Long story short, Ive had three times as many beers than Ive had sc2 games today. I come dropping by as i often do 4:30 in the morning when im drunk.

*flash*

"Is that pony wearing a fucking birthday hat? That looks fucking retardarded, who the fuck would do something like that?"

*i keep on going about my business, flippin through one forum after another. Wait a second... why would there be a 10 on the front page? Oh shit! TL is 10 yrs old, holy fuck.*

So let me recount my tale as a non-tl member,

I grew up with a mac (please understand; those werent macbook times. This was fucking me as a fucking 10 year old kid before the iMac was even launched. Imagine being a jew, black and ginger all rolled into one - thats the type of shit I had to grow up with. Not being spoiled about video game titles I pre-ordered Starcraft because I knew it would be something I would want to play. I played through the campaign and what not and felt sated by the game. A few months or maybe a year went along, then the my long time friend and the "super cool dude" - even though he never was that way towards me - showed me extreme skill of online play. I remember using the strats I used to crush the computer with, and he fucking wiped the floor with me. And i was like "holy shit I need to learn this" So i went by my "cool" friend's house to watch ^Ch0b0^ play. He was so smart and taltented like you wouldn't believe - he didt have a comp at home - he played wherever he could. But even in 2001-2 he knew where the action was - US West. He knew the channels and was a regular. NT, NC, KOR, etc, were the clans of the day. I remember him teaching H.O.T.-Forever norwegian curse-words just because he was within the "circuit".

Fastforward a year or two, I was fucking mezmerized with the game. I wanted to compete, I wanted to be good. I had played alot on and off, but never a 100% seriously. I grinded games so hardcore on the US west server. I was only 14-15 at the time and so full of my self. As I already mentioned I was a mac user (ofc it came back to haunt me) and i couldnt bind the control key to my mouse. So i played with a "deficit". So instead of trying to match the koreans at their own game (which they at the time followed in a slavish fashion. FOLLOW THE LEADER) I figured i would "out-smart" them. And it worked! I beat both Sync and TheMarine! The only problem was (and Artosis would whrithe in pain over this) i beat Sync with a 7 vs 8 LT DT drop and TheMarine 7(me)vs3 Bio-Gundam against blind-DTs again! I took one game from each of these fucking masters. But they showed me prety quickly, that was the only game i would take off either of them. They wiped the floor with me in subsequent games...

That was a big fucking blow to my self esteem. I was this young kid, feeling on top of the world! Ive always been arrogant, but coming to terms with "these guys will always be better than you. They have the mechanics, they have intuition and so forth." That was fuckingpainfull.


I kept playing on and off with but I always followed the game. Even though i felt like "that bitch broke my heart" it/she was beautiful enough to follow and pay attention to. Again ch0b0 urged me to "if you wanna follow anything, you better read TL and maybe join it". So i did for a while and then Warbucket.com turned up