EPT
- Whats up TL its hot in here ... and out there! (I'd rather be in here) -
Hey guys, its summer where I live, here in the northern hemisphere. Currently its getting to be the hottest part of the day in my city, so I'm retreating to my centrally cooled man den. What's up? I've finally gotten a lot of peas in order within my personal pea pod so I'm looking to converse. Hope everyone has been good, things have certainly been good to me. Anyways I'll throw out a few uninteresting morsels to get the shit storm started!
- Teaching as a Gateway to Being Happy. -
So let me tell you a story. My story with TL.
For a long time in my early adulthood (rather, my late childhood) I was unhappy and didn't know what the hell what I wanted to do with my life. I had left home to go to a state school on scholarship but had zero direction, and most of my high school mates had gone to another university. Like an idiot I chose the university I went to because I had been a fan of their basketball team since I was able to talk. I thought everything would be fun, the parties, the games, the drinking, the smoking. Basically I thought everything would be turning up p4NDemik, even though I had no idea what I wanted. Absolutely none.
What followed was a year of torment, isolation, somehow decent grades, drinking, smoking, and eventual breakdown. I finished out that year somehow, and moved on to a different school, but still with no direction at all. Rinse repeat. I flunked out of my next uni, went home and felt even more lost than I had ever been before.
I still worked a summer job, but I didn't have the motivation to get a full-time gig, so I sat at home on my computer, as most of my close friends spent most of the year at their own respective schools. I wandered the internet, looking for direction, searching the vast expanses of the immense knowledge that the world had to offer. I saw the game StarCraft 2 was coming out, which looked badass. Still though, I had no direction.
Until I ran into an English commentary of a Professional Korean Brood War match done by a mysterious Indian-Irish man named Klazart, who spoke faster than any human being I had ever met before.
This dance in front of my eyes was captivating. I had no idea this existed. I had played Brood War religiously with some of my best friends in my youth. I was too unsure of my skills as a youth so I mostly played team games. We'd play 2v2 Lost Temple and rush mutas every game. We'd talk smack. I joined a clan called "Yakuza" where we'd create 4v4 fastest map possible games for the sole purpose of backstabbing our unsuspecting teammates. We would earn virtual currency for each backstab. It was immature, but titillating at the time.
But this was a whole new world. Klazart helped me understand the strategy (though later I found out he was almost as much as a novice in StarCraft strategy as me). He knew more than me, and he ignited a spark in me, he was the impetus that got me involved in this amazing world. I watched all his commentaries, then moved on to the commentaries of his cohorts, and even found commentaries by these awesome guys named Tasteless, Artosis, and Day[9]. The latter three knew so much that I could barely understand them, but I soaked it all up nevertheless.
Eventually I had watched all the commentaries I could, and I didn't know what to do. So I found THE commentary website, SC2GG.com. It was upstart. It was hot. It was sexy. At the time. I got as involved as I could. I became a member. I became a mod. I became a writer. Then things stalled. There wasn't enough of a support structure above me, and I got frustrated. So I started reading their rival website. SC2GG didn't like TL. TL looked at SC2GG as a misguided little brother, which we pretty much were. We didn't know enough about the core tenets of the game and would get angry when others pointed it out.
Anyways, point is, I left SC2GG. I got involved at TL because it was just where I needed to be. Most people there were actually quite nice, and didn't care (or didn't really know) that I had been a mod and writer on an aspiring competitor's website. This community taught me. And taught me. And taught me. It gave me so much. It helped me become a better StarCraft player. It helped me become a better writer. Most importantly it helped me learn to become a better leader and a better person.
I could go on to talk more about what happened after I joined TL but that isn't important. I've arrived at my main point of this blog. Last weekend I was appointed to a training position in my full-time job. I'm happier than I've been in a long while. Not that I haven't been happy, my social life has been very rewarding, but my work life sucked because I wanted to teach and until last week I could not do it very effectively. I had my own work to do.
TeamLiquid. Please never stop teaching. Please always be a gateway for knowledge and enlightenment. Don't ever shut off that faucet. I promise you will not regret it. Keep it up! Cheers!
- Enough with the Sentimentality, on with the Music!. -
First of all, if you aren't into the new Tame Impala album Currents, please please tell me why you don't like it. It SOOOOO GOOOD! If you like it, that's awesome too, and the whole lot of us should talk about it in depth and over many beers.
But I hope most of you know about that one, so I'll move on to another less-known artist I was recently introduced to by a friend who is way more cutting-edge than I am. Viet Cong. I just saw them live, and let me tell you their music is compelling, and they are humble and open minded as shit. When my friend and I walked up to the venue, there were protesters outside, who have issues with the bands choice of nomenclature. We spoke to the lead singer, Matt Flegel later, and he was very understanding of the protesters, actually having spoken to them prior to the show. Great, open-minded guy.
Anyhoo, their music is a cacophony of responding guitar riffs, hard yelling, driving drumlines, and resonating bass. So fucking good it almost hurts. Personally, it sucks the pain out of me, a healing elixer. Don't believe me? Try listening to this song, "Continental Shelf," off their most recent, self-entitled debut album.
![[image loading]](/staff/p4NDemik/Me/blog_images/Viet_Cong_self_titled_album_.jpg)
The Prize
by p4NDemik
Time spent apart.
You travel continents,
Expanding your world,
Embracing the cosmos.
I move fast
Within my mind,
Attempting to discover,
Struggling to uncover.
I feel something
Similar drives us.
Its unseen machinations
Moving the gears,
Creating our common locomotion.
As we rush faster
I see the tenderness
In your eyes.
I hope you won't fear me,
Or my outward disguise.
You have already shared your knowledge.
Now it is your trust
Which I prize.
Thank you for listening.
