302

When people got bored and stopped using the internet, Google came to me. They came to beg. They wanted me to fix it, to make it better. I told them to just let it rest for a while, let people catch up on their board games. Straight away they knew that I'd been paid by the board game companies to say that, and so, they offered to double whatever Hasbro had promised me. Always being prepared, I had the solution ready - new emoticons.

Here are the international emoticons for:

__&__	"I've fallen on the ice and I can't get up."
A * * -8	"A snowman is attacking my tent."
H_O_H	"There's a boulder on the rugby pitch. Someone call the police!"
~~\o/~~	"I see a drowning man, but I can't swim, so he will have to drown."
SSS $	"A gang of snakes are burning another snake at the stake. It's not God's work."
(}< ###	"I've developed x-ray vision, but all I can see are traintracks."
^A^A+A^A^	"Bury me in the mountains, papa."
>-ii-< iiii	"Go fetch mother, a giant crab is attacking the penguins."
[____i]i	"The only man I've ever loved is in prison. Now we have to make love through a fence."
<^> - - [] []	"Don't bother coming into work today - Aliens are attacking the city."
i-\ H~~^~~	"Jumping the shark."
~Q_	"One of my sperm has escaped and now he's snorting lines of coke."
~n=n''- IIIII	"There's a wolf at my door and my house is made of sticks. What the hell was I thinking?"

40

Even as a 22 year old in 2007 it feels like the Internet has been around forever. I don't know how I'd cope without it. There will come a time when I'll have kids and they'll start using the Internet from a very young age, much younger than I did. How do you break it to a six year old that the Internet didn't always exist? It could shatter their tiny infant brain. It would be worse than the time my dad told me that the universe didn't exist 13.2 billion years ago. I couldn't get an erection for a week.

Stephan, Ludlow.