No, not those skaters from Gotham. This is a mashup of female DC comic characters and roller derby. They're available on Teefury now.
Apart from Harley, they're all missing helmets (unless Batgirl's helmet counts as a derby helmet... I'm not sure what the WFTDA rules are about the face mask bit but I'll let it slide). The art's all done by TomKurzanski.
However, as with all Teefury deals, they only last for one day. As of writing this, you've got just over 21 hours to pick up yours!
Sometimes there are behaviors in roller derby that aren't, well, acceptable in non-derby contexts. For example, Mr. Mouse HATES when I come back from practice and tell him to smell my wrists because hey non-derby people don't appreciate derby stank.
So Vette City Roller Derby has put out this helpful video to let you know what you shouldn't be doing around civilians.
That said, I think that juking is totally acceptable when other people are slow walkers!
Science and technology are awesome. Okay, sure they make things like nukes and whatnot but sometimes there are things that come along which are really useful and we wonder why nobody thought of them before. You know, things like this mouthguard:
For anyone who's had a concussion before, you know those things aren't fun. Your vision is blurry, you can't make proper sentences and falling down is a constant thing. Ok, and of course there's also the fact you've got some kind of brain damage.
Mouthguards in derby are supposed to help prevent that to some extent--when you fall on your head the force of impact can be distributed and absorbed by your jaw and your mouthguard is there to reduce the injury to your body. But the problem is that there's little research on concussions in derby specifically--I mean, we've adopted our safety gear from other sports, and we're still in the early days of knowing how to protect ourselves in a way specific to our sport.
So, the next best thing from actually being able to protect yourself specifically for your sport is to be able to protect yourself generally, AND also get information about how these injuries are occurring. I'm a big fan of information gathering. Enter the FITGuard mouthguard, which has an indicator to tell you the likelihood of your having a concussion in a pretty foolproof way.
The FITGuard has a green LED strip on the front that turns blue when
it detects a medium force impact and red when there’s an above-50
percent chance the athlete has suffered a concussion. The athlete can
then use an app to download a data log showing why the guard is
displaying a given color. The data will also be uploaded to a central
database to help the FIT team improve the device.
Yeah, so that's a handy-dandy way to helping determine the injury. Plus one thing that's good is that you can tell without having to take the skater's helmet off (which might make things worse if they have some other injury, e.g. to their neck).
Plus it's a LED strip so you'd glow in the dark (maybe)!
It kind of reminds me of those stickers they put on things in
Mythbusters to measure G Forces or whatever (for illustration, here's
the Exploding Water Heater episode, the stickers are at 0:35 onwards but stick around for the explosions):
Yeah, I'm glad my head doesn't do that when I get a concussion.
Firstly, the Sochi Olympics are on right now. I'm not a huge fan of the winter olympics, except (maybe not surprisingly) for the events that take place on skates. Not so much fancy ass figure skating stuff, but ice hockey and speed skating.
So here's my favorite winter olympics moment EVER: Steven Bradbury winning Australia's first ever gold medal at Salt Lake in 2002.
And he won it because he was so far behind everyone else in the finals he didn't get caught in the pileup. And that's also how he made it to the semis. And in the heats he didn't qualify but then someone who did got disqualified and he got bumped up. Yeah. That is seriously one of the greatest stories ever told RIGHT THERE.
But hey, that's in the past. Here's some NEW NEWS, speaking of speed skating:
Francey Pants is training for the Winter Olympics. YES. 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, here she comes. Is there anything that she can't do?!
In my non-derby time I am a bit of a gamer nerd. A few weeks ago, Blizzard made a roller derby alternate outfit for one of the chars in their League of Legends clone.
She's supposed to be a roller derby girl I guess, and she has the pads and quads and a jammer star on her head and pigtails coming out of her helmet... what? And what's with the weird bra thing? I'm not sure how I feel about the typical roller derby outfit being all short shorts and long socks, since I guess that works for some people but I've seen a lot more skaters move towards more athletic pants and not weird boob armor. At least she's got the appropriate derby gear on, which you don't usually see when people try to derbify other things. :P
(Warning: lots of pottymouth ahead because I am mad.)
One thing I hate about Halloween is the rampant sexification of women's costumes. Like, seriously, WTF. Fuck No Sexist Halloween Costumes does a pretty good job outlining the ridiculousness of this. And this year I came across Sexy Osama Bin Laden. Like, okay, what the fuck is wrong with you people, really.
When you think about the ridiculousness of things like Sexy Osama Bin Laden and stupid shit like Sexy Fruit Salad (and why the fuck are women's costumes the "sexy" version of the norm?) on the one hand, and then even stupider racist shit to throw on top of the misogyny (e.g. this Trayvon Martin costume, complete with blackface) it almost makes "sexy roller derby skater" not offensive.
I'm sorry, but what the fuck is this shit.
Let's ignore the fact that the first time I saw this was on DNN. Or, let's not. Like, maybe if they weren't also promoting athleticism and whatever about derby, then that might be okay. But if people go to them for a source of information on derby and see this, doesn't this just give a really, really wrong idea about derby, especially since people don't already have much idea of how it is played (besides the obvious "oh I saw Whip It so I understand it" sort of thing).
Of course, I'm not saying that derby is a special case, since pretty much every sport (involving women or not) is sexified at Halloween. But this one doesn't even make any fucking sense.
Here's an alternative one from Value Village.
It's not perfect, but it is much less ridiculous,
and hey, she's actually got pads and a helmet
AND SKATES with it.
In the image above, there are stars on her boobspenders (I call them that because as far as I can gather the suspenders are connected to the boob tube?), and stars on derby helmet covers, so maybe that makes it derby?! I don't know, but I'm really reaching here. Also, if you go to the store website for this, the pads aren't even included. The only thing remotely derby-ish about this picture isn't even included. *headdesk*
So besides the unnecessary sexification of women with this costume, the
fact that DNN posted this apparently "for fun" could potentially be
leading people who might want to know about the sport down the wrong
path. It's different from something like this sexy football player costume because hey, people actually know about football, so they KNOW it is a costume. They don't know about derby, so it is actually possible that people
think that we actually wear shit like this to skate. It's like when
people talk about whether or not derby is a sport--shit like this makes
it look much more NOT like a sport, because people have much less to go on than in other sports for information.
Okay, but let's try to find a silver lining. The only thing derby about this is if you went to a party wearing this and someone who did derby asked you what you were supposed to be and you told them, they would probably hipcheck you in the face because this costume is so freaking stupid.
But if you're still looking for a nonstupid costume, do not despair! At least there are some other choices available. Take Back Halloween has an awesome list of non-sexified, historically accurate (to some extent) representations of strong females on which to base one's costume. (They even have one specific for my wife, yay!)
Wow! I haven't updated this for a while. Sorry. Anyway, a LOT has happened since my last entry. I spent three weeks back in Australia, did my Ph.D. graduation (for which I deliberated wearing skates, but there was carpet and LOTS of stairs, plus I wasn't sure how wearing a giant robe on wheels would work without eating shit), went to a bunch of derby practices and did an awesome epic lake skate with Boudi. Actually, when I was in Canberra, the things I did the most pretty much was all skate related (even though I also had graduation and a conference to go to, I managed to wrangle a lake skate, skate shopping, social skate with CRDL and a few VDL practices. It turned out that I got to do something skatey pretty much every day. Yay).
I learned a lot while I was away, and in the next few weeks I'll be doing a bunch of posts about particular things that I saw work well at other leagues, new drills I learned, and whatnot. Keep your eyes peeled!
(Or is this in the realm of math? Or engineering? I don't know.)
So, I read today thata guy in California has invented a wheel. No, keep reading. That's not the end of it. It's a wheel that rolls faster and better than a round wheel, across a variety of terrains.
AND IT IS SHAPED LIKE A CUBE.
YES. A CUBE. LOOK AT IT.
Okay, it's not SO crazy. The cube shape has a wave pattern, so you would still get a roll on these wheels. The grooves in them mean you don't roll over debris, but they get "funnelled" off to the outside, so you're less likely to trip and eat shit if you skate outdoors. Plus because there are those big grooves, there's less contact area with the ground so you have less friction, which would result in a smoother roll on a variety of surfaces.
So far it's only available for skateboards, but if this takes off, I
wouldn't mind trying these for derby, especially given the way these are made. The super cool thing about this is that they're made by snapping together smaller wheel-parts of different hardnesses. So if you wanted a sticker inside on your inside wheel (e.g. if you push more on one side of your wheel than the other--and you can see how much you do this by checking your wheels for coning), the bam! You just put together different segments of different hardnesses and Bob's your uncle.
(That said, there's already something like this on the market in the form of Faster skates' demilune wheels, which were released several months ago, but haven't seen to have taken off. But they have a little strip of sticker urethane closer to the axle on each wheel for more push.)
More information is available on the kickstarter here.
So last night, the awards ceremony for the best female athletes in Australia took place in Canberra. I remember voting for this: basically, there was a poll open to the public to name the best athletes (across any sport) in Australia, in an attempt to boost the profile of women in sport.
The top 25, and an article about it, is here. There are a lot of good athletes--Australia does have a very strong sporting presence--but what is notable is that ShortStop (who was voted MVP of Team Australia at the Roller Derby World Championships last year) won the popular vote, but didn't even make the top 25. Her name is in the "and here are the other people who got voted on" bit at the bottom of the article.
Shorty at Blood and Thunder, with the other MVPs
Of course, the women who did make the top 25 are fantastic athletes--they are world champions, Olympians, superstars in their own right. I think that they certainly deserve to be up there. But what pisses me off is that Sports Hydrant, the organizers of the event, put this to a vote, and then "moderated" the result. I also like how the reporter for the article describes the potential result that a derby girl could have won the popular vote as "alarming". Really? What's the point of asking the public to vote, if you don't care about the result they will give you?
What this suggests to me is that roller derby is still not seen as a legitimate sport. Even though it's clearly really popular (and certainly more so than, say, shooting paralympics which made the list), there's still something it is lacking before it will be recognized as a sport in its own right. I have no other explanation for why such moderation had to take place, but then I wouldn't know what was going through the minds of the organizers.
Consulting other halls of fame and sporting records (as the organizers did) disadvantages roller derby, which does not have an Olympic presence (most of the other sports listed do), or at least have a well-established championship. Blood and Thunder--the roller derby world championship--is only a year old. Of course, the current reincarnation of sport itself is also relatively new. But it is a sport. It demands just as much athleticism, strength and strategy as any other sport on that list. What else needs to be done to show that it is a legitimate sport, and not just some random passing fad?
I honestly don't know what justifies taking Shorty off the list. CRDL is the most successful sports team to come out of the Australian Capital Territory. Team Australia got congratulated in parliament by the Prime Minister for their performance at Blood and Thunder. I also don't see the point in trying to boost the profile of women athletes if you take one of the most popular sports that there is for women, and publicly strike down one of its most successful players from a list of the top female athletes in the country, in the one sport that has been primarily developed by women, for women. I think it's extremely disappointing that this happened, but in a way I'm not surprised that it has. I just don't know what else needs to be done for derby to get the recognition that it should have.
Update: Okay, according to this article, it's the fact that people wear fishnets and have derby names that makes it not a sport. Really? Try telling a boxer that boxing is not a real sport because they wear little silk shorts or have nicknames for when they are in the ring.
On Wednesday we had our last practice session before we took a break for Christmas/NYE. So of course, it was WFTDA skills test! Honestly, I have no idea how I went; I was still kind of sick and had a massive coughing fit in the middle of the test and choked on my water and snotted everywhere. It was gross and awkward. I thinkI might have failed but we'll see.
Anyway, off-season. What does one do on the off-season? Stupidly, because it's Christmas break, I suspect it's when people stuff themselves full of food and therefore get all sluggish and stuff before they get back. We only have two weeks off but I'll be going back to Oz so I'll be away for a month or so, plus there's Christmas and New Years and two weddings to go to so I'm sure I'll come back a bloaty fat ass.
When I was a kid my mum would never make this shit (maybe once she made ham, but I don't eat ham). We used to have spaghetti and garlic bread for Christmas Eve, and then go to a restaurant for Christmas Day.
I also wasn't planning to bring my skates so I guess I'll have to make up for it by doing crap loads of off skate work while I'm away. I'm thinking something along the lines of:
alternating 30,60,120 minute planks
sit ups (2, 5, 10 sets of 10)
pushups (2, 5 sets of 5, contingent on munty shoulder and hand, blah)
occasional running
bicycles (I actually like these and will probably do these until I collapse)
lifting heavy things (groceries, wedding presents etc.)
knee up/downs (10, 15, 20 sets of 10)
actually stretching in the mornings and after I do exercise
Haha this is all very ambitious I guess. But we'll see how it goes.
Happy holidays! (I don't care whether this is politically correct or not; it's at least accurate if you are on holiday.)
So, at Season's Beatings, in my attempt to be an athelete, I got that big ass bottle of gatorade and some muscle milk. I don't know if drinking protein shakes and whatever is effective, but if it helps me recover faster and fix my muscles and whatever, then hells yes. I also tried to eat things like protein bars and peanut butter and banana sandwiches to get my energy up.
No.
Last week, I bought my first actual pack of protein shakes. I don't want to be like super muscly or anything, just have a better recovery time after my muscles get a workout. I feel like sometimes if I skate really hard then it takes me a day or so to recover or at least stop feeling sore, so I want to improve on that. General conditioning I think will help, and so will stretching after practice (which is what BAD taught me but I've not seen any other league I skate with do that), as well as eating better.
I've generally been a pretty healthy eater. I don't really like candy, and I'm definitely not one of those women who will sit in front of the TV and eat an entire block of chocolate or whatever. But I know I don't eat very much meat and don't get protein from that. I eat mostly carbs, and my favorite foods are pretty much all carbs. Before Beatings I accidentally carbo loaded the whole week before instead of a few hours before. Oops. Yeah, I'm not good with that sort of thing. But I do want to lose a bit of weight so I have less to carry when I'm jamming, and also make it lean muscle so I can take and give a few hard hits.
So I've started drinking these protein shake things:
Fancy science shit in fancy sciency looking packaging!
It's like 500ml, so I drink half on my way to practice, and half immediately after, and then usually I have dinner when I get back home, maybe about 30-40 minutes after practice.
Importantly, it doesn't taste like ass. It doesn't taste like rich dark chocolate either, but we'll see. Anyway, I've been doing this for the past week or so and I don't feel beefier or anything. I guess I need to do this longer and more consistently to see if it's improving my performance. Maybe I will just be super beefcake in the next few months or something. Or maybe this stuff is just going to make me ridiculously flatulent. We'll see.
So today for shits and giggles I randomly googled "Derby Jesus" to see what would come up (and also because I wanted to know if other leagues also had a Derby Jesus or what), and I came across this link on the first page. It's some discussion forum for a Baptist Church in Iowa where the topic of discussion is "Roller Derby? Is it safe for a heterosexual like me?"
This kind of Baptist church I like.
I honestly don't know whether to laugh at the ignorance in the discussion that ensued, or just get really annoyed at the fact that there are a bunch of intolerant religious fucks out there hating on derby. Okay, and granted, it was written three years ago and I just came across it now, but still? I don't think much would have changed.
I don't have anything against organized religion or anything like that, to be
sure. If people all want to go around praising Jesus or whatever on their own time, that's fine. The judgement and assumptions is what I don't understand. It just strikes me as weird that people make the derby = lesbians =
demon spawn jump so quickly. I was really amused at the reasoning for
the lesbians thing though, since OF COURSE DERBY WOMEN RIDE MOTORBIKES
TO PRACTICE! Where the fuck are we going to put all our gear on a bike,
really? Oh, and also WE ALL DO DRUGS AT THE BOUT. Because that's totally what goes on in the sport, yes. I'm surprised nobody mentioned the blood orgy that happens at half time though, given the respondents' expertise in the area, clearly.
Sarcasm aside, I did like how the woman who did go ended up thinking that the women at derby were okay and not terrible sinners, and that her only complaint was that their skirts were too short. I suppose it could have been worse if she thought derby was so terrible that she left or had to pray for everyone there or douse the place in holy water or something, but she didn't say anything like that, just that they had short skirts.
I guess it's all baby steps though, right?
This is a statue of Big Butter Jesus in Ohio. The first time I drove
by it, it was dark and foggy and suddenly Jesus was just there and
looming out of the fog with these creepy lights on him. I'm surprised I
didn't crash right there. But it looks like he is saying NO PACK.
After my munting I thought things would be better, so I just tried to
go to sleep. Then the next day everything was fucking shit. The blood
pooled in my butt bruise overnight so I had this fucking huge purple ass
crack, and my fingers were swollen up like little sausages and didn't bend at all. I dropped my toothbrush twice when I was trying to brush my teeth. Also I was
going to a conference that afternoon.
Splints, hospital ID bracelet, hospital gowns.
So I stopped by the hospital on the way to the airport to fly out to
said conference. The doctors put me in for some scans, since there was
so much swelling and pain they couldn't really poke at anything to see
if it was broken. They pushed on random bits of my spine and above my pelvis it seemed okay, but my sacrum/tailbone area hurt like the dickens. Then they also brought in the sports medicine doctor who said that even if I could bend my fingers they could still have fractures, so they splinted up my hands and then sent me off to radiology for some X-rays.
Because they were X-raying my butt, they made me change out of my jeans (with metal bits on them) into a hospital gown which seriously was draping on the ground because I was so short. They were nice though and gave me two so I could wear one backwards and one forwards and have my ass totally covered the whole time when I was walking through the hospital. The hospital gowns were stupidly huge and didn't do up (not that I could use my hands to tie the little tie-y things together anyway because my hands were in splints) but wearing a backwards and a forwards tent at the same time was at least not too terrible, even if it was really... breezy. Also lying on a cold X-ray table in a variety of different positions on a giant squishy bruise was not comfortable.
My whole that thing is brused and sore.
Anyway, so then they were done with the X-rays and I could get back and get dressed. I didn't get the results that day, but basically it turned out that there aren't any fractures, just a crap load of "soft tissue damage" in my joints and also possibly what looks like tears along my finger ligaments. Also, I found out that my tailbone is a fucking weird abnormal shape, which is why they couldn't tell on the X-ray if my tailbone is broken. Normally tailbones curve anyway into your pelvis thingy (yes, I'm so good at medical terms) but mine has a tiny kink in it. I've never had a problem with it but that is why on the X-rays they didn't know right away if something was up with it. So that was pretty cool to find out. But I don't know if that will ruin my dreams of having a prehensile tail at some point.
Anyway, so basically I'm out of action for at least 3-4 weeks, depending on how long it takes to recover. This also sucks because that would be riiiiiight when we are doing the league-wide WFTDA skills test. I'd hate to not be able to test because of my stupid muntings. They only do these every 6 months too, which sucks.
I'll post the X-rays when I get them!
And also here is a random leg bruise I got but didn't notice until I was at hospital.
Mostly tricks for me tonight. We were doing a new drill where you had to juke through a giant pack while still cutting to both the inside and outside lines. It was fine, but then there was a bit of a pileup. Chatterbox fell and took out RayWoWW, and they were both behind me and I was like "yeah I can get out of the way" and then the next minute I was flat on my back on the ground. Two things hurt like the dickens: my butt, and my right hand. I had to stop skating and that was the end of practice for me. Sadface.
Foreground: fingers taped together for sprain.
Background: bag of ice on cushioned chair.
Gritz got me some ice and I spent my time alternating between icing my hand and sitting on a giant ziploc bag of ice. I think two of my fingers are sprained or jarred or something because I fell awkwardly my hand, but I can bend them a bit, so nothing broken there, I am sure. The butt is a whole other story. I have to be really slow with sitting and getting up and putting weight on it sucks. I am sitting on a bag of ice right now. I tried to shower before and even stepping into the shower (over the lip of the tub) resulted in a load of cussing and shit. Also because my hand is munted I couldn't shampoo my hair properly. Argh.
Apparently what happened was that Chatter fell and as she did her leg came up and took me out. I'm not sure how: either she kicked me square in the butt as she was falling, or I fell and landed square on her skate. Either way, there was butt-to-skate contact and it was hard.
Anyway, this is what my facebook status says now:
Trick: I might have broken my ass (literally) at derby. Treat: I am getting an awesome bruise. Trick: I can't show anyone because of its inappropriate location.
Because I am pretty sure I can't post a picture of it here either without violating Blogger's terms of service, let me describe it for you: I am starting to get a bruise on my ass, right at the base of my spine where my spine intersects with my pelvis, basically at the top of my ass crack. And then the bruise goes INTO MY ASS CRACK AND ON EITHER SIDE ON MY BUTT CHEEKS. WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK.
I'm sure you all just had to think about my butt. I'm sorry. I will have it checked out but apparently there's nothing doctors can do for a broken tailbone? Also I have a conference to go to tomorrow which means sitting on a plane for the whole day, and then sitting for two days after that. Fuck. Also this post took over an hour to write because I can only use one hand. Happy Halloween.
Ugh, it is that time of year when job stuff comes around again. Basically, I'm in a role that gets renewed annually, so it's not like a perament position or anything. And that's really shit because of the lack of job security etc.; I could actually be on the other side of the world this time next year doing more or less the same thing but at a different university. After a while, the moving gets old. Also, I felt like I just went through the job merry go round shit and I'm not ready to do it again, I think.
I also often have dreams when I am participating in competitive eating and being a super viking at it, but that seems more a product of gluttony than actually wanting to be a competitive eater.
Last night I was really stressed out about jobs and I had this awesome dream that I just decided not to do my real life job for a year and spend that year basically on my skates the whole time, and improving as a skater. It was amazing. The idea of being able to spend so much time working on something I really like was really exciting. I had training 3x a week, and the rest of the time I skated everywhere and got over my fear of outdoor skating on hills and stuff, and I would go to rinks and work on things and everything. And in my dream I got super good at derby over the year and could do backwards crossovers (on both sides) and pegassists and I understood derby strategy and was lead jammer ALL THE FUCKING TIME and nobody could touch me and nobody got munted.
Then I was like, "boo, that's not going to pay the bills," and I woke up. I do this a lot--I will be having an awesome dream and then my stupid pragmatic cynnical self will come and shit all over it and I will actually wake up because I realize that my dream isn't real. And now I am like, FUCK YOU, BRAIN.
But the idea has been planted in my mind. There aren't any professional derby leagues (thankfully I think), but how awesome would it be if you could just do derby all year and not have to worry about stuff like work and whatever else gets in the way?
Sorry for the lack of updates. Southwest Virginia is nice, but NO DERBY YET BECAUSE MY STUPID HEALTH INSURANCE IS TAKING AGES TO GO THROUGH. Argh!! It's frustrating. Apart from skating with Boudi in San Francisco, I haven't skated for about six weeks now. I'm not going to skate without my insurance though because I am the Queen of Munt and will probably break my face or something.
Stupid university administration; how long does it take you to do someone's insurance application?! Boooooo! Seriously, I can't wait to start skating again. I'm hearing about everyone learning these new things and having open scrims and I'm totally jealous and want to play too. Sadface.
Anyway, on an unrelated note, here's a picture of a slice of pizza that is bigger than my head that I ate at the my work's welcome reception on the way to a welcome dinner with my work peeps:
NOMTASTIC.
Hopefully I'll be back on skates next week, but we'll see how effective the administrative machinery is around here.
Today I was at my faculty orientation for the new job, and we had to do a boring thing where you go around and introduce yourself and then say something interesting about yourself. (Sidenote: academics REALLY like that pedigree shit; everyone was like "I'm so and so and I did my Ph.D. at such and such university" or whatever.) Obviously, for my interesting fact, I said that I did roller derby. Some people laughed; others just looked surprised or confused. Whatever, that's not a weird reaction at all I guess. Then, later in the day, a woman (who was probably in her mid-30s) came up to me and was like, "Aren't you a bit small to be a rollergirl?"
I'm sure she meant well, but what the fuck?
I'm about five feet tall. Maybe 5'0.5" on a good day. But until this point, I wasn't aware that there was a particular size and build that people who do derby. Maybe she was just thinking that women who do derby are giant amazonian behemoths who can crush walnuts with their thighs or something. Maybe she thinks they're the kind of women who kill men by Snoo Snoo. But whatever it was, I was kind of taken aback.
I didn't really respond to the question except to probably smile weakly
and say "no", and then I was trying to think of something else to say.
Okay, so people make assumptions about all sorts of things all the time. Maybe I should have told her that one of the reasons I liked derby was because it didn't require people to have a particular size or build to do well; hell, I thought any team in their right mind would want a combination of skaters of different sizes, because differet people can do different things. Isn't that what the all-inclusive spirit of derby is about? For example, check out the infamous video of Rice Rocket taking a ride on Beyonslay:
Surprisingly, I'm not just posting this video for the "WOW, HOLY SHITBALLS" factor.
Obviously, there is a sense in which size does matter. If it were the other way around, I seriously doubt that there'd be any youtube videos of Beyonslay taking a ride on Rice Rocket without crushing her. Beyonslay is clearly great at what she does, which is blocking the shit out of the incoming jammer (after all, she's the "shark/power blocker" in that play), and she knocks RR out a few times before the ride in the full video of the jam. Likewise, RR is a great jammer and uses her size and speed to get around the rest of the pack with more or less no problem. So there, it looks like size is important, in some kind of role-specific sense.
But then, there's another, broader, sense in which size doesn't, or shouldn't, matter. If you had a team of all Beyonslays or all RRs, well, I think that'd be an interesting bout to watch. Most teams will put a combination of different skaters in, to optimize their abilities and whatnot. Having people with different abilities based on different sizes is one way you don't put all your eggs in the skill basket. That said, it'd be interesting to see how derby strategy develops if a team was all made up of tiny skaters who could skate five abreast and not touch each other or something, or a team of all really large women who could booty block the entire track or something.
But that can't even be true. What you can do in derby isn't contingent on what size you are or what your body build is. I mean, okay, maybe people who are bigger and heavier can take out smaller people more easily, but that's not even a given:
(Photo: LRR)
That's London Rockin' Rollers' Murder Urs taking out a blocker who is pretty much twice her size. Ans she's doing a fucking good job of it. So it's not like big girls have a one-up on little girls by default. (Also, she's little and blocking! As much as I like jamming, I get a bit bleh at the assumption that little girls jam and big girls block, and there's no in between. Also I think I think this because I'm not very good at jamming.) But yeah, so size doesn't seem to matter here.
Finally, it's not even that you have big girls and little girls. Derby skaters come in all kinds of combinations of height and build and ass-sizery. I don't have a skinny ass. Hell, my butt pretty much starts right at the bottom of my ribcage and goes to my knees or something in a continuous ass-and-thighs-in-one-thing. It's not mega huge either though, even though I can pretty much leg press Ze Boyfriend (and he weighs almost twice as much as me). So you might think that if size matters, it's size where that matters. But I'm not sure it does. Also, the twelve-year-old boy mentality in me is tittering a lot at talking about size and where.
But I can't get over the fact that said lady at my work orientation even made the comment at all. Is it because I'm short, that she thought I must be likely to be crushed to death by women bigger than I in derby? (Okay, muntings aside, really.) Or maybe she's just thinking about whatever impression of derby she's got, like from Whip It or something, but even then, that can't be right.
They all look more or less the same height and build.
Also, I am seeing a distinct lack of derby booty.
Or maybe I am taking this out of context and she just wanted to have a friendly conversation with me, and I am a socially retarded idiot who is taking this too far.
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...
I'm not the gushy type, but I have to post this because Ze Boyfriend decided to get me a surprise. I normally hate surprises because I'm one of those impatient types and I like to know stuff. But check out this awesome ring that he got me:
It's a custom ring that he got someone to make at a website that normally does monogrammed rings and whatever but he got them to put my derby number on it. AND THE OTHER SIDE OF THE RING IS A BOTTLE OPENER. I have opened many bottles with it in the past week. Yay.
I am now wondering if there's a way I can heat up the ring without injuring myself, so I can brand people with it when I hipcheck them or something. Or maybe an inkpad will do in a pinch. But yeah, isn't that awesome? :D
Also the picture makes me look like I have sausage fingers, hahahaha.
As some of you will know, I'm finishing my Ph.D. and then moving to the States to be a grownup. I already checked out where the nearest roller derby league will be to my new city, and I'll see if I can swing by BAD and SCRD on my way in. But yeah, the idea of moving to the States again (I lived in Michigan a few years back) is kind of exciting. I like lots of American things, like drive-through everythings, deep-fried everythings (except chicken), and monster trucks.
These guys also made the list. (Well, Star Trek generally,
but I have a mild preference for TNG.)
For the 4th of July, Fortune made a list of 100 great things it finds awesome about the US&A. I agree with some of them (clam chowder, Stephen Colbert, cheeseburgers, NASA), and some of them are totally "I am an intern who pulled this out of my ass"* to me (Tupac's hologram, snuggies, cheerleading, marshmallow peeps) and COMPLETELY WTF. But okay, so it doesn't say "100 greatest things", and some aren't uniquely American either, but you get the idea.
Anyway, check out #37. Roller Derby made the list, for what it's worth. Huzzah. It's there in between the Triple Crown and Campbell's Soup Cans, so make of that what you will.
*NOTE: I just noticed the article also says:
To compile the list, we tapped the youth and brainpower of a few members of our summer intern class of 2012.
I'm about five feet tall. Maybe 5'0.5" on a good day. But until this point, I wasn't aware that there was a particular size and build that people who do derby. Maybe she was just thinking that women who do derby are giant amazonian behemoths who can crush walnuts with their thighs or something. Maybe she thinks they're the kind of women who kill men by Snoo Snoo. But whatever it was, I was kind of taken aback. 
