So I stumbled into some kind of article about all the secret code kids use to talk dirty on their cell phones (a.k.a. sexting), and I, for one, am shocked.

Actually, let me restate that. I’m grossed out.

And I’m wondering how on earth it is that things have changed so much in 20 years?

This is actually a pretty clever ad campaign from a teen + unplanned pregnancy prevention group.

When I was 18 years old, I had a close male friend who offered me $100 to record the outgoing message “When I think about you I touch myself” (in homage to the hit song at the time) on his answering machine, and I wouldn’t do it. And if I remember correctly, the offer was raised by at least another $100 before he stopped asking.

Yet the combination of peer pressure and cold hard cash was not enough to break me.

I think I worried about it coming back to haunt me in my bid for the Presidency or I was just a prude or who knows. Regardless, I wouldn’t do it. These days, I could use the money. You know who you are. Call me if offer still stands.

Meanwhile, I also remember that I was rendered immediately and immensely uncomfortable by the mere sight or sound of Rod Stewart. I have an explicit memory of being in my friend’s basement rec room in my late elementary years (so 9 or 10 years old), and seeing him on TV singing “If You Want My Body” and wishing I could drop dead from awkwardness and shame right then and there.

In other words, I would have never – even with the available technology – have sent any of this filthy stuff. My mother was a world-class snoop, so I probably would have had to use the ‘MOS’ or “PAL” codes (and in hindsight, wish I ‘d known them), but that’s it.

I can’t even imagine who I would have sent them to. By and large, the  boys I liked tended to be odd outcasts, unpopular and even actively disliked. Thus, my crushes were a shameful secret that I kept to myself, and I hid them so well and buried them so deep that even at this moment I struggle to recall the name of a single guy I liked in middle school. Love is weird like that. Fleeting and completely forgettable…

Anyway, and without further ado – and apologies if you’re prudish or easily offended or are now suddenly realizing that your sweet and innocent 12-year old is actually a raging floozy – here’s the lineup.

Top 50 Internet Acronyms Parents Need to Know:

1. 8 – Oral sex

2. 1337 – Elite

3. 143 – I love you

4. 182 – I hate you

5. 459 – I love you

6. 1174 – Nude club

7. 420 – Marijuana

8. ADR – Address

9. ASL – Age/Sex/Location

10. banana – Penis

11. CD9 – Code 9 (it means parents are around)

12. DUM – Do You Masturbate?

13. DUSL – Do You Scream Loud?

14. FB – F*** Buddy

15. FMLTWIA – F*** Me Like The Whore I Am

16. FOL – Fond of Leather

17. GNOC – Get Naked On Cam

18. GYPO – Get Your Pants Off

19. IAYM – I Am Your Master

20. IF/IB – In the Front -or- In the Back

21. IIT – Is it Tight?

22. ILF/MD – I Love Female/Male Dominance

23. IMEZRU – I Am Easy, Are You?

24. IWSN – I Want Sex Now

25. J/O – Jerking Off

26. KFY -or- K4Y – Kiss For You

27. kitty – Vagina

28. KPC – Keeping Parents Clueless

29. LMIRL – Let’s Meet in Real Life

30. MOOS – Member of the Opposite Sex

31. MOSS – Member(s) of the Same Sex

32. MorF – Male or Female

33. MOS – Mom Over Shoulder

34. MPFB – My Personal F*** Buddy

35. NALOPKT – Not A Lot of People Know That

36. NIFOC – Nude In Front of the Computer

37. NMU – Not Much, You?

38. P911 – Parent Alert

39. PAL – Parents are Listening

40. PAW – Parents are Watching

41. PIR – Parent in Room

42. POS – Parent Over Shoulder -or- Piece of Sh**

43. PRON – Porn

44. Q2C – Quick to Cum

45. RU/18 – Are You Over 18?

46. RUH – Are You Horny?

47. S2R – Send to Receive

48. SorG – Straight or Gay

49. TDTM – Talk Dirty to Me

50. WYCM – Will You Call Me?

My mental image of what today's oversexed kids will be like in another 20 years, after they've worn themselves out on talking dirty and can't even bear to look at the number 8 anymore.

I’m wondering for #49 if the following response is acceptable?

88811748811741431337888

Oooh, baby.

I love it when you text to me like that!

And I’m fond of leather.

But not like that. In a cute bomber jacket or a nice pair of boots or something. But still…

So if you know anything about Twitter, you know it’s largely useless. Seriously.

And for those of you who ‘don’t get’ Twitter, that’s because – by and large – there isn’t much to get. 90% of the people on there are just trying to sell you get rich quick schemes or pass on boring and worthless information. Actually, 90% may be far too low of a figure, but I’m trying to be generous. It’s a new thing. We’ll see how it goes.

At any rate, a former useless Tweeter has finally said something of value. This morning when I logged in to do my daily post (which I try like hell to make funny, and which is way harder than you would think),  I saw the following at the top of my screen: “Does sleeping well make you look younger? Is the concept of a “beauty sleep” real or myth?”

And then some link to something I didn’t follow in part because I don’t have time, and mostly because I don’t particularly want to know the ‘real’ answer. 

I have my own answer, and that answer is YES!!!

Yes! Yes!! Yes!!! Yes!!!! Yes!!!!!

Case in point?

Donald Trump sleeps like two or three hours a day, and he is not by any stretch of the imagination beautiful.

Heidi Klum and the rest of the Victoria’s Secret supermodels past and present sleep like ten to twelve hours a day. Or at least it looks that way in the catalogs, so it must be true.

See? Sleeping. And beautiful.

Supermodels aside, my dog sleeps a solid 18 hours a day, and he is an unquestionably gorgeous critter.

So there. Proof positive that sleeping is not a waste of time.

I think my continual issue with those anti-sleep types is that I intellectually recognize that sleep whisks away valuable hours in which I could be making big important business deals, organizing conference calls, short-selling stocks, or otherwise taking over the world.

However, the thing of it is, I love to sleep.

If I were to list my five favorite things I would say eating, cooking, reading, sleeping, and country line dancing.

Actually, I’m kidding about the dancing, I’m a terrible dancer. I have no natural sense of rhythm and the realization that I’m very bad at it robs me of any or all imagined joy. Also, country line dancing is for jerks. Thus, instead of country line dancing let’s go with lying around in the sun. Essentially – minus the cooking – I’m extremely lazy. I’m like a big cat in a human body.

Dump me off on a food-rich desert island with a good bed and a pile of books (and maybe a laptop), and I’m living large.

Which reminds me, when I say I love to sleep, I don’t mean any old kind of sleep. In fact, I’m fervently against these ideas like business executives taking a ten minute power nap sitting at their desks. First off, it doesn’t look  particularly professional to walk in and find the CEO face down in a pile of his own drool. Second, naps suck.

They are neither satisfying nor luxurious nor nearly long enough to have a really crazy dream. 

So, in conclusion and for the record, I am a stronger supporter of sleeping (with or without the side effect of beauty) and passionately opposed to naps. 

So stick that in your pipe in smoke it.

Or don’t.

the more they stay the same.

I actually have no idea what that means.

I’ve always just assumed it was someone being impossibly clever, and everyone else just went along with it rather than appear dumb. That’s my plan, anyway. I figured the rest of you were in on it, too. You were…right?

We’re all just pretending we understand that. Right?

Total emperor’s new clothes pact: He’s nude, he’s acting like he’s not nude, and he looks AWESOME. Just smile and nod. That’s right. Show some teeth and go with the flow…

So anyway, without actually getting the deep meaning behind that saying, let me just summarize and say NOTHING IS GOING ON.

It’s sunny, and it remains sunny.

This makes me happy.

It’s hot and it remains hot.

This takes my sunny happiness and ratchets it up to overjoyed. If I lived where it was warm and sunny all the time (Haiti? Ethiopia?) I’d be the most cheerful person on earth. Most likely. 

If not, it would at least minimize any sadness about whatever else situation I had to manage (malaria, starvation, severe hurricane damage to my hut, etc.) 

Today was Memorial Day which is in memory of something that either has to do with the military or war or both. I did not opt to bust out the stars and stripes bathing suit. Maybe for the Fourth of July.

I may however – for the right ‘buy me a beer’ contribution – post a photo of said bikini circa last summer could be published. 

Meanwhile, in honor of Memorial Day, the SciFi channel is running a ‘Land of the Lost’ marathon which allows me to 

a) prove my point that it was not two grown men and a girl, but rather a father and his two (old teen and tween) children, a.k.a. Marshall, Will, and Holly. And,of course, the adolescent missing link critter, Chaka. 

b) reignite my irritation that they keep remaking all my childhood favorites and turning them into schmalzy crap. I didn’t see Escape to Witch Mountain, but the goofed out laugh track-esque ads with ‘The Rock’ (Dwayne whoeverthehellheis) really pissed me off.  And now ‘Land of the Lost’ with Will Ferrell and two other adults. Sight unseen, I’m not impressed.

Otherwise, I got nothing.

Write, eat, write, cook, write, workout, write, sleep, write, internet…repeat.

And with that, here’s hoping I can be more interesting tomorrow.

Oh no, wait.

That’s me.

I’m getting very sleepy.

Something about combining half a beer, a couple thimble-fulls of sake, and a butabital (migraine medicine, but I think codeine is involved) does that to a person.

Who woulda guessed?

With a yawn and a slight whimper, thus dawns Memorial Day weekend.

Memorial Day has to do with soldiers or war or honoring people who went to war or died in war. I think.

Something uber-American such that it’s one of the three days of the year – along with the 4th of July and Labor Day – I feel empowered to pull out my Stars and Stripes bikini and parade around like a patriotic jackass. Otherwise, I feel like a jackass.

And that’s about all I’ve got.

Headache turned slightly wasted and an American flag bathing suit.

More where that came from tomorrow.

Sweet dreams!

Okay, sorry about that. Between the crazy pregnancy stories and the planetarium flashbacks, I managed to overly postpone my plans to tell you about my time in Paris.

So, I got there Wednesday -a week ago - after a typically restless sleep on the train. It’s mostly the rocking and rolling and related jostling, but it’s partly the subpar bunk-style Murphy beds.

Mister Corn. My new best friend.

And possibly they’re pumping poison gas into the air during the wee hours.

I have no actual proof.

But I do have suspicous anecdotal information.

Here’s the story:  As you may or may not remember, back in August on the train from Lisbon to Madrid, I accidentally slept with my ‘Day and Night’ contacts in. Supposedly you can wear these contacts for a month straight without issue, but my eyes will have none of that.

Anyway, I woke up in the middle of the night that night and my eyes burned like sulfuric acid, and I took the contacts out and didn’t put them back in for three weeks…just to be safe. And then when I did put them in, all hell broke loose, and I actually thought I may have scratched the cornea or something, but happily it all worked out in the end.

With the Louvre behind me.

ANYWAY, my point here is that I woke up in the middle of the night on the train from Barcelona to Paris last week, and I didn’t have my contacts in this time, but my eyes were burning something fierce, and it was exactly like I remembered it…without the contacts and the corneal scarring.

Suspicious.

Otherwise, Paris was lovely. I like to just walk the streets and take it all in. Except when there are monsoon-like torrential rains, which there were, so that’s too bad.

As always, I struggled with the language. I took four years of French in high school and some overachieving part of my brain believes that I should still remember all that stuff, but the bulk of my gray matter will not cooperate with this aspiration. 

One night I had a dream that I remembered everything I’d ever learned and spoke with a spot-on accent, and when I woke up I was super disappointed to to realize it wasn’t actually real.

Did I mention it rained?

By and large we could get by, and what I do remember was enough. More accurately, it had to be enough, so I made it work, but I find it very frustrating to be unable to effectively communicate. The major hardship came in with the handwritten menus  scrawled in white on black chalkboards at pretty much every brasserie in town.

This is charming in theory, but in reality it’s like taking an eye exam and a foreign language test at the same time. Minus a few key items (pommes frites, names of known pastas like penne or linguine, and escargots), what was delivered to me was often not exactly what I was expecting.

Sometimes it was completely left field of what I was expecting in a “oh. So THAT’s what ballotine or rissole or soissons means…”

Oh well.

A brief but glorious parting of the clouds at Sacre Coeur.

To ease the foreign-ness and take a break from the rain, we went and saw Angels and Devils in its unaltered form. The movie itself was all right – not great, not terrible. Tom Hanks is looking good. He’s seen doing laps in the Harvard swimming pool early in the morning, and he looked so fit I would’ve bet money that wasn’t him. Actually, now that I type those words, maybe it wasn’t him? Maybe it was a much more buff body double? Who would ever know? Except me and my eagle eye (once outfitted with corrective lenses, of course).

Anyway, the movie was mostly a welcome dose of American English, but specific to the situation, everything said in Italian (which was a fifteen minute chunk of talking, all told) was translated into French, so I found it something of a double whammy for my saturated brain (which still furiously tried to translate despite the futility of the effort.)

Me at Sacre Coeur.

Otherwise, I saw through the plot almost immediately. I’m a bad person to go to the movies with. Within the first twenty minutes I identified the ‘real’ bad guy, and  announced my theory. Due to the filmmakers need for an onslaught of unfathomable and unbelievable twists and turns, for a long time going there, it looked like I was wrong, but in the end I was oh so right.  As always.

So there you have it: food, movies, and rain. The rains in Spain may fall mainly on the plains, but the rains in France dump all over Paris. And then some.

The first day, while walking back to the apartment from the Eiffel tower we got caught in a torrential downpour. It was the kind of rain so ferocious you’re confident it’s going to back off at any second. But it didn’t.

It just got worse and worse, and I seriously started to wonder if I might get struck by lightening channeled through my cheap H&M umbrella which would blow inside out at the first sign of the slightest breeze. But after a while, you realize you’re so wet that you’re committed, and you’re pressing on even if an ark comes floating down the road.

That’s how I found myself totally drenched up to my BUTT (seriously, my jeans soaked up so much water that even my underwear was wet) and neither the denim nor my shoes would dry out the entire time despite the fact that they were lying over a heater. In fact, I had had to pack them up wet.

Thank you, Paris, for making my brand new sneakers smell like mildew.

I’ll remember you fondly each time I catch a whiff.