Emoji Confujion

Shared a picture of my cat,
You sent me a thumbs up.
Shared the news of something bad,
Your emoji cheered me up.
Texted you a funny joke,
You sent a smiley face.
When I sent a little heart to you,
You asked me on a date.
But what does this emoji mean?
The mouth is open in a scream,
It's spitting something blue and green,
Puffed out cheeks and rising steam,
A halo up above its head,
Crossed out eyes,
It might be dead,
And fuzzy ears just like a cat.
Now, how should I respond to that?

-B.C. Byron
How should I respond to this emoji? Why doesn’t my phone have a steaming angel cat, spitball, puffy-cheek emoji?
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Written language has a strange evolution. In ancient Egypt, they used pictures to write onto stone tablets. It required memorizing a huge number of pictures and not everyone had the tools or time to learn how to communicate with heiroglyphs and stone carving. Then we devoloped other types of writing that was more flexible. A limited set of pictures or symbols that can represent any complex idea you want. Then the printing press and electric copiers came along and soon nearly everyone was able to write. Then phones came along, and we’ve reverted to vague pictures, mish-mashed with partial words and acronyms. And now we use tiny tablets to write with again. I sometimes feel like I’m in an ancient Egyptian pyramid when I read a text by teenagers. LOL, SPDQ, smiley, smiley, wink, wink. No idea what that means. Honestly, do we really understand these modern heiroglyphics as well as we think we do? I guess it makes communication more fun, though. We need a bit of mystery and confusion to keep things interesting between people. Is that girl in chemistry saying she’d like to get to know you better when she sends a red-faced emoji with stars around it? Or is she saying she got hit on the head and needs you to drive her to the hospital? Guess you’d better go find out. Or you could just text a tiny ambulance with a question mark after it. As you can probably tell, I’m not a very advanced texter, but I’m learning.

In the end, we all appreciate a real smile more than a digital one, but there are so many ways to talk to each other in the modern age. Isn’t it cool that everyone can find their voice through technology? Keep poking heiroglyphics into your little tablets, just take a little time now and then to explain what you’re writing to a confused adult. We want to be a part of your jokes too. Even if they’re about us.

Irresistible

Onions and fish and a big spicy pepper,
A meal I never would miss.
Onions and fish and a big spicy pepper,
You gotta' try some of this.
Onions and fish and a big spicy pepper,
The makings of heavenly bliss.
Onions and fish and a big spicy pepper,
How could someone resist?
Onions and fish and a big spicy pepper,
I'm ready for my kiss.

-B.C. Byron
Hold on, I’m almost ready for my kiss
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I happen to really like onions, fish, and spicy peppers. I often put at least 2 of these in my ramen noodles along with eggs and zucchini. It really makes me sweat and the flavor lingers. I know what you’re thinking, “Can I have your recipe?” Actually, I just gave you the whole recipe. Just boil the ramen and throw that stuff in the pot. It’s fantastic for a filling lunch, but not so great for putting on romantic moves, especially when accompanied by the onion-fish burps. It can be a real mood killer for my wife. Breath mints also have a hard time cutting through this combination for some reason. The mint aroma sort of piles on top of the other smells. Sometimes we just have to choose between delicious ramen and a kiss. Maybe if I just do the peppers next time? That would put a real zing in a kiss.

Although these things are healthy, we do have to eat them in moderation. By moderation, I mean not having them at every meal. I met a person who believed that onions and garlic were the cure for everything and would boil them in the same pot for hours then drink the juice twice per day. Every time we visited this person, the onion and garlic smell was overpowering. He was actually sweating garlic and onion juice after a few weeks of this regimen. I don’t care if drinking garlic-onion juice CAN make me live forever. It’s not worth living forever if no one can stand near you. All things should be done in moderation. Even healthy foods can be waaaaayyy overdone. I try to remember the onion sweat guy whenever I start a new hobby or spend too much time at work. Overdoing those things can be worse than the garlic sweats. It’s good to have an end goal in mind with the good things we do. Otherwise, they can quickly become bad things and take too much of our time and energy. We can run too much, work too much, play too many video games, meditate too much… you get the idea. If you’re not sure how much of something is too much, ask the people around you if they think you’re taking something too far. Good friends will let you know if you’ve gone bonkers with something.