As for emotificators, there really need be only one (just like immortals), and that is the simple ;-, or ;-) if you say something that would invoke a massive flame war if the recipient were truly to take offence.  Otherwise, all other emotive behaviour can efficaciously be displayed thusly. 

My wife was accepted to a residency at Harvard today.  I am happy.  OR one could simply add: Yay! 

All these dancing yellow stinking smileys, and pole dancing widgets seem the very nadir of frippery.  I, for one, am agin it. 

*sigh* So now my quest includes not merely the destruction of the pulp mills, the churches of the cult of Papyrus, but also the decimation of the smiley factories.  Some times an unspeakably evil god's work is never done. 

As for emotificators, there really need be only one (just like immortals), and that is the simple ;-, or ;-) if you say something that would invoke a massive flame war if the recipient were truly to take offence.  Otherwise, all other emotive behaviour can efficaciously be displayed thusly. 

My wife was accepted to a residency at Harvard today.  I am happy.  OR one could simply add: Yay! 

All these dancing yellow stinking smileys, and pole dancing widgets seem the very nadir of frippery.  I, for one, am agin it. 

*sigh* So now my quest includes not merely the destruction of the pulp mills, the churches of the cult of Papyrus, but also the decimation of the smiley factories.  Some times an unspeakably evil god's work is never done. 

;-

I have to agree I am kind of tired of the "yellow stinking smileys" also.  Imagine if Dickens had access to emoticons.  We might get something like this:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,

Of course some might like this new version of A Tale of Two Cities but I prefer the original. 

As long as people remember to write humourously and wittily, rather than simply typing what they would say, stripping their dry delivery of all the necessary non-verbal modifiers like a grin or raised eyebrows, we should not need beware so many raging open flames. 

Fortunately, this being a rather literary-minded forum, think that many of the folks hereabouts have grokked this. 

Ugh.  Just felt a chill run down my spine when I thought about your new version arriving at the kings and queens and what evil emoticons would be birthed because of it. 

I'm going to get those yellow stinking smileys for what they did to Fritz...

Must I follow you about continually, correcting your grammar, wiping up the oil stains?  The smiley faces are "emoticons".  The act of emotifaction is defined as "assuming the author of a particular post cannot actually be as obnoxious as he or she appears, but is very likely lazy or has something against using emoticons, so I will read this post AS IF it contained whatever emoticons would render the post otherwise inoffensive to my delicate sensibilities". 

Or words to that effect. ( Deliberate reference to a previous post.) 

P.S. You have a spine?! 

P.P.S. I hold the copyright to the word "emotifaction", because I mozzled it.  I also have the copyright to "mozzle".  Pay up, sucker. 

If you will simply accompany me down this dimly lit alleyway, that nice man with a lead pipe will gladly pay the money that I owe you. 

PS The sad thing is that is some dark corners of the internet, the poster truly is that offensive.  So if I impugn your high moral standing by equating you with other, less evolved typing mammals, I apologise.  Luckily, the members here seem to be a higher breed of typing mammal, so we can generally surmise that a poster is attempting wit, not vitriolic rhetoric. 

PPS As an anthropoid cephalopod with chiropteric wings, I suppose that I have a spine.  Have never seen it, so cannot say with any certainty yes or no.  A spine is that crunchy surprise inside humans, right? 

hm, i hate to bother you, but you wouldn't happen to know the author ? " stages" or "stages play" gives thousands of results in amazon or google, and the quotation gives only this page... (ironically, google recommends i try spelling it this way : "This is like reading mercury with a pitchfork!",  which gives 0 results.) 

What exactly is the Karma FOR?  Or is it just there to make us look good? 

It's a way of publically saying "thank you" to people who you believe have benefitted the MobileRead community.  In my own case, virtually all of it has come from people who've appreciated the books that I've created and uploaded here. 

It's a way of publically saying "thank you" to people who you believe have benefitted the MobileRead community.  In my own case, virtually all of it has come from people who've appreciated the books that I've created and uploaded here. 

AND for the valued input towards helping to choose Cybook Gen3 over the others .......

could someone have made a play from Brautigan's poems ?  it's not implausible, based on NatCh's description "It's actually a pretty freaky little play, but fun if you're in the right frame of mind for it." 

thanks for the linky anyway, whether or not it is the same book, it looks quite interesting ! 

could someone have made a play from Brautigan's poems ?  it's not implausible, based on NatCh's description "It's actually a pretty freaky little play, but fun if you're in the right frame of mind for it." 

thanks for the linky anyway, whether or not it is the same book, it looks quite interesting ! 

I dunno.  The play didn't seem at all like a compilation of verse.  I think it's more likely that the playwright had come in contact with the title (possibly indirectly) and liked it, so he used it. 

I'm not sure I'd really 'recommend' the play, per se.  It was about a group of actors who were trying to tell what amounts to a basic boy-meets-girl-etc.  type of story, but the playwright (yes this was a character in the play, he sat in the audience) kept changing things.  The play started as a greek tragedy, changed to something quasi-Shakespearian (complete with an advertising ditty to the tune of "Greensleeves"), then morphed into a plain old present-day cocktail party type venue, then moved on to something modern-interpretive, and finally ended up with one character, alone (it increasingly lost characters as it moved from phase to phase), on the stage in a shrinking spotlight trying desperately, and unsuccessfully to somehow make the playwright happy so she wouldn't be left alone in the dark. 

The stage manager and director (my part) were characters too, 'til they quit the show in frustration (the mercury line was one of the director's), but they were up on the stage.  There was one scene where the actors run amok through the audience pretending to stab audience members with their rolled up scripts ... I think it was the transition between the Greek and Shakespearian variants. 

Thinking back on it, it may have been a comment on the evolution of theater and a prediction of what the author saw as a possible eventual outcome of that pattern.  Or it might have been a comment on the amount of power writers (should?)  have over productions.  Or the guy could have been writing it on a bet ... while drunk. 

On the emotifaction issue, I tend to try to write as much nuance into my posts as I can, but I make liberal use of the smilies to reinforce that.  I figure I'd rather be understood, and I don't always have an hour to devote to a single post.  I also like to use them to indulge in my dry, twisted humor, while still communicating clearly that I'm joking. 

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.  I am aware that forums such as this have their own internal dynamic, with various characters that roam the dark hallways.  I assume that you have set yourself up as the whimsically, smart talking, emiticonatory-hating hall monitor.  Don't tell, you were beaten-up as a young spineless squidling by an over-enthusiastic bully Orca who disliked emoticons and decided to provide you with some emotional scars whilst at the same time knocking the stuffing and any sense of irony you may have once had out of your system.  If the good Lord and this forum and its goodly and godly administrators had not wanted us to utilize our smiley-and-otherwise faced little pals they would not have allowed them to be born of Photoshop and other such graphic birthing-pools in the first place.  However, I realize you find that an irrelevancy. 

Your dislike of my emoticonatory effusiveness I can stomach and will accept as a predilection which you abhor.  However, the remark, 'PS The sad thing is that is some dark corners of the internet, the poster truly is that offensive. ',  I will not tolerate from a bottom-feeder such as yourself.  I had hoped that this forum was full of decent people with at least some sense of humour and some honour, so that if they disliked someone or their ways they would have the decency to approach them on a personal level about their gripes - sadly, I was mistaken.  I can see that your spineless avatar and your natural tendencies are well matched.  You prefer the open-forum, vacuously open and smart-mouthed approach instead, presumably to feed your fragile ego. 

Please don't confuse my persona on this forum with that of someone you think you know and can insult with impunity.  I would also like to recommend that you take your own advice : 'As long as people remember to write humorously and wittily, ' .  Being smart-mouthed and being witty are not coterminous and you have amply proven that with your own witless and spiteful remarks.