You and I go back a little ways, and I know that you have huge experience in the craft, but like you, I just can't resist a chance for a wind up now and again
WRT emoticons, at he risk of "grandmothers and eggs" etc. you could try the
original hand crafted smiley
:-)
[which is the characters "colon" "minus" "right bracket" (tip your head to the left to see the image)]. It's a little bit more effort than a mouse click, but so much more satisfying.
or frownie :-(
or Oh! :-O
or Hmmm :-|
or cool 8-) [also sunglasses]
or eek! 8-0
or big grin :-D
or poke tongue out :-P
or wink ;-)
et ever so very cetera.
You can probably tell that I am an old fashioned original Usenet type (the early internet, before the WWW, where practically everything was text only). Many modern phones (and some PCs), in a misplaced attempt to be helpful, will automatically replace those characters with an appropriate image which I find less than helpful - we are told that this is progress but somehow, preferring the hand crafted look, I do not see this as such. So much of what we are told is progress not actually better, merely different.