Sell-out Vista Emoticons

If we’re ever having a conversation and you want to communicate minor disappointment or a bad mood, don’t use the standard size AIM frown face. It’s too sad!

I circled him for those of you who would deny your inalienable AIM heritage.

Take a second look. That isn’t the face of someone who has to walk to class in the rain, or just found out the Death Cab show was sold out. It’s the face of someone staring over a ledge.

hugz?

I imagine this guy as hard candy on a stick- Ed the Sucker, from Candyland. He’s lemon-flavored, so no one likes him. He’s just found out that for the tenth year in a row, he’s the only piece that will be excluded from the Lollipop Parade. He has no idea why and the other candies refuse to tell him.

For some reason every year he holds out hope that they’ll let him join in, and goes down to the parade office with a small tentative smile. But he gets the same word each time, and heads home amongst all the revelers and giddy candy people laughing and spraying each other with silly string while they set up their floats and practice their candy-cigarette twirling routines.

Later on that night he and his only friend, Steve the Riesen, are assigned to pick up the leftover wrappers and trash in the slanting rays of the Candyland sunset. They don’t say much.

His mind wanders to thoughts of the only one who ever loved him, Lucy Lipps the lip-shaped Valentine’s lolly that’s too big for most mouths

As you can see, Lucy had a rare case of the mucus worms and died young, leaving Ed alone…only a day after they’d announced their engagement to their parents. Now Ed is alone forever.

That’s how sad it is!

And then so what is THIS shit?

Thanks for nothing, Vista. We’ve got the murdering heart-devouring Spencer on the top left, his trenchcoat wearing “self-employed” brother Phil who still makes up Canadian girlfriends at 25 to his immediate right, and let’s not forget support-our-troops there in the bottom left. What are you all camo’d up for, the war on software piracy? And is that a fucking BERET on your head? ARE YOU A FRENCH G.I. JOE? FUCK OFF!

Look at their version of “sad.”

If my own child looked like this I’d kick it in the head. It’s like a surreal plasticine morphine junkie freaking out, begging your little sister for money at a bus-stop. It elicits contempt instead of sympathy. Is America really watching THIS MANY Pixar movies? It’s a wandering, unemployed computer-generated loser who tells lies about having been an extra in Toy Story and then cries when girls at bars shut him down.

Otherwise I like Vista. I like the little neon clock you get. I’m back to paper-writing though.