Is one of your three things reading?

No.


I'll cool it with the emoticons in my comments. I didn't know about your flaming hatred of them.

I have railed against them in this journal, periodically, for many years.

I use them because I think it's easy to misrepresent one's intentions when communicating by computer.

Yes, it is. However, there are other options. For example, if I think something is funny, I simply say "heh" or "hah" or something like, "Oh, that's rich."