and as evocatively as the cute little limbless, gutless, ear-less, gravity-defying, jaundice-infected, tireless, regularly-flossing, nude and mostly gender-neutral balls of joy. They have the versatility of Christian Bale's paunch [2]. I recently noticed that WhatsApp's emoticons have a larger emotional range than me!

Emoticons are racist too... (clue: yellow)

But the real problem mostly is that it's next to impossible not to use them. It is as though there's an invisible hand guiding my index finger to the correct keys. Sometimes, I am not even aware of it. Then come the typos. Typing 'distaster' instead of  'disaster' is excusable, but :) in place of ;) could actually spell disaster.. (big round of applause to those who got the joke immediately!)


Want further proof? You love minions don't you!

[1] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=douchebag
[2] http://media.digititles.com/title-gallery/70e847739104d5d98d1c25e6de0c74d9/medium/christian-bale-body-transformation.jpg

I have a dream!

Ladies and Gentlemen,

A certain revered gentlemen, sometime in the 1960's proclaimed to the world his dream. He had big dreams and his pronouncement received critical acclaim, to say the least.

I am, but a simple man, but I have sufficiently-large-sized dreams as well. And since dreams don't cost, at least not until someone figures out a way to monetize them and our dreams are interrupted by requests from 'Cute White Asian girls in Finland' and whatever other ads facebook deems tempting to girls, we can dream to our heart's content.

Here's mine! Rather, here are mine. I try not to be too wishful.

I have a dream...

I dream of a world where clothes don't go out of fashion and laundry does itself;

where alcohol is acclaimed for it medicinal values;

where a human life is equally precious, regardless of nationality;

where great power comes without much responsibility and Tobey McGuire is not Spiderman! (this one's true already! hurray!)

where Anonymous gets credit for all his/her work;

where addiction to 'House' and facebook are treatable afflictions;

where code debugs itself and smart phones are intelligent too;

where there was no Batman movie before the Dark Knight trilogy and Ben Afleck is given a fair chance to screw up;

where judging people gives you an instant migraine;

where the grass is green and the girls are pretty (you didn't think I'd miss this one, did you?)

where food doesn't go bad and you remember what's in your fridge;

where all of Elon Musk's dreams come true;

where IKEA furniture assembles itself;

where traveling and living in a different part of the world are valued for what they really are - an education;

where men understand women's words for what they really mean; (or maybe this is asking for too much)

where you're always right in time for the bus/train/plane, unless you've got dynamite attached to you;

where people chase happiness and not money, smile and be kind for its own sake;

where religion is not confused with morality;

where beauty in all forms is appreciated and people stop being obsessed with 6-pack abs and zero-figures; (seriously, I am yet to find someone with enough grey matter, who thinks it really matters)

where sarcasm is understood, appreciated and elevated to an acceptable form of communication; (no, seriously! really! I mean it!)

where people who get offended should be offended;

where engineers run and rule the world, for I cannot see a more apt group of individuals that could ensure both peace and development, alongside a mind-blogglingly fun world;

where perpetrators of egregious crimes simply die from shame or are at least rendered limbless, as a direct and inescapable consequence of their act;

where nobody minds that your blog post ended abruptly...