lexiKlein and the terminal case of copykat

Don’t background this post; slap an away message on your Trillian, and pay attention to me.  High school freshman girls take a taxi there, to the corner of "kewl" and "gr8,"  smacking down the IM abbreviations while they download music ringtones for their Razor phones.  Okay, so do my friends.  Shit, damn, so do I.  But there’s just no excuse for “kewl.”  It’s so beaded friendship pin on Keds. 

Random people IM me all the time through this site.  I know immediately when it’s some college kid trying to hit on me.  To start, they’ve formatted their IMs to be highlighted in pink.  Don’t do this; it’s as bad as music on your outgoing answering machine message.

Sup, Diva?
Ur sight is kewl
What skool do u go 2?

That’s what my friends would call, “gag and a half.”  I would, too. Because, what, it takes too much effort to write “you” in lieu of “u?”  And you can write "sight" instead of the proper, and shorter, "site?"  I mean really. 

We’ve all seen Single White Female by now.  We know the signs of an obsessed friend: clothes, perfume, hair color—taste, even—are mimicked.  At first it’s quite flattering.  The questions and compliments are breezy.  “Oh my god, love the gold lame shoes.  Spill. Where’d you get ‘em?”  You pause and take a moment to fan the flattery fire, the way you read graceful people do, with a genuine smile and a polite “thank you.”  How agreeable.

Before long agreeable becomes alarming.  Suddenly your friend wants it your way.  “I’ll have the same” becomes a phrase that makes your asshole pucker.  This isn’t high school.  Now you’re grown up and the carbon copy extends beyond a CC’d email, finding refuge in very subtle places.

You spend so much time together, your bodies don’t just start mimicking one another’s period cycle, but you begin to pick up on speech and writing patterns.  I sound more like my friends. We *star* things and begin to footnote.  Laughs change.  Turns of phrase, accents.  We become sponges.    It’s why it’s so important to try to keep friends you respect… because sooner or later, behavior rubs off too.  You are what you eat; you are the company you keep  (No I don’t eat my friends).  Role models are often discovered in friends.  So are new words… which brings us to the Klein Lexicon, or LexiKlein, which is mostly strewn with abrevs…

rye-dic or ricokculous: ridiculous
phenom or pheens: phenomenal
pritts: pretty
totes: totally
torch, torch and a half, torch and three quarters: torture
reseys: reservations
brill: brilliant
jumpy: smelly (it’s jumpy in here)
skate: he’s cheap
longchamp: she’s so longchamp (so not YSL)
rick or ricky: he’s such a rick (dick)
the ‘stis (stee-s) for some frites: “Let’s hit The Stis” (as in Pastis) or “He’s The Stis” (as in The Shit, The Guy, The Bee’s Knees, The CopyKat’s Pajamas)
gorge and three quarters: he’s NOT ugly

Damn, you can figure out the rest:
probs, cammy (bring your cammy to the par-tey), hi-lar, pervy, perf, parfait, whatevs, whenevs, fabaux, naush, yums, yumsies, drinksies, gimmie the deets, dee-lish, loverly, fabs, fabs and a half, just kill me now, are you listening to me “my friend?”, assbackwards, loving to love you,  good talk, and my fav: crapass.

I bet this post makes all men naush.  No wonder I eat alone. 
Whatevs. 

And for what it’s worth, my friend, this post is brill and a half.

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COMMENTS:

  1. This is brills, parfait. You did a fabs job translating our loverly speak into a hilarious post.

  2. We should totes give credit where credit is due…Tim Bowers, thank you.

  3. You're right, friend, and a lot of it also comes from Rachey-Rach.

  4. It's all about Kimsies and Jenny Jen. Oh, and my latest is:

    rome again, rome again, jiggety jig.
    rome again, rome again, she is a fat pig.

    I'm just sayin'

  5. is it just me, or does the new picture in the upper right corner look like you're at an arm wrestling match?

  6. If you post like that again, could you please hotlink those words so that it pops up their definition. I am really having a hard time here…

  7. So. best. My friends from college, we always say "totes."

    "Longchamp" though, awe-some. Gonna have to steal that. Here's one for you that we say in Paris, "elle est bcbg." Only you slur the french pronounciations of the c and g letters, so it sounds like "bays bej." It stands for "bon chic, bon genre" and it means very correct, bourgeois, and well, Longchampish.

  8. Maybe some of these swine are in training to be optometrists. Maybe your sight IS kewl. 20/20? Kewl!

    Bastards.

  9. Yes, naush. But it's all out of context, so that's to be expected. The favorite piece of my own lex is "AC" as in, "you are acting like an AC" Transaltion in the movie "Office Space".

  10. all about abreviations. this weekend after a chocolate gorge fest my roomate and i overused the term 'vom' to our friends dismay. but really, sometimes you're so naush, you feel like you're gonna vom!

    another fave that i've used since childhood: are you red? (as in ready to go… now!)

  11. Random Thoughts:

    "Asshole puckers"? Nice image… I'd have to guess you've been sitting on that one for a while (pardon the pun), waiting for the chance to use it somewhere. I wasn't sure if I should laugh, or make the "ewww" face. Still trying to decide…

    The disgustingly overused word "diva" needs to be eliminated from the face of the earth, especially when used by—or when referring to—white chicks. (Extra points off when women refer to themselves as "divas"). I believe "naush" is your word…

    Just for the record, you're right, as a guy, I was cringing while reading your lexiKlein and abbrevs. However…

    "Ricockulous" is a great one, and has been around in my crowd since the late 80's. Basically, it's since morphed into "ri"–"ulous". Rifuckulous, Rishitulous, Ridorkulous, etc. So flexible…

  12. Reminds me of Tremble:

    Sooo…I totally *heart* my new job as a field corresondent for the E! Entertainment (Spanish) news network. I'm totally out there, in the field – and totally playing the field. (NIGHTMARE!) I never imagined myself as a real correspondent and, honestly, now I can't imagine myself as anything else. (Except married! JK – not really. No, seriously, JK!! But my ring finger is freeeezing! AND SO IS MY UTERUS! Ew! TMI, right? JK. But for serious, though, why do I meet so many assholes? JK! sigh. K.) But here's the problem. Yes, I'm a correspondent but I only have EDITOR PANTS. Ack!

    He is, by the way, joking.

  13. I guess all girls do that, I thought we were strange. In high school we used to call hot guys SMITMs just becuase one day someone wanted a way to distinguish them (sexy men in the mall)…and I guess it stuck forever. Alot of my friends still use it…it's been six years.

  14. I'm a week behind, so I just read this today. As a college student myself, I thought "Well shit, when did it become acceptable to hit on random women over the Internet?! Surely I should try this new trend!"

    But you weren't on AIM, so I couldn't smooth talk you to upstate.

    And most of my friends talk like that too, except they're guys, so I'm allowed to hit them when they do it.

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