I'm feeling so emojional!
Like a combination of face with tears of joy, woman dancing and smiling cat with heart eyes.
Which can only mean one thing: New emoji are here. At least for those of us with Apple devices. And for those of us ready to dive bravely into the 11.1 update. Me? I'm still reeling from the 11.0.2 update, which left me unable to airprint documents from my phone and tablet even after fruitless hours spent online and on the phone with tech support. Enter frowning-face emoji here.
But if everything works as it should, iPhone users will soon have plenty of new characters in a hot second. Here are some of them:
CRITTERS
There's a new cricket to point out awkward silence. Of course, we always found that just plain silence always accomplished that rather well.
There's a prickly porcupine. No wait, that's a hedgehog. I guess now I'm going to get "crickets" from the hedgehog.
Apparently the Unicode Consortium, which approves emoji, has been discriminating against the long of neck. It's now sticking out its neck by including not only a giraffe, but a Brontosaurus-esque dino.
LOVE
Because there just isn't enough love in the world, there will be another way to express it with a hand in the American Sign Language sign for I Love You. Which can easily be confused with the rock 'n' roll sign of the horns. Be sure to note the thumb positioning before getting all sappy back. Your crush might not be professing his love but asking if you're seeing Cinderella's Tom Keifer at the Arkansas State Fair on Friday.
And there will be a new heart. An orange heart to join all the other ones: red, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, broken, exclamation, double heart, beating, growing sparkling heart, with arrow and with ribbon.
Ah, yes, orange. A school color for Auburn University, the University of Florida and the University of Tennessee.
We definitely do not "heart" it.
WINTER
So we know what the sled is, and the scarf and the gloves and the trench coat and the hat -- cooler-weather gear (OK, this hat is an all-season blue baseball cap) we long to use once October quits fronting like it's August. Enter face-with-open-mouth-and-sweat emoji here.
But what's that gray blob with a red handle thing on it. A kettlebell? A weird iron?
Oh, this emoji represents a stone for curling, you know for that Canadian ice sport we only acknowledge every four years during the Winter Olympics.
We're curling our lip at this one.
FOODSTUFF
Now Unicode Consortium is really speaking our love language. Carbs. And fat. And salt.
Joining the delicious emoji buffet of bacon, pizza, pancakes and two other kinds of cake: a sandwich, Chinese takeout, and for more Asiany goodness, dumplings, and -- for dessert -- pie!
Then they had to go and ruin the feast with boring old broccoli. Then again, people have always found steamy secondary meanings for other fruits and vegetables.
We can't even look at produce such as cherries, corn, eggplant, melon and peaches without producing a blush.
FOLKS
A bunch of new people have moved into the emojisphere. So as not to be sex-discriminating, there's a young genderless face, and so as not to be sex-and-age-discriminating, there's an old genderless face. There's a woman with headscarf, a mother breastfeeding, a person in lotus position. They mingle with mythical beings like a fairy, zombie, vampire, mermaid, rock climber (OK, so he's not mythical, but given my likelihood of performing that activity, he might as well be) and a wizard (which I confused for a gemologist, as he's got a faceted emerald at the end of his wand -- these are the only kinds of rocks that interest me).
There's an out of the shower for the late or the obsessive compulsive. There's a dude with a monocle ... for when ... hmm ... when you want to play Monopoly?
Then there's a &$!#% cursing face for, well, everything. The poo emoji might no longer be smiling when faced with such competition.
And finally, there is the shhhh face. For when you want people to stop talking ... even though by texting they weren't talking at all.
Don't leave me with crickets, email:
jchristman@arkansasonline.com
Spin Cycle is a smirk at pop culture. You can hear Jennifer on Little Rock's KURB-FM, B98.5 (B98.com), from 5:30 to 9 a.m. Monday through Friday.
Style on 10/15/2017