Geek Chic Guide - Derby Girls

'Derby Girls Rock my World!' by NerdJerk

I've got a wicked obsession with all things Roller Derby. Not-so-secretly crushing on the idea of being a full-blown Derby Girl is one of my specialties! Here's some rad gear that makes me wanna buy that first pair of skates and rock out!

skatesnouts $20.00	janinebasil $23.00	SnapDragonStyl... $32.00	knickerockerol... $20.00
Whiskey7Art $5.00	BLSoaps $9.95	ravishingjane $19.99	BlackfinGraphi... $2.99
smallfly $22.00	cupcaketree $9.00	whimsyandink $18.00	missfancypants... $29.00
beepart $12.00	amepix $6.00	SkateLove $22.00	CausticThreads $17.00

Treasury tool by Red Row Studio.

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I'm pretty sure of a few things in life... and one of those truths is that "We are all geeks about SOMETHING!"

Whereas I've never been too ashamed of my geekiness (heck - it's how I make a livin'! Thank you, loyal fans!), I do have a long-standing secret crush & embarrassing point of shame about said secret.

Awesome starter skates that I've been
eyeing since before Maker Faire 2011.
On SALE for $144.99 USD
RollerSkateNation

SECRET CRUSH is...

I wanna be a bad-ass derby girl!!! RAWR! :)

SECRET SHAME is... 

 I am totally afraid of skating. :(

Okay, okay! I can hear you all the way from over here!

• "What's WRONG with you?" 
• "How could you wanna be a derby girl and not be willing to suck it up and get a little beat up?" 
• "There's no way you'd make it as a bad-ass. Better stick to yarn!" 

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And you know what? Part of that might be right! But not all of it. So to answer your (*ahem* hypothetical) questions:

• Nothing is truly wrong with me other than:

1. I was traumatized by roller blades as a young child. Take 9 y.o. girl with poor balance, add roller blades, a rope, a bike and some sugar-crazed kid pulling you along downhill on asphalt. Marinate for almost 20 years. Serve.
2. I'm the heaviest I've ever been in my life & as other types of physical exercise leave little to be desired, the prospect of derby gets my blood going!
3. Roller Blades are not Roller Skates.Roller skates have the potential to hold more weight at a better distribution. And possibly go slower... down hills?

Roller Derby Poster by Whiskey7Art - $5 USD on Etsy

• Dude - although I've got these extra pounds and gimpy crochetitized wrists, I'm willing to make it happen. I just need to get that first pair of skates. I suppose I can *grow* a pair while I'm savin' to buy a pair.
• I will stick to yarn, but I'll do you one better. I'll make my own bad-ass derby gear. ;) Being a hookin' baller has it's perks.

That being said, I ended up getting an email from Erica of Derby Girls Blog about possibly doing some advertising on their site. As I've yet to fully invest myself into the derby culture, I don't know if I would quite fit in very well. But it still got me thinkin' about how much I love the culture! Which led me to looking at my favourites on Etsy! Which led to a treasury! Which is what today's Geek Chic Guide is all about!

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What activities have you just been dying to try out?!

Have you gone for it yet? If not, what's holdin' you back?

Music is so awesome, but I don't make it as much as I used to

There was a time in my life that I would play music... a lot.

I had a guitar. I had a voice. I could use them both at the same time. And yet, these days, I just stay on my home... catching up with the TV from 2004.

..probably the year that I was "into" music. :)

But just a few minutes ago, I was listening to Sebadoh's "License to Confuse" & really missing MySpace.


If I'm forced to think about it, I probably stopped playing the guitar & singing when I started playing Guitar Hero.


I guess the reason I miss MySpace is because at the end of your blog posts, you could put what you're listening to. I always found that whilst perusing the old posts, I was most interested in what I used to listened to.

I could tell my mood from what I was listening to. I could tell how awesome i felt by the lyrics.

Today, "License to Confuse" starts with a rather angry riff; rock it out & then admit "I'm not attractive today, I'm not a sight for sore eyes."

Today, my entry tells you how fox-tastic I am NOT feeling.

Despite that, I still played some music on my guitar.

Well, not MY guitar. Roger's guitar, since he was under the weather and it seems that every time I play guitar & sing, he gets happier for some reason.

It's probably because I'm not a very good rhythm guitarist. :)

But the point of the story is that Roger gave me my dream guitar for my birthday: A Seafoam Green Squire Fender Strat with pretty pick-ups and a matching Honeytone mini-amp that I can clip into my skirt and rock out with anywhere I'd like! It even has a freakin' hardcase.....

SOMEone loves me!

Why haven't I taken pictures of it yet? I don't know.

But I do know one thing: The first ting I learned to play was "Undone (The Sweater Song)" by Weezer. It's the only song that's easy enough to repeat over & over again and still sounds rad. ESPECIALLY the talking parts.

I need to get pictures of me rockin' out... making music and making music awesome!

What kind of music are people listening to today? What kind of moods are you feeling? I didn't see any music features on your blogs either. ;D

Practise What You Preach - To Blog or To Sit & Stare?

I'm really great at procrastination. Like, for reals.

But I'm also really good at givin' out advice. Oh MAN, am I ever!

Sound familiar to anyone?

*sigh*

Recently, I've been speakin' with the ladies on the D-Listers Team May Forum thread about blogs, giveaways, not-enough-time-in-each-day and "If I plan an awesome party, will they come?" syndrome.

It's not necessarily a pity party; it's more like a "I have this problem. Oh. You have that problem too? Holy crap. No WAY! Man, it's hard" kind of a party.

But being a solution minded type of girl, I thought that maybe we could do something about it. So I suggested that maybe we could hold a team challenge to get us all motivated...

And then this little light bulb went on...



I need to get rockin'! I can yap-yap-yap and dish out awesomeness (like the most solid gold bricks of knowledge that I've stored away in the recesses of my noggin!) til I'm blue in the effin' face, but truth is that you can't preach somethin' that you haven't practised.

Plus, whatever happen to my "Awesome-ating" blogging aspect!? (read two posts down)

SO, BALLS! I've got to get off my tush o' mush and rock some cool topics.

Some of the amazing items that you can look forward to this week are:

- "How I End Up Makin' a Comic in a Couple of Days": This post will be featuring the entire process behind my recent submission to PAPERLINKS.oRG

- "Gettin' a Small Space to Look Like a Big Business": I haven't got a lot of resources (monetarily speaking) to be able to run my business and since I'm unemployed, it makes it even harder to make my business look & feel professional (Spending money to make money is hard when you gots none, yo!). So, I plan on sharing a few steps that I've taken to represent NerdJerk as a whole.

- "What Did You Wanna Be When You Grew Up? : Knowing Your Roots & Using Them to Help Motivate Yourself": I've got some potentially embarrassing pictures (including a 6 year old self with a mullet) to illustrate the fact that knowing who you were when you were a kid, livin' in dreamland and remembering what it is that you dreamt about can really help you keep focus in the long run.

Plus, some Etsy sellers, fellow artists & awesome items should be featured as well!

So, if you're remotely interested in reading about this AND/OR taking part in this (such as being featured/interviewed), please feel free to follow this blog AND/OR email me.

Comments & concerns completely encouraged!

Awesome-ating the Blogger Site... Awesome-ating My Blog Posts!

If you're familiar with Strong Bad and his crazy emails, then you'll get the Trogdor the Burnanator reference. And if you didn't, just click on Trogdor link to check out the awesomeness.

Also, play the song on Guitar Hero II if you have that readily available.

I'm not "Burnanating the countryside" but I'm attempting to Awesome-nate this blog, yo.

I'll admit it, I haven't been too awesome with the blog posts and the links. But since I'm working on getting people interested in what I do and how I do it, or even what other people do and how THEY do it, then I should probably post pretty regularly.

Gotta admit that this is a relatively daunting task, seeing as how I had never wanted to blog before I started up Nerd Jerk or watched Julie & Julia, but now that I've got a brand to set up, I best do something about it.

Strangely enough, the thing that got me to wanna blog better OTHER than Julie & Julia was Zombieland.

Yeah... you heard right. I took my cues from a movie meant to show the funny side of gore.... or something... the neurotic side of it?

And I almost never watched this movie (at all!), mainly cos of Woody Harrelson, but I actually enjoyed his character (Tallahassee) the most. His lack of tact and blunt awesomeness made me open my eyes. Yes, it was him who said "Time to NUT UP or SHUT UP!"

So I decided to nut up.

As you're reading this (all 6 followers that I've acquired over a few months of non-work), you're probably thinking, "Wow... she sure does use a lot of nerdy pop culture references." And you'd be absolutely right.

But it's things like this that inspire me. Sure, I use a lot of crafty how-to blog posts and books to help me figure out how to make things more rad, but for the most part, it's movies, comics and TV on DVD.

So here's to actually nuttin' up (despite my obvious lack of testicles), and bloggin' a whole lot more.

And as time goes on, I'll work on actually making content a whole lot more interactive and awesome-ated.



P.S. Any suggestions as to what ya'll would like to hear about?