I have been having all sorts of emotions in the last few months.

I have been very disappointed recently.



That's caused me to be fairly frustrated.



So it's pretty rare that I'm happy.



I've been nostalgic for some old times, which occasionally is good...



... but more often is bad.



A girl played with my heart in a way that was truly shocking.



Now I can rarely remember what it feels like to be really aroused,



or truly satisfied.



It makes me angry!



And somewhat apprehensive about my future.



People tell me I'll get over it eventually, but I'm skeptical.



I want to punch love in the face!



Or, I dunno, become a serial killer or something.



But really, tonight, I'm just feeling repulsed by emotions.



Tomorrow, though, is a new day, and when that day starts in 90 minutes, I will be getting on a plane to fly to Portland to cover the roller derby National tournament live on Derby News Network. I'm sure that will cause all sorts of new emotions.

First game is at 6:30 Pacific time on Friday night -- live video and liveblogging will be happening all weekend. Join us, won't you?

Current Location: Baltimore, MD
Mood: sleepy
Music: Amusement Parks on Fire -- Venus in Cancer

I have learned that one of the important keys to my life happiness is knowing which bits of reality to choose to ignore. One of those bits is the unbelievable loss of privacy, both legally and technologically, that has occurred in just the last ten years of our lives. It's almost overwhelming if you really sit down and think about the depth and implications of it ... so I just try not to think about it.

I had one of those moments today, though, where it sort of smacked me in the face with a blunt reminder.

I was having an email conversation on Gmail with this photographer named Rich to set up terms for using one of his images in a print ad for DNN. Said conversation contained the following elements (among others):

----
(Rich): For efficiency sake lets talk over the phone so we can get all the details out at once rather than through multiple emails.I'm going to be booked for most of the morning and mid afternoon tomorrow. Shoot me your phone number and good time to reach you. Tomorrow evening would most likely be best for me. But, if I happen to have a free moment I can call you before then.

(Me): Excellent! My number is [my number], and I'm free until 6pm Eastern Time on Tuesday.
----

Sure enough, the next time I log in Gmail, there's a new widget in my sidebar with a link to Google calendar, asking:

Would you like to...
Add to calendar
talk to Rich evening.
Wed Jul 30, 2008

Dude. Seriously, DUDE. Not cool. Granted, they got the day off by one, but I imagine the only reason that happened was because Rich referred to Tuesday evening as being "tomorrow" even though he sent the message after midnight on Monday.

This makes me very concerned about all the heroin and child-pornography rings I run from my Gmail.

In happier news, I am making my yearly roller derby pilgrimage to Las Vegas tomorrow, where I will once again get to play roller derby right smack dab in the middle of Fremont Street. Sweet. Also, this time I think I'll finally get the better of those video poker machines. I've been practicing.

Current Location: Baltimore, MD
Music: Curve -- Horror Head

Let's be honest with each other -- half the reason I decided to spend three months in Albuquerque was that I heard that Duke City Derby practices and bouts in a bar. Roller derby! In a bar! It's, like, all two of my favorite things in the world in the same place!



One of the first things that happened when I got to Albuquerque was that I sat in on a Duke City league meeting, in which one of the topics was the pressing need to move to a new venue. I was baffled - perplexed, even. The roller derby was already happening in a bar. What improvements could conceivably be made? On top of that, the bar charged the league $10 an hour to rent the place for practice. TEN DOLLARS AN HOUR. Harm City Homicide paid $10 a SKATER when we first started having 2-hour regular practices, and even that was only with the help of Charm City sharing the benefits of their rink sponsorship with us.

So last night, after two years of anticipation from afar and two weeks of anticipation in Albuquerque, I finally got to go to a DCD practice with ladyfriend Muffin. Boy! Was I excited!

We strolled into the location to find eight rollergirls sitting around looking surlier than usual. I couldn't figure out what was bringing everybody down until I looked at the track. The majority of turns 3 and 4 were, like, underwater. The roof was leaking and a significant portion of the bar was flooded ... not enough that it would be a big deal if you were coming for a couple of drinks and a game of pool, but something of a significant issue if you were going to try and, you know, rollerskate. Also, there was a mystery substance in one of the non-flooded corners that I at first thought was mold, but proved upon closer examination to be bird droppings. Really? A bird pooped on the track? I have been to many a derby venue, but that was a first.

However, the Duke City girls were not the kind of ladies who would let a little thing like having 20 percent of their track unusable keep them from having a practice. Fortunately it was fresh meat night, which meant that the majority of the league wasn't present ... it was a handful of coaches (Muffin, Kamikaze Kim, Death Ro, Miss L Command and Punchkin Pie, I think) leading about eight or nine newbies on basic skills. There was just barely enough space to run a practice by having every drill start from the jammer start line, continue around the first two turns, stop at the beginning of the flooded area, and then head back in the opposite direction.

Of course, the problem with this was that everybody was going at slightly different speeds, and therefore some were going clockwise while others were going counterclockwise. And also, that the layout of the bar had a dining area where the infield would be on a normal track ... which meant that you couldn't see one straightaway from the other one. Which meant that you never knew if somebody was skating directly towards you until you were already halfway through the turn.

Also, the hardwood track itself was slightly elevated off the concrete floor, and just barely as wide as a regulation track. On a normal derby track, if you get blocked out of bounds, you go over a flexible rope boundary, and maybe if you go REALLY far out of bounds, you crash into a crowd member. No such luck here. Get blocked out of bounds in Duke City, and you *literally* go off the track and into a metal pole, concrete barrier, table or mechanical bull. (Yes, there was a mechanical bull sitting next to the track. Unfortunately, it was not plugged in.)

In other words, Duke City had managed to find all sorts of new ways to make an absurdly dangerous sport exponentially MORE dangerous. It was great. Most of the skaters seemed upset about the flooding, and it was kind of unfortunate that we couldn't do laps, but since this whole place was totally new to me I thought it was pretty cool. I entertained myself for quite a while racing at top speed around 3/4 of the track and performing a do-or-die hockey stop at the end (because if you didn't perform it correctly, you would fly into a lake and the 10 trash cans that were placed around the lake to catch the water dripping from the roof.)

I helped out a little bit with coaching, which is still weird to me, but I'm starting to take to it. Muffin and I teamed up a couple of times to demonstrate or lead drills, which was pretty great -- although we've only skated together three times now I can already tell that we're surprisingly similar in style and ability and that makes it almost as fun to work together as it does to compete against each other. We did that a little bit at the end, too -- eventually the water was almost all mopped or air-dried, allowing us to race around the full track, except that you had to be hyper-aware in one of the turns because you had to either jump or maneuver between the remaining puddles, which we didn't always succeed at. Hydroplaning on roller skates is pretty scary.

In other news, Muffin's roommate and BFF Dahmernatrix is obsessed with the new version of American Gladiators, and although I have not seen it yet, I am predisposed to hate it because it features a Gladiator named Justice, and he looks like this:



I don't say this often, but this situation calls for it: nigga, please.

Current Location: Albuquerque, NM
Music: Metric - Soft Rock Star

I got an email from Frenzy Lohan recently, and I will directly quote it here:

Derby,

Derby, derby derby. Derby derby. Derby? Derby.

Derby,

Derby

That pretty much says it all.

Charm City Roller Radio: Episode Four

Baltimore's Charm City Roller Girls are back for their sophomore season, and Justice Feelgood Marshall and Dirty Marty are back to tell you all about it in Episode Four of the derby world's second-finest podcast! Featuring a recap of the season opener, a look ahead at this Sunday's doubleheader, and interviews with some of the newest Charm City Roller Girls, including Reckless Ndangerment of the Speed Regime, Marzipain of the Night Terrors, Penaltyna of the Mobtown Mods and Cherrylicious of the Junkyard Dolls.

Music: Like Honey - Let It Pass

Apparently, this happened at some point in the past:



I've been leaning very heavily on the friends filter options recently, because life is ridiculously complicated. If you don't have an LJ login, you probably haven't seen anything here for quite a while. Feel free to comment if you would like to be added, because I don't see my life getting any less complicated anytime soon and any future public posts will probably be a variation on "Hey, come to this upcoming roller derby event!" Because I am involved in roller derby. Did you know that? I am.

Music: Skid Row - Makin' A Mess

After two months and countless spare beds, couches, recliners, air mattresses, back seats and floors, my homelessness is finally coming to a blessed end. I'll be moving back to Charles Village for the fourth time, into a one-bedroom place at the corner of 25th and Calvert. It is moderately sized, but the mere fact that it has more than one room makes it HUGE in comparison to my last apartment. It has three rooms AND a real kitchen AND a nice bathtub AND a washer & dryer! It's a nice location, and by "nice location" I mean "I can walk to the Ottobar." I am moving in on November 1st, and this week seriously cannot pass fast enough. I find myself scribbling floor plans on the back of bar napkins.

The rent is fairly cheap for the size of the place, but on the other hand I am fairly poor, so I am going to be seriously impoverished for a while. Less sushi, more ramen. The tradeoff is fully worth it, though. The longer it's been since I lived alone (back in April of this year), the more I realize it was a pretty serious mistake to stop doing that. I didn't realize how much I enjoyed having that space until it ceased to exist, and missing it really put a serious strain on my relationship with Cara. I can't know for sure if we would have stayed together if I hadn't moved in with her, but it probably wouldn't have gotten quite that difficult at the end. I imagine that at some point in my life I might be ready to live with a significant other, but 2006 was apparently not that time.

My landlord is a totally nice guy, very smart and well-read, and also a sad, sad bastard. I went over to his place on Guilford to sign the lease, and he spent a lot of time talking about Proust, which is always a warning sign because I associate Proust with this completely insane chick (I love her, but she's still insane.) He had a lot to say about how Proust held that unhappiness was the most important emotion because it taught you the most about yourself. I would have agreed with him for most of my life, but I eventually found that the big problem with unhappiness is that it MAKES YOU FEEL REALLY BAD AND THAT SUCKS, so fuck that noise.

I didn't want to attempt the frontal assault, so I tried to change the subject by saying "I really like your place. Lots of space, nice and big."

"Oh, it's a lot of empty space, since my wife left me."

Oops, that didn't work. "Oh, I'm sorry. Um... how long ago was that?"

"A few months."

"Does she still live around here?"

"Oh, yes. Just four blocks up, actually. I still see her all the time. She's a lovely dancer. She used to dance with me. Sometimes I see her down at the Belvedere doing ballroom dancing, and she's still so beautiful, still attractive. She aged much better than I did, you see."

"Oh. That's, um, really rough. I'm sorry."

"She's like George Sand. Absolutely brilliant. But an absolute heartbreaker. Are you familiar with George Sand?"

"She, um, wrote books?"

He thought this was pretty funny. "Ha! Yes! And she broke hearts! De Musset wrote a book AND a play about how she broke his heart." Then he suddenly got very sad again. "I don't supppose anybody will write a book about my broken heart."

Man. That was the toughest lease-signing ever.

---

On a completely different note, if you don't have plans for this Friday, come to this:



For some unknown reason, I signed up to MC this event with Jules Burn of the Speed Regime. Come watch us make drunken attempts at witty banter. It'll be great.

Also, I have a downright brilliant costume idea. Unfortunately, to pull it off I need to get my hands on a fursuit, like, immediately. I don't suppose there are any retired fur enthusiasts in the audience that can help a brother out?

Music: Yo La Tengo - Sugarcube

Ok, so in the last week I have gotten two offers to fly cross-country to referee roller derby. Of course, they're not paying gigs. Derby gives you a weird mindset where it seems perfectly reasonable to drop $300 on airfare for the privilege of working for free.

The first one makes me the head referee of Rollercon 2007 in July in Las Vegas. I must say that I am pretty stoked about that. Last Rollercon my referee duties were primarily scorekeeping and timekeeping, which is unquestionably important but not that challenging. I imagine that being nominally in charge of 50+ national refs who are used to being the final authority on referee matters will be quite a bit more challenging. Plus, I'm sure my status as head ref will make it less likely that the Arizona Derby Dames will try to beat me up in an elevator again.

The second one has me going to Tucson, AZ to referee in the western regional Dust Devil tournament in February. Also a pretty huge deal because 2007 is the first year that a national tournament will determine the national champion - it's roughly analogous to the NCAA college basketball tournament. Also highly flattering because I didn't actually apply for this gig, the head ref of the tournament contacted me based on my reputation (really, my reputation has primarily been built by running my mouth on derby boards all year, but still.) Also pretty exciting because Tucson is where elf_owl lairs, and it has been Entirely Too Long.

However, here's the thing: the Dust Devil head ref made it very clear that I would not be allowed to wear my normal skirt-and-tights attire because it would be distracting and unprofessional and that referees are not to be part of the show. I was kind of nonplussed and vaguely insulted by this. First of all, I thought the entire idea behind derby was to marry sport and spectacle. Second of all, there is no way that one dude in a dress is going to distract anybody from 28 hot girls in tight revealing clothing for more than an nanosecond. Third of all, I REALLY did not like the insinuation that I have been unprofessional at CCRG bouts. I have worked and studied my ass off to make sure that CCRG bouts are officiated as well as is humanly possible. Fourth of all, a big part of the idea behind derby is remixing traditional notions of gender roles. It seems to me that the primary authority figure being a male in a skirt is supportive of that, not undermining of it.

I responded with all of these points to his offer, but I accepted his terms anyway because I'm a strong believer in the your house / your rules policy (in life, as in derby). Plus, I REALLY wanted to go to the first Dust Devil earlier this year and long regretted not having done so, and refereeing gives you the absolute best seat in the house guaranteed. But it's weird, I feel simultaneously flattered and offended by the offer and its condition. That's a combination you don't get too often.

Music: Beat Happening - Our Secret

A meme from redlightpress via wowbagger. I do love music games.

"Open up your music program and play 15 songs on random. Alter the name by turning it into a convoluted, wordy synonym. For example: Silent Night = Nocturnal Time Completely Lacking Noise. When someone guesses the title correctly, strike out the convoluted one and put down the real title and the person who figured it out."

This isn't totally random, because some of the stuff that came up would have been completely impossible. So in the interest of fair play:

1. In This Location, My Subconscious Created a Belief That My Career Dealt With The Construction Of Buildings The Decemberists - Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect (hannahchan)
2. From This Moment On, Do Not Act In A Manner That Is Disappointing Or Unsatisfactory To Me Depeche Mode - Never Let Me Down Again (wowbagger)
3. Medieval Weaponry Favored By Knights Made Of Matter That Is Neither Solid Nor Gaseous GZA - Liquid Swords (doctah_ignazio)
4. A Series Of Romantic Encounters Occuring During A Historical Age That Saw Explosive Growth In Science, Religion and General Culture Hooverphonic - Renaissance Affair (redlightpress)
5. An Official Designated To Preside Over An Organization and/or Government Who Exudes An Offensive Odor James Brown - Funky President (hannahchan)
6. It Is Impossible that Precipitation Will Continue In Perpetuity Jane Siberry - It Can't Rain All the Time (faerydusted1)
7. The Unique Scent That Arises From Rhythmic Gyrations In A Chamber Dedicated To Rest
8. It Is Vitally Important To Remember That One Must Engage In Activity That Is Not Specifically Related To Completing The Task At Hand
9. It Is Incomprehensible To Me That You Have Indeed Expired The Microphones - I Can't Believe You Actually Died (wowbagger)
10. The Time In Question Is The One In Which I Extend My Arm In The Direction Of My Firearm Mission of Burma - That's When I Reach For My Revolver (katsby)
11. Provide Sustenance And Nourishment By Placing Your Lips On Mine My Bloody Valentine - Feed Me With Your Kiss (katsby)
12. The Powerful Emotion of Romantic Affection Is Sure To Cause Both You And I To Be Utterly Ripped Asunder Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart (katsby)
13. I Have Been Verbally Directed By My Maternal Parent To Render You Unconscious LL Cool J - Mama Said Knock You Out (faerydusted1 and hannahchan - date stamp tie!)
14. Leaping Upon Rail Transportation Which Belongs To A Person Other Than Oneself The Cure - Jumping Someone Else's Train (hannahchan)
15. A Outpost That Orbits The Group Of Stars That In Part Comprise The Big Dipper Catherine Wheel - Ursa Major Space Station (hackwerks)

Weird - I just realized that the above kinda looks like the track listing to a Smiths album. Anyway, have at it.

Music: Working For A Nuclear Free City - Troubled Son

The D-list celebrity life continues as I appear with some of the CCRG ladies this evening on AM sports talk radio to talk about that wild new craze that's sweeping the nation. (It's roller derby!) This should be very interesting, as I have no idea if the host is going to take us seriously or whether the audience callers are going to be geniunely curious about the sport or geniunely curious about what the girls are wearing. Believe it or not, I listen to a fair amount of sports talk radio, and I must admit that the level of discourse is often not very high. I'm trying to come up with a few talking points about the rules and my responsibilities, just so I don't lock up and say something stupid and then say "Shit" because I have just said something stupid and then say "Shit" again because I just said "Shit" on the radio. Plus, according to the host's biography, his dream is to someday become a stand-up comedian. I feel confident that he will take at least one shot at my dress and I'll have to be ready for it. You can't let your rhetorical guard down around those fucks.

Anyway, if you live in the Baltimore area, tune into AM 1570 WNST at 7pm tonight. If you don't live in the Baltimore area, you can attempt to stream directly from their website (the stream does not appear to be Mac-friendly, but maybe you'll have better luck than I did.) If you want to be really nice, try calling in and lobbing us a nice softball question along the lines of "Isn't it difficult being so incredibly awesome all the time?" I can hit that one out of the park. (See, that's a sports metaphor! Talk radio fans love that kind of stuff.)

Music: Missing Persons - Mental Hopscotch

I'm thinking of writing up rules for a drinking game to be played whether one finds a mainstream-press article on flat track derby. Here's what I've got off the top of my head:

+ Variation on the phrase "The names may be fake, but the action is real"
+ Variation on the phrase "This isn't your mother's roller derby"
+ Mention of Leo Seltzer
+ Mention of fishnets and/or tattoos
+ Variation on the phrase "[Accountant/Waitress/Hairdresser/Secretary] by day, rollergirl by night"
+ Use of the phrase "hell on wheels"
+ Mention of the fact that rollergirls enjoy beer

The CCRG is in the Baltimore Sun today, and while the article about us is pretty similar to every other article about us, the Flash slideshow photo gallery that accompanies the article is HOLY SHIT amazing. The pictures are fantastic and the accompanying audio is extremely well put together.

Apparently there's an anthropologist from the Discovery Channel coming to film our practice tonight? This is going to be interesting.

Music: Swan Lake - All Fires