'Shower' looks like a shower, if you look at the letters like shapes...'Hell', if you write it out and turn it upside down and turn the letters to face left, looks like a pneumatic press crushing the letter A against the number 11...Or, if you want to make it a shape, 'a' looks like Yin, whereas 'e' looks like Yang.
I almost always regret the decision to use an emoticon in chat or email. It lends the same sense of maturity and authority to your message as would dotting the i's with little hearts.