The Chairman has arrived.

I don't have classes on Monday, so normally I hang out at home and do some class preparation and stuff. I was sitting outside my house reading and the mailman came and had a delivery for me. My new helmet decals had arrived!

Also, I intentionally picked a Chinese-looking font.
It's called "Wonton". Ze Boyfriend says it's racist.

Okay, so firstly, you'll probably notice that they say "Chairman Mouse". Yes, I am officially changing my derby name. I submitted a thing to TwoEvils a few months ago, but they're working on January now so I won't even know if it is official for ages. But I don't really care, since we don't care about 2E now, do we? I think the new name's been growing on me, since I thought of the change. I like that it's a play on "Chairman Mao", and since I'm Chinese and probably going to be branded a communist in this country, it was fitting. And I get to keep the "Mouse" part because I'm little. Also, I like the idea of having a dictator for my derby alter-ego.
 
The thing to do was obviously to stop doing work and put the new decal on! Yes, I actually did this. My poor students. Oh well. I had prepared for this day last week by buying some rubbing alcohol, some wet/dry paper (like sandpaper, but finer) and some hardcore cleaning shit called "Goof-Off" which removes shit like gum from carpet and stickers and anything from anything else really.

Anyway, in with the new and all that! So, the first thing I had to do was take off the old derby name and number. The name wasn't so bad, since originally what I had done was print out my name and use a big piece of packing tape to stick it down. I have a white helmet, so the white paper on the white helmet made the black text stand out a fair amount and it worked okay. It did get a bit grubby over the year:

Also, I'm keeping the stars. I worked hard for those.

Peeling the tape off wasn't so bad except that it had kind of fused to the helmet in a goopy sort of thing and only came off in tiny strips. The bit under the actual name with the paper was probably the cleanest part of my helmet to date. It was all still shiny and bright white and not covered in scratches. I gave it a bit of a clean with some paper towel and rubbing alcohol and then that was pretty much done:

It looks like a giant shiny egg. For my egghead.

I have to admit that it was a bit sad, taking away one derby identity and replacing it with another one. Or at least taking that one away and then having nothing there. :( Maybe I'm just an old sap like that. But that said, the back of the helmet still looks the same as before. I'm not a huge fan of sticking craploads of stickers and whatnot all over my helmet, so I guess this is all I'm going to have on it:

F is still for Fucking Awesome.

The derby number was a fucking bitch to get off. For one thing, I had used strips of duct tape originally, but then they fell off, leaving that cloth strippy stuff underneath but no color, so I had just colored it in with a paint marker because that was faster than making new duct tape cloth strips and possibly duct taping my hands together (which is what happened the first time). I had to use rubbing alcohol and a towel, and it took ages. I got impatient and used some wet/dry paper, and that helped although the dissolved bits of paint marker got into the the little scratches so it ended up getting a bit gray, and then I had to buff that out.

This bit was a fucking pain in the ass and took over an hour to do. I also ended up just using the Goof Off shit for the 3, because that wasn't going anywhere and by this time I'd used half a bottle of rubbing alcohol and the fumes were making me slightly high. Also then I knocked over the bottle of rubbing alcohol and got it all over my front steps(since I was responsibly doing this in a well ventilated area) and then also burned my leg on the metal edge of the step to the house while I was trying to clean that up. I'm kind of surprised and thankful that none of the rubbing alcohol got onto the cat that lives downstairs, and directly under my stairs at the time. Anyway. Don't huff chemical fumes, kids.

After having all these weird chemicals on my hands I also went
and ate lunch. Because I am a viking. Or an idiot.

FINALLY, when I was done, it was time to put the new decals on! One thing to note is that I originally had my name/number around the opposite way from what most people do, which is that your name is on your right side of your helmet and your number on the left. (I guess this is because when we started doing derby, Sarge would stand in the middle of the track and to see our names he needed them on the left, not the right. But when you are skating past audience members on the outside of the track, you'd need your name on the right so they know what to yell out.) So I had to reverse that.

I got my decals from TLKelly Graphics from Etsy here. That one's just for one color, but I got the fancy two-color one, so it was considerably pricier, at something like $28. Like, whoa. But I figure that I was going to be a grownup and spend responsibly... not. But they look fucking good and they were quick with the order and design so yeah, why not. I actually emailed them to ask what the font would look like (since the font I'm using is custom and not one of their standard ones) and they did some mock-ups for me within the hour. Then we changed font sizes and placement but yeah. I liked it enough to jump on the wagon the next day.

The first one I put on was the number, since that was smaller and the area for that was relatively clean. The hardest thing about putting decals on is that you are effectively putting something that is flat and two-dimensional on a curved three-dimensional surface. The problem also with decals is that you press down parts of it and they actually stick to the helmet and not to the adhesive thingy that they came on and then you're like FUCK and have to wonkily stick the whole thing down.

But the number wasn't too hard, I guess:

It still looks like a mouse, in Wonton font.

I think I would have liked it a litle bit further forward, but whatever. It was stuck down by this point. The name was a fucking pain in the ass to put on though. I have a pretty small head, and therefore a pretty small helmet, and it was hard to position it right so that I wasn't going to have the name spill over to the MUNT bandage on the back or the monster face on the front. So that was annoying. Also because the decal is fucking huge, it was much fiddlier than just the number. After some wrangling and use of scissors and swearing, I managed to get this thing done:
 

I fucked up the "M" in "Mouse" a little bit because there was a huge air bubble at this point but nothing I could really do about it. This is why when I was little I never bothered to put that Con-Tact shit on my books because I always fucked it up with air bubbles in it and whatever. Ugh. But yeah, it does look pretty fucking awesome, despite the imperfections. I love the font with the black outline, and I like that it looks kind of comic booky as well.

Overall, I think it's pretty good, although $28 (plus $1 shipping) is probably a bit steep to blow on something like this, especially if you're not the kind of person who is good at putting decals on helmets and might fuck it up. I guess for that price you could get a decal and pay someone to put it on your helmet for you in a way that won't induce stress and swearing and air bubbles. But whatever, it's on the helmet now and I fucking think it is rad.

P.S. This will mean at some point I will also have to change the name of this blog, but we will get to that point later. I'm still getting used to the new derby identity.