EPTAn Opinion Piece #7
![[image loading]](http://www.teamliquid.net/userfiles/17318.jpg?1254589689)
Gather 'round children while uncle Chef rambles to himself
Gather 'round children while uncle Chef rambles to himself
Tea
A substance I've grown very fond recently, comes in an incredible variety. By this point I must have a little over forty different kinds of tea. Some would call that a problem, an obsession, a certifiable disease, but I just can't help myself anymore. Anytime I see a tea I've never tried before in a store, I buy it immediately. If there are several, I buy 1-3 and then make a note to come back another time when I want to get my consumerism on.
Why are people so elitist about tea?
People are elitist about nearly everything, but it seems like it is too far to be elitist about tea. Take this blog for instance. What a pretentious twat. If you thought the recent Chuiu blog about tea was filled with elitists, this is at least ten levels above that. While the guys in Chuiu's blog were using 'tail whip' by telling people anything but loose leaf is terrible, this guy had 'ember' and was talking about hundred year old expensive teas.
Tea is an inexpensive drink. The reason I can have so much variety is because it hardly costs more than 4 CAD to get a few months supply of any tea I want, excepting of course the 100 year old teas. I'm sure you can tell the difference between a month old tea leaf and a hundred year old tea leaf, but I'm not convinced it's any more pleasing than the difference between teas grown in different regions which are still reasonably priced. Anyway.
Let's not talk about the perfect brewing time, the perfect water temperature, or how to waste ludicrous amounts of water by boiling water, putting it in a tea pot, and dump it out without drinking any of it. Even if that did make the tea taste different, I have no clue why the method which is the biggest pain in the ass is automatically seen as the tastiest method. But I digress.
The hunt for a good tea ball
Or the like. I've tried various methods and I won't bore you by listing them all. Instead I will show you to the latest method I've been using, and one that I think has finally got it right. It's a 250 ml (one mug) French Press. Here are pictures for your enjoyment.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/zOU8j.jpg)
Being able to see the leafs get wet and expand is very satisfying. In this cup, Sow Mee (a Chinese white tea) is being brewed.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/nxZoo.jpg)
It's kind of like a beaker... :o
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/oxJG1.jpg)
Blaaaaaaarrgg!
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/Ni1nx.jpg)
Squish!
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/RlWF1.jpg)
Squished.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/pmWZY.jpg)
Here's a bonus picture of my turtle sticks. I use them to find happiness in the form of noodles.
StarCraft
I have to confess, dear readers, that I have a special account for doing dumb strategies and various conditions on. It's called ConditionSC. When I play on it I think of a condition before I play, such as mouse only, or proxy hatch, or whatever, and I do it in the game. This helps me not take the ladder seriously so I don't get pissed off by lag and not being able to regame players. It's also quite a bit of fun.
I'm about to crush the dreams of all newbies on this site when I say I'm not actually that good at BW. I have the same idea that literally every other casual player has in that I think if I played enough, I'd be quite a lot better. But of course everyone would be better if they played more. Grobyc can attest that most of my matchups are pretty weak, although I can be somewhat formiddable when I am given a chance to practice and I know my opponents style. That's the modesty check. Now here's the battle report where I will be completely immodest.
I beat BoxeR
That's right, the real BoxeR. The 100% I'm not making it up real BoxeR wasn't just a random smurf on iCCup pretending to be boxer and I have proof but won't show it for inexplicable reasons. I beat Boxer. And here is my battle report of the occasaion.
Allow me to give you a bit of background info. I was watching Jaedong's bnet attack when suddenly I had an epiphany. One of those BW epiphanies I have once every few years that makes me literally twice as good at BW as I was ten minutes before it. The epiphany came from watching how Jaedong 'spams' and where his focus lies. I suddenly realised after all these years that I was spamming wrong. I shouldn't be pressing 33 44 33 44 33 44 33 44 repetitively like a rabid rabbit on steroids for absolutely no reason. I should be rallying my hatchery furiously, and only occasionally checking my overlord. Believe it or not I'm not actually joking about this. This really was a huge error in my game play. I switch the screen so fast all the time, but really I should be putting my screen where my focus is needed the most. Whether that's at my units or at my hatchery in the beginning, it is super important that I only check on the other things for a split second before going back to what's important. It used to be that I'd lose random crap in my main because I didn't switch my screen often enough. Then it was that I switched by screen to much to be effective where it was important. Now I've finally found the harmony between the two, and it's made me a much smarter player. I feel like I have so much more time to think now that I'm not furiously readjusting my senses to the new screen position. It's liberating.
In any case, I just have to pause b.net attack immediately so that I can try it out. When I think of something I get excited about it and want to do it immediately, it's just how I am. So there I go, I hope onto Condition SC and play a warm up round against the computer to see if I've got it all thought out. Then I select a real live 1v1, and who else could it be but Boxer.
The last game I'd played on ConditionSC had been a 1v1 against SlayerS_Buffy, who I dispatched on match-point with Zero's proxy hatch strategy. That was very satisfying. But apparently Buffy had cried to BoxeR, and BoxeR just couldn't let his teammate be humiliated like that without trying to get revenge for him, even if it meant going back to BW. Thus, our match was fate.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/72Wyp.png)
BoxeR asked me what rank I was and I told him D+. Too be honest that's a lie. I'm not actually that bad, but I didn't want to scare him away by telling him my rank was Jaedong (as a direct result of watching Jaedong's B.net attack). The game name had been "D only Zerg come." It was obvious that BoxeR was the type who would leave the game unless the conditions were exactly right, as evidenced by his very specific questions.
If it weren't enough that I'd embarrassed his teammate Buffy by cheesing a proxy hatch, and if it weren't enough that he was talking a lot and talking a lot usually means a player is trying to make you not think about scouting, then it was made obvious by the fact that it's fucking BoxeR and what else does he do but cheese. I focused hard and prepared myself with a mindset that would be strong in the early game.
![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/OdYSB.png)
BoxeR asked me for a re, and I told him yes. I'm not going to lie, I just logged off iCCup right then and there. I was on the combat high of my life after beating BoxeR, plus I had a paper to write that was due the next morning. If I hadn't told him yes, I feared BoxeR would just to drag the game out by hiding supply depots all over the map. I apologise to anyone who thinks it's rude that I wasted his time and he might have been waiting for me, but I suspect he just typed /whois conditionsc and thought I'd lost my internet. The circumstances were extenuating and I would not do it normally.
I'd like to reiterate again, that I beat BoxeR and I am the greatest StarCraft player to ever live.
Sex
If you scrolled down here looking for something to jerk off to, I'm sorry to say you're going to be disappointed. When I say sex, I only mean gender. In the recent blog by JWD, XIII, he made some comments about some inequalities between the sexes that he perceives on this board. He said some pretty dumb things too, but I think JWD is a pretty good guy on the whole and meant well. I also think it's good to continue the discussion.
I don't really care about the use of the word rape. When I first joined this community I thought it was tactless and a little disturbing, but I never viewed it as sexist. I also eventually got used to it and stopped thinking much about it. I don't want to talk about words here.
How to objectify women
There are two ways of objectifying women. The first way is to think of women as being only useful for sex, being pretty... Other selfish needs. That's the most obvious way and I think most people can agree it's not a particularly healthy outlook. The other way (okay, there's probably more than two, but dichotomies are fun) is to think of women as being too good for sex. This is more or less the angel in the house way of thinking that feminists have been trying to leave in the Victorian era (but which actually pervades to this day)
I'm going to make this point short because I don't think it needs elaboration. In much the same way that I went from two ways of thinking about how to spam in StarCraft to a happy medium, women are more complex than just only thinking about sex or never thinking about sex. No one's entire personality revolves around their sexual appetite—that's why there's StarCraft. It's the feeling that there is a time and a place for everything, and when you are browsing a forum or playing a game, you are probably not looking for solicitations on your sexuality.
I don't like to place sex in a box and put it to the side, but let's have some self-restraint, TL. This is not a site which you visit so you can find pictures of incredibly endowed women or men. It's not a place where people post pictures of themselves to be criticised or commented about. I'm not going to stop hordes of 14 year olds for commentating on the physical attractiveness of every girl that happens to be in the StarCraft community, and I'm not going to going to stop people posting pictures of models on this site either. There are always going to be horny teenagers and nothing can stop that. I just want to say that if you are trying to be feminist, talking about how beautiful the female body is while only looking at pictures of models is not a particularly good way of doing it. Focusing only on the female body and not any other accomplishments (that go beyond a bubbly personality) is also a pretty shit way of doing it, model or not. A well rounded person has many other things to offer, and it's a shame to ignore them :O
(This last section is admittedly way too preachy and I apologise for that. I just want to say love women, not just their twenty year old bodies ;o)
