The Roller Derby and the Voxettes

Over the past week, our life has been extremely exciting.  Okay, it actually hasn't been exciting, but let's pretend it was. That's pretty much how life goes: If your life is exciting, you wish it wasn't, and if your life is not exciting, you wish that it was. People spend all of their days seeking to sit on the couch and eat ice cream directly from the carton, yet when we get there, we find out that such a life is boring. Anyway. This is getting too philosophical. Let's cut directly to some of the anecdotes for the week.

Sally can wait, but she knows it's too late.

One semi-major project that we have undertaken this summer is emergency preparedness. Engineer R reads a mommy blog that advocates making 72-hour kits. For the uninitiated, 72-hour kits are bundles of supplies (food, water, clothes, gas-mask, military-grade helicopter, etc.) that one can use to survive during a disaster.

They say you should always pack your own parachute, so we assumed that it was the same with 72-hour kits. Engineer J was the chief project manager for these kits. She oversaw most (okay all) of the purchasing of the supplies. Engineer R assembled his own pack, but otherwise did nothing. His jobs mainly consist of writing this blog, checking the mail, and watching Batman cartoons. He also moonlights as a backup dancer in the vocal quartet "Fatema McVee and the Voxettes." They mostly cover Motown (a portmanteau of 'motor' and 'town', origins Detroit) songs from the 1960s and 70s. Picture a meld of Marvin Gaye and Gladys Knight, with a bit of Oasis mixed in (for an early 1990s flavor).

Another endeavor that Engineer R  has been undertaking lately is selling things online. There is a site called "eBay.com" that he is a casual user of. He has not sold much besides a guitar and a board game.

A 1996 Fender Telecaster

This is a guitar, not a bomb.

A board game. 

The game was a prize in a drawing. (It's a long story). Neither Engineer R, or Engineer J are followers of such types of things. Supposedly this game was at one point actually worth something, but now it is out of vogue or something.

Selling things online can be much like life. When it is exciting, you wish it wasn't. And when it is boring, you wish it were more exciting. Online shopping is just the pursuit of obtaining fungible commodities and nothing more. And then you find that what you have obtained in life is out of vogue.

Our last story originates in a TV show that we saw this past week. One of the main characters in this show becomes a roller derby queen. This lead to our researching women's roller derby in more detail. The Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA) is the international governing body of women’s flat track roller derby. The WFTDA covers 18 different countries and is still growing. And with the Olympics coming up, it is worth mentioning that roller derby was actually under consideration for being added to the 2020 Olympics (as part of a "roller sports" package). Unfortunately their bid was denied.

One of us may or may not have watched a roller derby competition between The Rose City Rollers (Portland, OR) and The London Rollergirls (London, England). Final score was 166-154 Rose City Rollers. RCR went on to win the 2015 WFTDA championship.

We will dispense with explaining all the details about roller derby, but let's just say that the scoring can be crazy. Most of the competitors have player pseudonyms such as "Scald Eagle," "Hurricane Red Thunder," or "Maven Mash."  Not people you necessarily want to cross.

This is their day job.

In conclusion, if any of you are considering joining the roller derby circuit, be sure to wear your elbow and knee pads. Comment below if you have a really good roller derby pseudonym.