Sunday morning roundup

Are celebrities sympathetic to OWS doing more harm than good?

I have principles, but I don't feel the need to have them tattooed on my ass. Seriously, though, those are some very good ideas.

Okay, whatever.

Careful with those emoticons. The results can be hilarious:

“In the text function of my BlackBerry there is a sidebar menu of emoticons (how ridiculous is that?) that shows the yellow smiley faces, except they are also crying and raging, and winking and blowing kisses, etc.,” Dr. Bates wrote. “I sent a fairly new acquaintance a ‘big hug’ emoticon — which, for the record, was ironic. But anyway, on his iPhone it came up with the symbols, not the smiley face, which don’t look anything like a big hug. From his perspective they look like a view of, er, splayed lady parts: ({}).“He then ran around his lab showing colleagues excitedly what I had just sent him. Half (mostly men) concurred with his interpretation, and the others (mostly women) didn’t and probably thought he was kind of a desperate perv.”

Also, I really like this analogy:

“To me, it’s like bad moviemaking, where as soon as Dad grabs the puppy, the shot immediately goes to Junior’s teary face — like the director does not trust the audience to have an appropriately developed emotion by itself,” Ms. Farinet wrote in an e-mail. “That’s what emoticons do. PLEASE don’t ‘show’ me that I should be happy-faced or sad-faced or that you are sad-faced or happy-faced.
“Can you imagine,” wrote Ms. Farinet, “reading the end of ‘The Great Gatsby’ like that?: So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past :-(”

Thank you, Sasha Frere-Jones. I also don't like Coldplay, and sometimes I've wondered whether that means there's something wrong with me. Thank you for letting me know I'm not alone.

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Haven't looked at the Post yet; I'll be back this afternoon.