Fred Benenson, a New Yorker, has translated Moby Dick into Japanese emoji icons ( aka Japanese emoticons). He managed to get funding for it from Kickstarter, a crowdfunding platform. As my first WOL blog might suggest, I believe emoticons, these pastiches of our human emotional repertoire, should be given the chance to develop greater emotional depth. Their marginalization stunts them. I have decided to translate the hallucinogenic bits of the New Testament into emojicons. Who else will answer the call to return heightened language to its iconic, ideographic roots?

Hey, Hatta, my favourite phrase at the moment is:

'add a participation widget'

what would that look like translated into emojicons?

Hi, nice phrase, Hatta. I'll get back to you with its translation at a later date. I guess there's irony a-plenty here since your response, and my response to your response, is couriered by a 'participation widget' of sorts.LOL LOL LOL etc which is itself a mutation of WOL -- although writing out loud describes the squeak or scratch of a nib or amplification of the sound of pen impacting on paper/fingers impacting on keyboard but is in itself not an emotional response, whereas laughter is normally a vocalised response to an emotional trigger and emoticons are like a digital pill of emotion. But I digress. Or do I? As The Prisoner said, 'Be seeing you.'

Hi Hat! Couldn't bear to see you talking to yourself! I have no idea what emoticons are really, how many different kinds are there? It's very hard to undersatnd the expressions on people's faces -if we could only have emoticon expressions would the world be a better place? (My lovely dad helped make the rubbery old whale in the G.Peck Moby Dick film. I am smiling in an emoticon kind of way when I think of him. xxxx

I stand back in amazement Hatta …. Grief LOL an emotive instruction WFM. I thought LOL was ‘Licking Orifices Lasciviously’ i.e. the whetting of one’s appetite, lip smackingly good and the like.

By the way Anne, Hatta’s request referred to Japanese isn’t the phrase ‘Rubbery Old Whale’ Chinese?


Gus xx

I guess these thingummies are the heiroglyphics of our electronic age? And rubbery old whales to you too Gus! ;-)

So we are back to aging labia and scrotums again...

Scrotum???...

Isn't that something you spit into?

No it isn't - though you may spit into yours Gus... nor is it anything connected to a native american pole...

ahhh.... I meant to say...split in two

Well that makes one L of a difference!

Viva la difference!... One man's meat...

is another man's participation widget. Sorry - I thought I'd better bring us back to task...

Japanese Emoji icons - I know nothing about them - in fact I've no idea what I am doing on this thread...

Lowering the tone Isobel, lowering the tone! ;-) xxxx

I tried skype for the first time t'other day and discovered all these little emoticons. They made me become totally hysterical, I was literally ROTFLing. Small things amusing small minds maybe. I love 'em! Not sure how you got them on here in your blog tho Hatta. But then I know you work magic! xx