Watch Your Language

Did you get picked last for kickball? I never did. All the kids in all the grades knew that I had an unstoppable leg that kicked the ball further than, say, those mountains over there. Alas, I cannot empathize with you if you were one of the unlucky souls the mean kids would pick last.

Getting picked last for Starcraft 2, well, that's a different story. Those of you who follow me on Twitter will already know this story, and the rest of you probably don't care. Since I'm the one in charge here, and since you were always picked last for kickball, you really don't have a say in this. Do you?

Story. I'm sitting there on the couch with my trusty lappy on my lap (her name is Rinoa Heartily, if you must know). On the other side of the room is the one and only codename: Trisha with his lappy on his lap. The ambience is that which you would imagine Trisha's apartment to manufacture, that of happy explosions and little men yelling "Go! Go! GO!!!" and robotic voices chanting ever-so-robotically, "SCV Ready." or "Our base is being attacked."

Before you skip the remainder of this post, and before I go numb writing it, I'll get to the point. As many of you know, some more newly than others. I can sometimes get on a tangent, which would be the line that touches (does not intersect) a given point on a curve. Then the slope of the tangent line is the derivative evaluated at that point. See how good I am at math? Maybe I should become a teacher. Maybe I should get back to the story.

So with lappies on laps, guns in holsters, and dews on coasters, we're locked, loaded and ready to go! We sign in. We choose 2 vs 2 mode, Trisha is on one team, I'm on the other. Two unknown humanoids join in. The match begins. 3. 2. 1.

I start clicking the mouse buttons faster than Maverick drawing his 6-shooter. My fingers are dancing all over the place giving the illusion of Tom Hanks playing chopsticks on a oversized toy piano as an overgrown 12-year-old. Nothing is happening. The Terran jerks aren't scuttling to and fro collecting minerals. The command center isn't training any more Terran jerks. My ally's type-face appears at the bottom of the screen:

Derrick Brennon (DB): WTF? Do something!!

I ignore him. Who is he to abbreviate that word anyway? Guess I could have told him how his intelligence was shining brightly through the words he was typing on my screen. Trisha and his ally were rapidly training Terran jerks and creating modes of transportation equipped with unparalleled destructive power quicker than Vanilla Ice can feed feasible rhymes in both vision and feeling. They attack DB's base first.

DB: Help?

Leon: I'll send what I have.

DB: Too late. You suck!!!

DB has left the game.

In retrospect, I can see 2 reasons why he quit. 1) He's a quitter and will never grow up/mature/get a college degree/lose his I'm-too-stupid-to-know-any-proper-insults attitude/go anywhere at all in life and will wither and die an unhappy noob, or 2) I really am terrible at the game, and all players/jugadores/joueur/giocatore who are my allies should follow the DB and leave the game. Thanks for your honesty, Derrick!

Love.