Hey look - the PTO decided to grant Cingular a patent for showing emoticons on a mobile phone. What next? A patent for the ability to use Unicode?

The USA based mobile operator, Cingular Wireless has managed to get a patent on the concept of using emoticon on mobile phones. While the aim of the patent is to enable the displaying of MSN style graphics on handsets, they also managed to patent the delivery of text based emoticon - so presumably sending :) via an SMS - if selected via a dedicated or softkey, would be a breach of the patent in future.

Do they let anyone work at the PTO these days, or do they specifically test for cluelessness?