There were many people, quite a few in America, who were excited, delighted, even positively beaming when some clever cove created that smiley colon/parenthesis thing that is now the universal sign of a written smile.
:) That's the one. The one that is sometimes written as ":0" or ":-)" or, for a smiling wink, ";)." Or even, and this is far beyond my intellectual galaxy, "J". Does that signify "JOKINGYOUMORON!!!!!!!!"? I think that it does.
All these symbols have been such great successes in bringing people together and making them live as one. So I am positively :), :0, and J to tell you that a company called Sarcasm has invented the SarcMark.
The SarcMark, whose blissfully witty advertisement I have embedded above, might at first remind you of a snail doing what bears normally do in the woods, but upside down. But please don't let that dampen your enthusiasm.
Costing a mere $1.99 (for lifetime use!!!), SarcMark clearly fills a gap that has needed to be filled for so long. Too many people find themselves violently misunderstood when they are merely making ironic statements about the parlous state of the world, the economy, or their friends' facial features and undergarments.
I applaud the creators of this wondrous symbol for their people-focused design and the Art Deco-meets-Jay Leno nature of their Web site. And I look forward to seeing the SarcMark embed itself on our desktops and in our culture. At the very least, it is sure to improve relations between the witty and the witless, between Silicon Valley and Shanghai, indeed, between all peoples of this great big world.
I mean it. No, really, I do. Really.