Blood and Thunder!!!

I like how it is an emu and not a kangaroo as everyone would expect.

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last couple of months or so, you should know that the first ever roller derby world cup is on in Toronto! It started early this morning Australian time, and it will be going for the next three days. You can watch the bouts live from DNN here: Click here for awesomeness

I'm mega excited about this. Having an international tournament for roller derby raises the profile of the sport, and makes it clear that it is something that's not just played by a handful of 400-pound lesbians (which is actually how someone tried to describe it to me once, really), or that it's all like in "Whip It" when people go about punching each other or something like that, and it gives the sport a greater degree of legitimacy and visibility. Derby girls are actually athletes, and this is a pretty good opportunity to show the world what they can do. Plus, on a more obvious and less philosophical note, it's like all these amazing skaters all descending in one of my favorite cities in the whole world. Fuck yeah. My brain is exploding from all the awesomeness. Or maybe it's because I'm mega-hungry right now.

There are a crap load of countries actually taking part in it, so besides the obvious USA (of which there are two?), Canadian, and Australian teams, there are also teams from Finland, Argentina, Scotland, France, Brazil and Sweden, among others. I probably would have liked to have seen representation from parts of Asia, like Japan and Korea (because I KNOW they have teams there, unlike China or Honkers which don't have any derby to speak of) but hey, this is the first ever international derby tournament so if this is what it is going to be like in its early days, imagine how awesome it would be in years to come.

Here's a video of Team Australia's first bout of the tourney against Team Germany:

Shortstop is frigging awesome, around the 2min mark. I also like when the person taking the video is all like "scheisse!!" randomly. Ha. Australia also won 136-53.

Team Australia v Team Finland is on in like 35 minutes!!! USA v New Zealand in 15!! I don't think I will be doing much work this weekend. Also, now I know how my housemate felt when the Rugby World Cup was on for like a month (he's a Kiwi, go figure). :D