Naming is hard, derby numbering is even harder

I have to change my derby number. Ugh.

Normally, it's <3)~ (as in the emoticon mouse). However, because of WFTDA rules, you can't use symbols in a derby number, so it's usually just 3. But NRV already has a 03, 3 and 3X on their team, so FUCK. But also hooray that they are even considering this, which suggests that I might get to bout soon and have someone yell out something other than "3"--of course, there's no guarantee that I'll remember and respond to the new number; I might accidentally go off to the bin when whoever actually IS #3 gets majored because my brain is stupid. Blargh.


But yeah, new number. Poo. I really like the mouse. I'm the only person that has that of the 65,000+ names on 2E, and it's obviously suited to the name. It's also an emoticon thingy, which is super geeky, and I like that too. But it'll have to go, and that means I'll need to replace it with something else, even if it's just while I'm skating with NRV.

For the record, Facebook didn't like my derby number either when I tried to change my name about a year ago.

Anyway, so I need a new number. Gritz suggested 131, because it kind of looks like the mouse now, but that's a mouse with a squashed face. Also because the font on my scrim tank makes it look like that.

Others have suggested more 3s, like 33 or 333 or 3333. (Haha, at VDL we had a 33, 333, 13 and 303, and once we were ALL on the track at the same time, and that was just fucking confusing and hilarious.)

For practical reasons, I'm also considering 7777, because that would be the longest possible thing to say for a ref, and so it would give me more time on the track before I got binned while they were trying to read out the entire number and what I was getting binned for.

My favorite so far is 100. I'm fucking Chairman Mouse, and Mao has a famous speech where he say:

"Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land."

Or, when poorly translated into English, "let 1000 flowers bloom"--how the fuck do you fuck up numbers so badly in translation? (Oh but maybe 1000 is also an option for a number because if they read out the individual numbers that would give me an extra zero). Of course, this was during the Great Leap Forward, and the 100 flowers campaign was used to tell dissidents that they could speak against their government, and then they were subsequently arrested and probably executed. So I don't know if I'd want to be going down that path.

Other suggestions welcome!

Here's what 1000 flowers blossoming looks like, assholes.

UPDATE: I considered 40,000,000 (as the number of people that died under Mao's regime) but I think that's inappropriate. Also it won't fit on my arm. But imagine if the refs had to read out all the individual zeroes!

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.

Still impatient.

So, apparently my health insurance kicks in at the beginning of the month, which is today. So I should be insured let's say, were I to go to derby training tomorrow. I don't have any evidence of insurance though, but it's only newbie training for the first hour and I could sit out the scrimmage/contact stuff if I didn't want to do that, right? :P

Fuck it. I'm going to derby training tomorrow for the first time here. I'm scared, but I figure the sooner I get into the swing of things, the better. Also, I want to freaking bout and learn some new skills.

Also, in other news, new derby helmet decal with new derby name ordered!!!

Virginia is for lovers, or shovers, or something

So here I am in Virginia. More precisely, I'm in southwest Virginia, like, the bit that sticks out and borders with West Virginia, North Carolina and Tennesee. It's a lot different here than anywhere else I've lived, that most of the places I've lived have been flat and politically liberal, and apparently here it's mountainous and conservative.

I took this picture while I was driving on a highway.

Anyway, when I found out I had a job offer and was possibly moving here (so, back in April) I looked up the nearest roller derby league to this town. Actually, my job choice was essentially a function of 1) how good the actual job was in terms of job security, salary, whether they would pay for my health insurance, etc.; 2) what the actual city was like; 3) how far the nearest roller derby league was. For the record, #2 ruled out Detroit.

That said, Detroit is about to get a Robocop statue, so
I might have to visit there anyway. Check it out here.

Anyway, so the nearest league to me are the NRV Rollergirls (NRV being New River Valley, which is some general description of this entire area which is surrounded by the Appalachians), and I've been in contact with them about training and stuff. They asked me about my bouting/scrimmaging experience, eep. And they train three times a week and do 30-60 minutes of scrimmage EACH TRAINING. And they train Sunday, Tuesdays and Wednesdays so there's minimal recovery time. Holy crapballs. I am going to die. I'm not skating with them yet, because the university hasn't given me my fancypants employee health insurance, and knowing how munted I get I am not skating without health insurance. Also, from my experience with BAD, WFTDA insurance is supposed to be supplemental to your own insurance, so were I to get munted I wouldn't be covered anyway. But once I get my health insurance sorted out, I'm going to go and skate with them and I will report back.

Part of the Huckleberry Trail.
It looks okay, but hilly.

Another thing is that this place is unintentionally skate-friendly, even with the hills. There are a lot of bike tracks, and they're usually asphalt and (more or less) sealed. There's a particular trail I'm going to test on the bike called the Huckleberry Trail that goes into the next town (I think it's like a 12-13 mile round trip), but that one seems to be okay with skaters. At least, it's apparently okay for "inline skaters" so presumably quad skaters won't die on it. It'll probably cure my fear of outdoor and hill skating.

I am also considering skating to my classes and to work but the sidewalks here are sometimes mega-shitty or actually just flattened dirt for a block or something. And they're quite narrow, so if I plow stop I'll take up the entire sidewalk, and that's with my stumpy legs. Still, I'll have to scope it out. Also I have work Tuesday, Wednesdays and Thursdays, so in theory I can be on skates four days a week, and on Tuesdays and Wednesdays I will be on skates for most of the day. Hooray indeed.

Finally, I am in the process of changing my derby name! Don't worry, you can still call me Mouse. But keep your eyes peeled on that one...

Should I change my name?

There’s been some talk among people in the league for changing their names. People grow and change, and sometimes your derby persona has to do that as well. I’d been kind of idly considering it, although Mouse is definitely something I like. I mean, for the last twelve years or so it’s been my nickname in whatever sport I happen to be playing (actually, when I played hockey, it was Mighty Mouse, but that was already taken on TwoEvils, so bleh. MadMouse will have to do. Plus I get to be named after a roller coaster that I swore so much on that the little girl in the seat in front of me actually turned to her dad after the ride and was like “Daddy, what’s ‘fuck’?”)

Anyway, I’d be thinking about switching to Chairman Pow, since 1) I’m Chinese and 2) I think the jokes about stature can only go so far. As far as I’m aware, there’s no Chairman Pow on TwoEvils. However, randomly googling “Chairman Pow” gives me a bunch of random DJ stuff and a link to a merby league in British Columbia, Canada. From what I can infer, there’s a dude called Chairman Pow there. Awesome name, I don't blame him for taking it. Heh. Anyway, for all I know he’s registered on TwoEvils and waiting for his name to be approved. So that doesn’t work. Maybe I should split the difference and be Chairman Mao-se. Heh. I don’t know. I really do like my derby number though. Chairman Mouse wouldn’t be so bad.

All my marketing would be taken care of already!

But I don't know. Is it worth the effort of changing one's name? Or should I just not bother? I guess either way it gets shortened to Mouse anyway, but still...

The Greater of Two Evils

In our league we have people who have been skating on their derby names for a year or so, and have recently found out their names have been rejected from the TwoEvils site. But they've bouted under those names, had uniforms and helmets done up with those names, and are just finding out that that was all worth shit.

I talked about TwoEvils here in this entry, but I think there’s increasing frustration with how the site is run. While I certainly appreciate that someone out there has gone to the effort of keeping a site like 2E, derby has grown exponentially, and the system that 2E uses is clunky and can’t really keep up with the volume of names that one can only imagine they get registered. At the time of writing this, there are something like 36,144 names on 2E. That's THIRTY SIX THOUSAND names that you can't copy.

Honestly, I think the time will come very soon when one of the following will happen:

1. Nobody cares about 2E anymore and will actually seek to register their name formally as intellectual property or on regional associations (like RDAU) instead, 
2. Nobody will care about having unique names in the derby world (come on, there’s really only SO many combinations of words you can do that aren’t above some degree of similarity) or
3.  2E will have to evolve its registration system to make it easier for people to actually get onto their site. 

Waiting for 9-10 months is kind of ridiculous. Half the names of the people we registered with VDL are obsolete or don’t even skate with VDL anymore, so that was a waste of time for the 2E people to have to process them. I can’t imagine that a considerable proportion of names on the 2E list are actually currently being used. 

Vague concepts = opportunity to trundle in
Sorites paradox! (Yes, I'm a nerd.)

Also, at the time, if your name is rejected you have no idea if it is or isn’t, except for the fact that your teammates all have their names up and you don’t. TBut today, we received an email from 2E listing the names that were rejected, but with no explanation why they were. I can imagine how frustrating this would be to some people, especially if their names were only remotely smiilar to other names there.

The best indicator of a name rejection is when you type a name in and it tells you the likelihood of a match (from very high to low). But terms like “very high” and “low” are vague, and it’s not clear exactly what that means for rejection. Since the system is automated, changing a letter sometimes does the trick, even if phonetically the names would still be the same. What’s the point of that?

Presumably 2E works something like this (although, of course, I am open to correction): There’s this online spreadsheet (in effect) with everyone’s names on it, and when you submit names they are checked off against the spreadsheet for similarity. Those that don’t match anything are admitted, and those that match things are rejected, and then there’s some additional checking that goes on for the in-between ones. I don’t know if the additional checking is manual, but I’d assume that it is, given how long it takes.

Ironically, THERE IS NOBODY CALLED JOHN DOE ON 2E.

Many people are already moving away from 2E. In Australia, RDAU has its own list for roller derby names for Australian leagues. It's not like I'm ever going to have to bout against someone called MadMouse from some random place like Bumblefuck USA or anything, so why the hell would I need something that is internationally original? (Of course, yes, my name IS on 2E, but the principle still stands.)

Okay, tons of people have already ranted about 2E. (See here for probably the most scathing and hilarious attack, but also here, where a Canadian skater had the same name as a mascot and it was rejected--a MASCOT*! WTF! and also here, for another Australian story.) But suppose now that we DO need to have 2E for whatever the hell reason. How do we fix the machine that is broken, instead of just abandoning it?

Obviously, we need to make sure that people aren't waiting 9-12 months for their names to clear. How do we fix that? Well, how about this: there’s already an automated checking thingy that exists on the 2E website. Why not use that to let people add names to the list themselves? Like, suppose I have a list of names. Maybe I can just copy/paste them into the name submitter thing, and it runs through the names and automatically adds the ones that are unique to the site. The in-between ones can be confirmed by looking at what the search throws up as being the most similar, and then maybe there can be a section for people to provide evidence if they’ve got permission from a skater to use their name. That would considerably reduce the workload that the 2E admins have to do, since there’s less manual labor involved, and let people get instant gratification almost right away.

This is who I'd want to be checking my name
on the website. Of course, that just means less
manual checking, not no manual checking
whatsoever.

Now I’m not a mega computer nerd, but I’m sure there’s a pretty basic program you could write that would let that happen. But that said, I’m not sure how much longer unique names will be sustainable in the derby world. Of course, there are already trends for people to skate under their actual names (which you’d think would be necessary if roller derby becomes an Olympic sport or something) and hey, if someone just happens to have the same (actual) name as you, then what are you going to do?

But so far as having a program for registering names on 2E goes, I’m not sure why this hasn’t happened yet. So consider this a plea to the 2E peeps: Nice work so far, but you don't need to have this burden all by yourself. Please consider updating your system to be able to deal with the number of submissions you're getting for this sport that we have all come to love. We want our names, because the derby side of us is, well, a real part of us, and it is really shit when you are denying that we can have that.

(Postscript: my MS Word spellcheck is dumb and doesn’t recognise the word “Pow”, or the word “spellcheck” for that matter.)

*Speaking of mascots and skates, I imagine that this post will have possibly enraged some. Here, lighten it up with some mascot skating fail. (This is also why I don't support the Raptors, heh.)

And if that wasn't enough...

...the old guard in the league are now registered with TwoEvils!!

2E is a website that lists ALL the names of people who do derby (banked or flat) around the world. It's like a database that you check before you pick your derby name, so nobody has the same name without clearance from the other person. It's actually a really interesting system for social conventions forcing people to be original with names, and it's actually been the subject of a couple of academic articles (of the "Freakonomics" slant) about how the community regulates name ownership and stuff. As an ex-lawyer and academic, I'm excited that there are even academic articles about derby, especially in intellectual property law.

We put our names in in September last year and they came up last night. 2E is run by a handful of skaters and there are a LOT of leagues in the world, so they have craploads to do and naturally there's a backlog. Of course, not everyone's name is there--sometimes someone's name gets accepted before yours (but after yours has been submitted), and you have no idea that your name has been rejected for similarity grounds until after the fact. I'm sure there could be automated systems that would bypass the manual inputting that goes on. In fact, I'm surprised that there isn't yet, but there you go!

Also, nobody in the world has my derby number yet, heh. (Of course numbers don't need to be original, but yeah, nobody up there has an emoticon mouse...)

This was a nice surprise to wake up (pretty sore) to. And there's training tonight again. Yeah.

Cross Promotion

The university Harry Potter club (yes, we have one of those) invited people from the league to participate in their Quidditch Grand Final. Haha. Yes. I’ve been in charge with liaising with the HPC people. Most of the league is super excited about it and we’ve already made a team for their Quodpot half time show for when we compete against the Uni Dragons. My worlds are colliding! I’m super geeked by this. Anyway, introducing:

The Prisoners of Smashkaban!

Starring:

Hermione Gouger (Boudica)

Golden Snatch (Me)

Pop goes the Weasley (Junk)

Professor Rumblewhore (Rubi)

Luna Loveblood (Legz)

Minerva Mc-Gonna-Kill (Lauren)

Quidbitch (Bubbles)

We also came up with a shitload of awesome other HP derby-esque names:

Rubi S. Hagrid

Fluffy (Derby number 3, of course)
Annie Magus

Nimbus-ter 2000

I am aware that this is a skateboard but imagine trying to get tiny quads on Hedwig.

 Godric Griffinwhore

Whore Crux

Die Agonally

Rolldemort

Voldemorticia

Ava D. Kedavra

Abra-cadaver

Draco Kapow-foy

Batter beer

Hairy Plotter

Dumbleclaw

Fire whipski

Calf-blood Prince

Dobby the snout pelt

The snorting twat

Hell-grr Huffle-punt

Salazar Slit-her-skin

Mad-Eye Poon-i

MaxiPadfoot

I think I have just made the most complete HP list of derby names that exists on the internet at the moment.

And we’re going to go full out in boutfits and warpaint, to scare off the Dragon Boating boys. Plus apparently Quodpot is full contact so we can hipcheck the shit out of the Dragon Boaters. Haha. I love us so much. 

The start

So, welcome to my blog. I’ve been meaning to write a blog for a while now, so I guess now I will (probably because this is actually a fit of procrastination, but whatevs).

I’ve been skating for about 4 months now, maybe. A couple of girls at my university started a league at the beginning of the year because the only other league in town (Canberra Roller Derby League) had like a 400-person waiting list or something. I’m on their mailing list, and they are having tryouts in November.

I’ve wanted to do derby for a while, even before I bought my first pair of skates and whatnot. I lived in the US a few years ago and derby was just taking off there when I was leaving. And then I went to the premiere of “Whip It” (NOTE: not the actual movie, just the fancy premiere thingy) at the Toronto International Film Festival. And they had a flat-track derby bout thing in the middle of Dundas Square (which, for those of you who don’t know, is a big square right in the middle of the downtown area). It was pretty awesome. To the untrained eye it seriously just looked like a bunch of women skating around in a circle and punching each other or something. So I thought that looked pretty cool. Then, back in Canberra, the then-boyfriend and I went to a bout between the Canberra all-star Vice City Rollers and the ladies from Sydney RDL in December. It was pretty epic. He was really into it, and when I managed to understand the rules I was like, “oh yeah, this is pretty cool”. I used to play hockey, and to some extent this had the same kind of fast-and-violent disposition about it that I liked.

That night all we could talk about was what my derby name would be. I wanted something that would suggest that I was small and fast, so I picked “Pocket Rocket”. Yep. (Later, I would find out that was taken, and I went through like 6 names before I settled on my current one. Gah. Picking a derby name is hard!)

I liked my first session so much that I wore my skates at work for a week.

And then I procrastinated for like 4 whole months wondering if I could actually do derby. Then one day the then-boyfriend (henceforth TBF) and I were walking across campus and we saw a bunch of people learning how to skate in the courtyard in the middle of the campus. And I was like, “yeah, I can do that”. So I jumped on their mailing list, and lo and behold I found out that they were doing a mass fresh meat purchase from Sydney Derby Skates with a huge discount. I love huge discounts. I managed to squeeze in a late order and then next week I had my awesome Riedell Diablos, and all the padding I could ever want. My friend McSmack skates with CRDL, and she came to our session too. It was probably WAY too basic for her, but it was nice to have someone there that I actually knew. :)

Anyway, I can’t really remember too much about what happened in those early days. There were only a handful of us, and we were being trained by Marie Slamtoinette from Central Coast Roller Girls. Marie had to leave CCRG because she moved to Canberra. Then, a newspaper article went out about how we had our own league and way more people joined, including Drool Sergeant, who is like a proper derby coach guy and actually used to train the CRDL girls. So that was a bit of a scoop. Sarge still trains us and Marie now trains the noobs a bit. There’s also a whole bunch of other people from those early days who have stuck around that I could talk about, but I’m sure that will come out in other entries.