Now that actor Ed Helms is a big movie star, I can reveal the even more important truth about him — you can blame and/or credit him as the actual originator of the word "totes," now ubiquitously used as a shortened version of "totally."
Years ago, I attended a performance of Prime Time Kalan, a small weekly live comedy show hosted by the prodigiously talented Elliott Kalan. In that show, Elliott interviewed Ed Helms, who at the time was a co-worker of Elliott's at The Daily Show (Ed was a correspondent, Elliott was a segment producer, and is now a writer).
One of Elliott's incisive questions was about the word "totes," which apparently Ed used around the office all the time, but which Elliott (and I) had never heard before. It had become infectious, and Elliott asked where it came from. Ed explained that it was something he started with some friends, and that wherever he used the word, it caught on.
I never heard the word again for some time, but a couple of years ago I started hearing it dropped in conversations, and then in the media, and now you totes can't get away from it.
Now, I'm no lexicologist, and it's possible that Ed actually heard the word before he started using it and misremembers originating it — or maybe he's a bald-faced liar. But I think Ed is not only a very funny guy, and a superb comedic actor, but he's also the inventor of a wonderful word that has brought color and a mischievous sense of fun to the conversations of millions of Americans (particularly middle school girls), not to mention saving us valuable time and energy by reducing the syllables of an often-used word by 67%.
Do I salute Ed Helms? Totes.