Later Days

Cool Beans, Bruh!

~ shawnaborman ~ 3 Comments

Hello, hello! How’s everyone doing this bright and beautiful first Wednesday of August? Why is it August already? I guess that just means there’s only two months of summer left in Texas. If we’re lucky. But anyway! Things here are okay. Still puttering along. If you stalk me, you know all about the ‘getting to know me’ thing I’m doing right now. You can find the list of prompts here. There are still plenty to choose from if you want or you can randomly pick a number between 1 and 50. I’ve already done 47 and 13. Today is 43. And 33, 11, and 27 will get us through August. Today’s prompt is courtesy of Heather Vendetti and asks what outdated slang I still use. This is probably going to get cringe. You’ve been warned.

As many of you are aware, I spent far too much time in the Yahoo chatrooms, which is where a lot of my slang comes from. I still use rawr way too often and shmexy. I don’t use it (I don’t actually remember ever using it. I received it a lot though), but every time I see ASL, my mind immediately translates it to age/sex/location and it gets very confusing for a minute. Ttyl and ttfn were also big in my vocabulary back then and still pop up occasionally. Oh! And I still use kthxbai, but it’s almost always sarcastically. Also, it’s not slang, but I never really made the transition to proper emojis. I still use XD and >___> and </3 and the like when I feel the need to use them. Mostly because I’m too lazy to switch keyboards on my phone. Yes, I’m that lazy.

The Interwebz influenced my slang in more ways than one. Since most of my friends were spread all over, I picked up sayings from them that I probably wouldn’t have otherwise. Cool beans and awesomesauce are still used regularly. I also have a tendency to add -ness to the end of words for no real reason other than it’s a habit I picked up from friends. Evilness is a word I use daily. I rarely use it, but Jen got “holey cheese and crackers” into my vocabulary. Cheeky bugger and cheeky minx still pop out once in a while even though I haven’t talked to the English Muffin (yeah, it was a stupid nickname) in over ten years. Friends make things weird.

Me on Facebook (jokingly): Okay, Zoomer. O____o I still say shmexy and rawr. Don’t shame my generation’s slang and I won’t tell you how much of a douchenozzle your slang makes you sound like. >___> Kthxbai. XD

And then there’s kawaii and adding -chan/san/kun to people’s names because I was kind of a weeb and I’m not ashamed to admit it. I still use kawaii and there are a couple of people I still call -chan, but I’ve mostly mellowed out when it comes to weeb stuff. I’ve learned to appreciate Japanese cultural rather than being an obsessive creeper about it. Oh, hey! Creeper. Definitely still one of my favorite words. And douchenozzle. I’m starting to think I use too much slang.

It’s also fun to use random slang from forever ago whenever I think about it. Poppycock is a nice one. Twitterpated. Hornswoggled. Weird old words are just fun to say.

But now, it’s time to say later days (can’t forget that one) because I’m hungry and can’t think of any more stupid things to say. As always, feel free to share your comments and questions here or on my social media pages!

For My Little Sis

~ shawnaborman ~ Leave a comment

Howdy, howdy! How’s everyone doing this beautiful June day? It’s actually kind of overcast as I’m writing this, but whatever. I’m sure that’s beautiful to someone. I have zero writing or publishing news. I’m a big slacker, I know. So, I wasn’t sure what I was going to blog about until I remembered what today (June 8th, because that’s when I’m writing this) is: Jen’s birthday! I know I’ve talked about her a little bit on here since she’s the one always drawing pictures for me to use as avatars, but I don’t think I’ve ever fully explained who she is to me. Today, I will properly introduce you.

I remembered yesterday too, but still.

I met Jen when we were 18 or 19 in a Yahoo chatroom. Oh goddesses. Was it really that long ago? Have we really known each other over 15 years? We’re getting old. But I digress. Honestly, I don’t even remember which one of us initiated contact or why, but that one random moment led to years of fun and friendship and sisterhood. We spent long nights (into early mornings) talking and RPing and complaining about the douchenozzles who kept telling us we weren’t doing it right if we didn’t adhere to their arbitrary and ridiculously detailed rules of that particular RP. She knows the main dude I’m talking about. It got to the point where we’d deliberately break his rules just to see how long it would take him to rage quit and sign off. Those were some good times.

The Yahoo chat years were great and sometimes weird and even downright sucky occasionally, but so much came after. She went to art school and got married and had kids. She’s constantly done artistic things over the years, like stained glass or making dolls or drawing. I’m always so proud of Jen. And, of course, there were not so good times. Stress, people disappearing without a word (because that’s a hazard of having Internet friends who live in different states or countries), family deaths. All the crappy stuff life throws at you. But we’ve made it through it all so far.

A picture she drew of us.

Jen is my little sis. She may not be blood and we haven’t gotten a chance to meet in person yet, but she’s part of my chosen family. I probably shouldn’t make assumptions, but I think I’m part of hers, too. (I better be!) We talk about anything and everything even though we constantly apologize for TMI. But it’s not really TMI because I’ve never really felt like anything was off limits. And I hope she feels the same. So, I’m going to say something I don’t say enough to anyone. I appreciate you, sis. And I love you. And now I’m going to stop because this is beginning to feel sappy. I’m not good at that.

Isn’t that just a glomp?

So, say hi and happy belated birthday to Jen! As always, feel free to leave your comments here or on my social media pages! Or you can go to her artist Instagram page! Later days.