It's Just Abbey

I'll see what I can do to keep my frothy, feminist rage out of this post. I'll do my best and I make no promises.

This year, like many years before it, I attended X-Fest concert in Dayton Ohio. It is a rock concert I look forward to every year because it’s a handful of bands, decent ticket prices and a freaking amazing time. Every year is the same thing. Mosh pits, people being hauled to the ER because of mosh pits, crowd surfing, more people to the ER, girls showing their boobies for beads and rejoicing to be had by all.

This year was a tad different. There were several "security" personnel wandering about yelling at guys to get girls off their shoulders. Now, I might also mention that there are hundreds if not thousands of people at this concert. As a girl of meager stature (5'4 when I'm feeling tall!) sometimes you just can't see. I've been on a few shoulders in my time just because I wanted to see the bands I paid for. I wanted to be sure that when Breaking Benjamin came out, I could see them and they could see me. Before you ask, my boobies have never made an appearance at X-Fest. They typically don't make appearances anytime public. They are shy and Joe Francis could be anywhere. So, it was especially upsetting to me knowing that there was to be no shoulder sitting.

Odd though it was because the lineup said, "No moshing or crowd surfing" and both of those happened constantly. I have a lump on the back of my head to prove the crowd surfing bit. But nowhere did it say anything about mounting a boy for an eagle eye view the bands.

Well, this was all proven false when the bras came off and the beads started flying. Several girls sat up on shoulders showing their boobs to God and the world for beads and no one said a word to them. Hell, they were encouraged by everyone including the concert organizers. They sat up there for as long as they pleased. One pale, little red head was perched for quite a while and even let people film her shaking her goods. Classy.

Now let me set it straight that I have no problem with girls showing their lady bits to anyone they please. This is mostly because I believe there is an underground bartering community based on the trade of Mardi Gras beads and the slutty girls rule the market. I only take issue with the fact that they show preference to girls on shoulders. No boobs? Get the hell down you twat! Boobs? You just be careful honey. I understand that this is a rock concert and I did in fact stand behind four guys chanting "TITS TITS TITS" then high five each other when they saw some. But what I don't understand is the blatant double standards.

So thank you X-Fest for being an amazing concert, run by a bunch of bastards. Maybe next year your security team will worry less about girls who wanna watch the show and worry more about the people slugging each other in the face.

I get tons of fan mail. I mean tons! Its almost hard to keep up with. The constant flow of emails, snail mail and tributes paid through PayPal are getting out of control! I may need to hire an assistant to sift through some of this!

Nevertheless, I have decided to start publicly addressing some of the questions that are sent to me. I am an advice mastermind and will give it to you straight. This is definitely not a ploy because I have nothing better to blog about! No! I wanna hear from you the readers!

The letter I will address today comes from Jimmy in Arkansas--

    Hey Just Abbey. I'm having a problem. I am dating a girl who is in love with McGriddles. I am a BK man myself. I love Crosandwiches. Every morning we fight about where to go to breakfast! It is taking a toll on our relationship and I don't know where to turn. Help me!

Well Jimmy, other than telling you that eating fast food every morning for breakfast will more than likely kill you before you are 35, I will give you a helpful tip. McGriddles are the Devil's food. Anyone who eats them is clearly a minion of the Devil. They are made from the tears of motherless babies and the flesh of abandoned puppies. Break up with her now Jimmy. Now! BEFORE ITS TOO LATE!

Do you have questions that need answered? Is Just Abbey your last hope? If so, email her at itsjustabbey@gmail.com. Please note that your questions can and will be posted online and any advice she gives should be taken with a grain of salt. Just Abbey does not have a psychology degree but does have her Masters in Crazy.

So, in my present overworked and dull life (because I am working 12 hour shifts everyday until October...) I have decided that all of next week will be Jellyfish Week. Why? Why the hell not?

Personally, I love jellyfish. Several inside jokes and general fascination have led me to be in love with the squishy little bastards.

So! What does this mean? Well internet, it means that starting tomorrow I will be annoying the hell out of my Twitter feed with facts, pictures and eventual blogs about and pertaining to jellyfish.

Not following me on Twitter yet? You should be! ---> http://twitter.com/Just_Abbey

I will be starting the hashtag #jellyfishweek so if anyone else wants to play along, feel free! Screw you Shark Week! Jellyfish Week is going to blow you out of the water!

Who's excited? ::raises hand::

Dear Mr. Favre-

      Greetings! How are things? Good I hope. I’m fine. So anyway, I heard that you aren't staying retired. Again. I can’t say I’m surprised after the whole Jets fiasco. While I support the fact that you are still happy to play and ready to toss that pigskin around I have to wonder one thing...

     Vikings? Seriously?

     Now I'm not saying that the Vikings are a crappy team like some mistakes by the lake I know of but come on. You are a legend! In time, no one will remember you doing this. They will remember you kicking ass and taking names with the Packers. Remember when Joe Montana played for the Chiefs? Yeah. No one else does either.

     Speaking of the Chiefs, I will happily say I'm excited that your season opener is with Kansas City. I am a diehard KC Chiefs fan. I've bled red and yellow from the womb. I know they kinda suck. The only games I look forward to all season are the two times they play the Raiders. Nothing I love more than watching those bastards eat Astroturf. I know their shot at the playoffs will always be slim, but I don't care. Go Chiefs! That said I have never wanted them to beat the Vikings so bad in my life.

     Last year we had a hand in taking out the football god himself, Tom Brady. That warmed my heart. If we can take on and beat the legendary Brett Favre I don't think I'll ever stop smiling. Our victories may be small and far between, but we take what we can get! Interestingly enough, we took out Brady in the Patriots’ season opener. Makes you think doesn’t it?

     Win or lose this weekend, I'm disappointed in you, sir. I supported you as a Packer but now I am just saddened by your actions. You are supposed to go out in style and slowly crumple your reputation by doing campy beer commercials and getting a seat on the sidelines with ESPN. You need to move on, Brett. You need to move on.

     But since you don’t listen to anyone and/or you are having some sort of an identity crisis, good luck. You and your old man knees are really going to need it.

I’ll be watching,
Abbey

     PS. Fun fact: The Chiefs wiped the floor with the Vikings in Super Bowl IV. Chew on that for a while.

I love when Apple comes out with a new product. Correction. I love it when Apple thinks about coming out with a new product. They don't even have to say they are doing anything and everyone starts freaking out. Its like the Cold War and we are trying to figure out if they have a bomb. Or a simpler analogy, its like Apple is Jennifer Aniston and we all are trying to decide if that pooch is a baby bump or too many trips to Taco Bell.

So here we are. Apple may or may not be coming out with a new tablet. Now what? Well that's simple. People come out of the woodwork saying that they are top analysts and making predictions about anything they can think of. They claim to have anonymous sources which really means, “Wouldn't it be cool if..?”

I operate under the theory that Apple never comes up with ideas on their own. They wait to see what the masses predict they are making, then make it. Its truly an ingenious way to operate. Hell, Apple has a fan base almost as insane as your average Twilight fan. Its just crazy enough to work!

So these “analysts” are really just doing the grunt work for Apple's development team and giving the middle finger to the design team “They want how much storage space in how big of a case?!”

So I wanna throw my hat into the ring here. These are my “predictions” about Apple's new tablet. Analyst Abbey at your service!

Its going to be affordable!
Yes Apple will be releasing an affordable computer for the everyman in a current recession. Call me crazy but my anonymous source swears its true! It'll be at least $500 but no more than $600.

It won't be an enormous iPhone!
My anonymous source has reason to believe that Apple knows that if you wanted an iPhone, you would buy an iPhone. Why would they just piggyback an already awesome idea into a different medium. Its not like they already did that with the iPod... oh wait.

It won't be too delicate!
If Apple knows one thing its that durability is key. No one wants something shiny and geek friendly if it can't be dropped one or seven times. So they are going to produce a tablet that doesn't look like its an upgraded Fabergé egg. This tablet will be made for tablet travel. A few bumps, drops and squashes won't even phase it.

It won't double as a level!
This one speaks for itself.

It will grow arms and legs over time and demand blood sacrifices!
You knew that one though right? I don't need an anonymous source to give you that info. Every Apply product already does this. Although the rumor mill is buzzing with talk of the tablet having a tail!

The first version of these tablets won't be crap.
Apple has learned their lesson from the iPhone debacle. They will not put out a product until it is up to the standards they want. Plus Apple knows thousands of angry, broke nerds will burn their homes and hunt their families if they are forced spend $500 to replace a tablet they bought a month ago. That's unpleasant for everyone. Plus handing out rebate checks is the government's thing and no one wants to be compare to the government.

--

So there it is, Internet. Those are my educated predictions of what Apple will be making to be released in the next 2-9 months. Now to simply sit back, watch and wait while the minds at Apple sort out these predictions and select the best product to produce. Just remember, when you get your Apple Tablet and it is affordable, completely different from the iPhone and can withstand being run over by a convoy of Best Buy trucks, I designed it predicted it.

There are so many important rules to follow when you are at work.

- Never say “That's not my job.”
- Don't dip your pen in the company ink.

Everyone is so concerned about office politics and drama that no one ever stops to think about basic etiquette. Opening doors for coworkers even if you don't know them, not reading over someones shoulder, etc. But there is one place that seems to need a set of rules lid out plain and simple.

How to use the microwave.

It should be such a simple concept but it has become more and more apparent that when people approach the office microwave their brain shuts down and they are rendered stupid and senseless. Now, that could be the radioactive aura of the microwave but more than likely people are just unaware of how to act while cooking their food. So I laid out a few guidelines for you to follow.

~*~

Don't abandon your food
First of all it is just dumb to leave something you are about to consume unwatched and vulnerable to office politics or Crazy Carl. No one wants to come back to 5 pizza rolls when you put in 12. That just makes for a bad day.

Everyone is busy but you should be able to spare time to sit with your food for a few minutes. If you are bringing food that takes up to ten minutes to microwave you need to learn to shop better anyway. If you are cooking leftovers you really need to watch your meal. Leftovers are temperamental and unless you are a nuclear physicist, you don't know how to properly heat homemade food properly. You have a 50/50 shot of ending up with burnt food that is ice cold in the middle.

And yes, it says to let your food sit for 2 minutes before eating. It can sit on your desk and not in the microwave. Laundry rules apply. If I go to use it and there is food just sitting in it, cooked or otherwise, I will take it out and cook my own food. Thems the rules of the jungle.

Read the directions. And do so before staking out the microwave.
This one is important for several reasons. No one likes using something that is covered in spaghetti sauce. If the directions say to cook your meal for one minute and 45 seconds put it in for one minute and 45 seconds. Don't just hit the 2 minute button and be done with it. In the land of microwaves a lot can happen in 15 seconds. Like explosions and tiny fires.

Also no one likes sitting behind the guy that is reading the directions while he bogarts the machine. If you have to stop and read what it says for a long enough period of time your meal is already going to take along time to cook. Just know what you are doing and don't work around things. Its not polite, you are just causing more problems. Most people sitting and reading the directions with intensity are the ones wondering if they can get away without venting the seal, stirring at the 1 minute mark, or adding more water. You are doing no one any favors by cutting corners because it just ends with you being there longer when you fuck it up.

When you ignore the first two rules and your food explodes, clean it up.
Food blows up. It happens. I won't deny that. But when it does, after you finish being pissed about it or being awed by the amazing splatter pattern get the paper towels and clean it up. Your office may have janitors or a cleaning crew but chances are, they aren't going to be there to clean up your mess before the next person goes to cook lunch. Be a big kid and do your own dirty work.

When you pull your food early and there is still 37 seconds left, clear the timer.
Okay, its just annoying if you don't. No real need to elaborate.

If you burn popcorn you are free game for interoffice violence.
Have you ever smelled burnt popcorn? Its rancid and it sticks around. For a long time. If you burn your popcorn you might as well strap a Kick Me sign to your back and wait for your punishment. Mistakes happen, but this is a sin of the highest magnitude.

~*~

In conclusion, don't be an idiot. I think my blog is developing a theme based on my intolerance of idiocy. Neat. Print out these rules and start sending it around the office. Step one to a happy workplace is everyone working in a cohesive manner. Step two is having posters with kitties on them.

It is interesting to live in a time of such ramped paranoia. Everyone is worried that the government is sitting around thinking of fun new ways to take away our personal rights. Each person is under the impression the government is out to get him or her.

As I've stated several times before, we are also a culture of narcissistic twats. This constant fear that everyone is out to get you is proof enough of that theory. The government isn't after you as an individual. They are simply looking to control the masses. They want to herd us and manipulate our group think processes. But no one seems to see the biggest issue we face. Its not communism, socialism, socialize health care, gay marriage or abortion.

The government is constructing a robot army.

Think about it. Every military commercial tells you how the US is working hard to keep our troops off the front line. Unmanned jets, remote controlled machines to defuse bombs, etc. They constantly tell us about the crazy new weapons they are developing. They are advancing in computer technology with increasing speed. They are flaunting it in our face that they are developing state of the art warfare under the veil of national protection. They have other plans for that tech, and it isn't for the well being of the troops.

But we are in a recession. There isn't a lot of money to go around. With all the bailouts and freebies they are handing out it is hard to keep any to themselves. The government is stuck with super computers and the best technology on the planet without being able to use it to their advantage. They can only use it to the means they say they do. Bummer.

Then a light bulb clicked on with the Obama administration. Cash for Clunkers. Of course! Its so simple! Offer Joe Schmoe money for his “gas guzzling” truck and give him a shiny new hybrid in its place. Hell, offer him $4500 off that car too. Those suckers will eat it right up. Then, take his old car and tell him its going to be scrapped out and destroyed. Gotta get those demon cars off the road right? Using our “Go Green” slogan against us.

Except Joe's car isn't going to a junkyard or to a scrap shop. Oh no. Its going straight to the government so they can part it out themselves. Strip down the clunkers for major parts and equipment. Its as easy as that for them to collect the materials they would need to create a robot army or two.

So now they have your heavy duty car/truck and you are in some wimpy little coupe. Advantage: government.

But don't forget the ban on assault weapons and the threat of a ban on all guns. Who are they protecting exactly? Well you can be sure as hell they aren't concerned with us gunning each other down. As they saw their time for robotic dominance approaching they started to not only strip us of our measly weapons but also distract us by going backsies on the Constitution. As they build their weapons they take ours. If our government knows how to do one thing, it is how to take an already unlevel playing field and make it even more so.

So there it is. As we sit here and squabble amongst ourselves about our values and personal opinions our leaders are creating a robot army to not only serve their own agenda (like getting rid of pesky countries that don't like or agree us) but to also keep us all in check. It is so much easier to rally the masses with a 60 foot death machine with machine gun arms and a flamethrower face.

So listen up America. Either stop trading in your clunkers or use that $4500 to strap some circular saws to the front of your Prius. The real war is coming. And it has horrible fuel economy.

Yes. I am a member of the group think, hoi polloi. I have a Twitter account. But that won't stop me from being a snob about my account settings. It seems more than likely, anyone who starts following me on Twitter is just an airhead spam site or a sexy lady account that gets suspended after a few hours. But if you think that you aren't a spammer or a sexy lady then let me explain to you why I won't follow you back.

~If you can’t spell, I won’t add you.
I am one of those snotty grammar/spelling bitches. If you are tweeting with complete disregard to spelling I will just be annoyed. Words like ‘ur’ and substituting an ‘r’ for ‘are’ makes me want to shake you until your eyeballs fall out. “But Abbey,” you say, “there are only 140 characters and I cant fit my thoughts into that restriction!” Well jackass, if you can’t fit your thoughts into that, start a blog.

Also the basics. There/their/there and to/two/two. Learn to use them. Seriously.

~If you are link obsessed, I’ll block you.
I don’t care. Oh my goodness, I really don’t care. I don’t want to find new ways get followers, I don’t want new awesome ideas and I really don’t want to follow you if you are just posting headlines. I have a Twitter account. Its safe to assume I can function Google fairly well. If I want followers, awesome ideas or headlines I will Google them.

~If you just repost trending topics to find followers, I will loathe you.
This is self explanatory. Why do you want all these followers? YOU AREN’T SAYING ANYTHING!

~If the number of people you follow is vastly larger than the number of people that follow you, I will simply roll my eyes.
This just never makes sense to me. Mostly because these people never update. They only stalk 10,000 people and never say a word… Creepy! Which leads me to…

~If you never @ reply to ANYONE I will not @ reply to you. Or add you.
I know that anyone with a Twitter account is already a narcissistic tool, but c’mon people. At least try to seem less self involved than you actual are. Try. Please. There are so many things wrong with our generation, lets try to tone down the “LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME” mentality. Although, with the existence of MySpace, will forever thwart that battle.

~And the final one. If all you do is link your blog, I will go to your blog and not comment. Burn.
Yes. We all have a blog. Yes. We all need to link our blogs somewhere. But if all your tweets are about your blog, I don’t care. You have got to have more than going on than your damned blog. And if you don’t, I REALLY don’t want to follow you.

Last weekend I went on my annual camping trip. This wasn’t hyper-rustic camping per say but it was getting away from the world. We went to Skinkfest in Bainbridge, Ohio. Sounds a lot like Skankfest doesn’t it? Yeah. Also, I kept calling the town Brainsville and was on constant surveillance for zombie attacks.

Anyway, I vowed to allow myself no technology all weekend except my trusty camera. I didn’t want to deal with anyone all weekend and just wanted to get away. We parked the Jeep and I threw my Blackberry into the glove box. Easy as pie right?

Wrong.

It wasn’t really tough at first until I realized how much I rely on my phone just in passing. If I get bored, I surf the net. If I do something awesome, I tweet about it. If I think of a random Scrubs quote, I text the only other person on earth who still quotes Scrubs. I also use my phone as an alarm for the morning and also for taking my vitamins and such. I also check my call logs constantly because I am a paranoid freak. If I walk away from my phone for two seconds, I am going to miss a call from my mother saying she was on a plane with the whole family that is now crashing and they were calling to say goodbye.

And yes, I am always this dramatic. It’s exhausting.

As the hours wore on I started to forget about my pesky little phone and the internet. I stopped having the thought, “I should tweet this” every 30 seconds. I felt so relaxed. I was out with my boyfriend, surrounded by a bunch of new people to meet and talk to and was happy as a clam. It was liberating to go almost 3 whole days without worrying about my phone beeping and flashing. I took in nature and the simplicity of it all and felt myself actually relax.

Now, as a girl I am a casual reader of Cosmopolitan. If you trudge through all the calorie counting and the predictable “50 ways to have an orgasm” articles they actually have some interesting things to say. The last few issues I’ve skimmed through have mentioned turning off your phone for an hour or two for the purpose of stress relief. That sounds like a wonderful idea but I don’t think that one hour is enough and two is cutting it close. After the weekend I had I would suggest 3 hours minimum or an entire evening.

You can diligently watch the clock for two hours or just catch a movie without so much as glancing at your phone or computer. Having your mind preoccupied for one activity isn’t enough. Three hours is enough time to watch a movie, take an open ended nap, cook yourself some food or just take a walk. All these things you can do without reaching for your technology as soon as you are done. Going off the grid for a while evening is also just as fun. Shutting off your world and just spending the night by yourself. Simply unwinding and reading or taking a long bubble bath and listening to some killer music. Or you could go out with friends or family for the evening and leave your phone in the car. Encourage whoever you are with to do the same. It would be a night of yours and their full attention. Something that is severely lacking in this day and age.

Be warned, I am not implying that you should just shut off your phone and stop start kicking back now. At least warn a few people. I know if I hadn’t told my mother she couldn’t reach me for three days she would have freaked out and wondered what ditch I was laying in dead. Yes, this dramatic nature is learned behavior. I believe one of my favorite lines about texting was on the Bill Engvall show. The daughter is grounded from her phone and states, “In about three hours the phone company will notice I haven’t texted anyone and they’ll think I’m dead.”

I am a tech geek through and through. I have enough gadgets in my purse to hold me up in airport security for a long time. I love the internet and I love my social media sites. But every now and then, stepping away from the high speed pace of the Information Age is necessary. Take a deep breath and enjoy simplicity. It’s a wonderful vacation.

Plus when you turn your phone back on, it makes you feel kinda special when you have a lot of messages waiting for you. And that’s a good feeling.

I was riding in a car with my best friend a while back and she was going on and on about this wonderful series about a girl who saves the world by having sex. And, uh, something about angels… and sex again. I’m not going to lie, I phased out a little because she was making absolutely no sense. I’m pretty sure she was speaking English but with this particular friend you can never be sure. About a year later I finally buckled and read these so-called “amazing” books just to see what all the fuss was about.

I will never doubt her again.

The series she was babbling about was the Kushiel Legacy series by Jacqueline Carey. They are epic books chronicling the lives of two heroes, Phedre and Imriel, in a strange fictional land of Terre d’Ange. All six books were fabulous and I will recommend them to anyone who thinks that Lord of the Rings needed a little more sex and intrigue. They are journeys over strange yet oddly familiar lands and Carey unfolds a fictional world that anyone who reads her books would kill to live in.

Her seventh book in this world is Naamah’s Kiss. Set several generations after the sixth book, Kushiel’s Mercy, ended. It follows a young girl named Moirin who grows up in Alba. She is the child of two worlds struggling to find her place. She is then asked by her god to prove her worth and bring pride to her people. This is a daunting task for anyone, if you ask me. Asking it of a young girl sets up a book for youthful follies and lessons in life. Not a far cry for Carey’s normal stomping ground. I was excited!

I will attempt to give no spoilers but say that this book really disappointed me. I had my hopes set very high for a book that was full of new stories, facts and rules. But instead I had to relive the same stories more than once. Although she couldn’t escape the very past she created, she delivered a slightly new character. In Carey’s previous works, her characters (even as youngsters) were smart, thoughtful and strong. But Moirin was… How do I put this lightly? Moirin was vanilla. That’s it, vanilla.

I was expecting so much more. I was expecting yet another headstrong and independent character who finds her destiny by simply living her life. Instead I got a young woman, seemingly uncomfortable in her own skin and led around by a spirit in her soul. She makes no real decision through the book other than to actually find her destiny. Ever other plan she has is brought to her or she is pushed into. It’s rather annoying really. Most of the time she just whines that she wants to do something else but her silly destiny keeps getting in the way.

The book is bland compared to Carey’s first six books but it is a good stepping stone. She found a story somewhere in the last few chapters and sparked my interest again. She ignited the spark just enough for me to be furious at where she left off and I was craving more.

In all of my complaining I will say that I am eager to see what Carey does with Naamah’s Curse. She is a wonderful writer and I will not let one so-so book sully the world she created. I really hope that Moirin comes into her own and isn’t just a shadow of a previously wonderful character. She truly can be amazing, if she ever finds her own footing.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 cupcakes