Meet Your New Favorite Emoji

The Unicode Consortium is a scary-sounding nonprofit that takes emojis very seriously. Earlier this month, having heard our pleas for people of color to be reflected in the emoji spectrum, the Unicode Consortium declared that diverse skin tone might — might! — be included in the next batch of emojis. But the joy doesn't end there. The Unicode Consortium is clearly aware of what tacos mean to the people of this world because it's now kindly shared an image of its proposed taco emoji. Stay calm. This is not a drill.

Tuesday marked the most joyous of all days: Taco Tuesday. And the Unicode Consortium, stern-sounding as it may be, knows it. Well, sort of. In a recent blog post titled "New Emoji Candidates for Unicode 8.0," addressing the emojis that may or may not come into play in mid-2015, it writes:

The Unicode Consortium has accepted 37 new emoji characters as candidates for Unicode 8.0, scheduled for mid-2015. These are candidates — not yet finalized — so some may not appear in the release.

The italicization comes from them, not me. Okay, okay, Unicode Consortium. We geddit.

Many other emoji characters, such as other food items and symbols of religious significance, are still being assessed, and could appear in a future release of the Unicode Standard.

This is only good news. In the attached form, the Unicode Consortium outlined exactly what these religious symbols might be.

It's about time. The last batch of proposed emojis, which are still yet to hit my iPhone keyboard — seriously, we can land a probe on a freaking comet, and we can't do this? — didn't come close to religious or ethnic diversity, sparking outraged petitions. (I mean, come on — if you can add "Man in a Business Suit Levitating," you can add a synagogue.)

So which emojis are most in demand, you ask? Well, in its own, very stern way — can you believe these are the same people who brought you the "martini" emoji you tap at furiously on Thursday nights? — Unicode Consortium has your answer.

This list addresses another subset the current emoji keyboard is lacking: Cheese items. Until now, there's been no way to accurately represent the foods that I spend 90 percent of my time eating. But no more! Now we will have (okay, okay, Unicode, might have) a cheese wedge, a cheese-filled taco, a cheesy cheesy burrito, and a cheese-topped hot dog. (What? You don't pile cheese on top of your hot dog?!)

We'll also have a unicorn face, which is, apparently, in demand. I'm sure that'll come in handy somehow.

In a little teaser, Unicode also shared what the taco emoji might look like, i.e., the future of your communication.

Come on, 2015. I'm ready for you now.

Image: Unicode, Flickr/@kevinv033