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.
