I'm not sure how many, if any of you remember or saw my blogs about how I was very concerned and worried about what college would be like, but let's just say I was not looking forward to it at all. After having had a few weeks of each of my four classes (College Computing, Psychology, Liberal Mathematics and English) you may or may not be wondering what I honestly think of college. What are my thoughts?

I ****ing hate it.

Alright, maybe that's too brisk and immature of a way to put it, but that would be the quickest, easiest way to sum it up. What is it that I hate about it? The class formats more than anything, which I pretty much knew going in I'd hate (most of the work taking place outside of class, which I absolutely loathe because I get too distracted when not in class, when I'm on my own with my own free time that's what I want, if I don't have a schedule like pre-college school I can't focus). While I haven't been overwhelmed with too much school work since I now have a more reasonable schedule at work it's still too hard for me to not procrastinate. For instance, I have a term paper due in Psychology on Thursday on a crush I had (it's on physical attraction which we have to relate to provided chapters in the text book). I don't know about you guys, but I'm a rather shy guy in real life, which makes this topic a little awkward for me (and the fact that for some unknown reason I STILL haven't had a girlfriend doesn't help). What's more two of my teachers I hate: my Math and English professors. My English professor is just a senile idiot that breaks off into endless rants in which she makes something that could've logically been explained by any of my high school English teachers in five minutes she takes roughly thirty minutes while making it sound like illogic. Not to mention the fact she doesn't hand our essays back (we do one every week) and doesn't use the college blackboard so I have no idea what my grade is. As for my Math professor, he's way too by-the-books, is a smug jerk more times than not in class (it seems that half the time when someone asks him a question he tries to humiliate them in a disgusted way, including me) and clearly has no idea how to smile or even chuckle.

My Psychology professor is pretty nice and cool though, and he does manage to make the lessons interesting but the material we have to memorize outside of class in the textbook is so boring and insipid that it makes the class by the end of the day (especially as far as my grades go) nothing more than like one of my middle school classes. Finally, my computing class may be the only one I can even come close to saying I enjoy since the teacher is reasonable and the material, while fairly easy, is at least interesting (it actually makes Word 2007 seem pretty cool). But the downsides from my other classes are more than enough for me to just despise college at this point. Another reason I hate it right now is because I need to maintain a 3.0 GPA (straight B's) in order to keep my financial aid. While this might've been reasonable in high school I'm not exactly off to a hot start in two of my classes. I have a 78.8 in math (I did horrible on my first quiz but I've been doing better now) and my only grade thus far in Psychology is a 71 on my first exam which I thought I did better on (we just took our second exam but I doubt I did even as well, so it's up to my term paper if I can bounce back, which I'm skeptical on at this point). I know I have an A in computing but again, I'm not sure what my English grade is, but my guess is anywhere from a mid B to low A (depends on the essays). This means I have anywhere from a 2.5 to a 3.0 GPA right now.

What's adding insult to injury is that there's practically no one that I know in any of my classes. While one of my lesser friends from high school is in my English class we only have that class once a week and she's getting the full college torture experience, so it's not like she has free time (I guess me and her are in a similar boat as far as how we're viewing college right now). While just about everyone out there has plenty of friends up there in the double digits and others in the triple digits I only have five close friends (not including my friend in my English class), one of whom is taking classes at the same college but has nighttime classes and has to work 40 hours a week, another is in another state at a military/boot camp for a freak accident with his mother that went horribly wrong, one other has his GED (or just needs to write an essay just to get it) and the other two are still in high school (my best friend is a senior and he thinks he's going to be moving to New Jersey next year and the last one is rarely around so that leaves me with only one potential friend for my time in college).

A loss of a good time in life, loneliness, self-demeaning due to the way things are done at this hellhole; it's just too much.

Yeah, college is taking its toll on me, and I absolutely detest it. Whenever someone asks me what I think of college (which has been quite a bit right now) I always say these words "All it's doing is making me miss high school." For me, my four years in high school were the highlight of my life, and as I expected, college has become a flaming roadblock which I'm still crash through in pain and dismay. I would honestly rather do middle school for the rest of my life than deal with college right now (which is pretty desperate for me). While I really didn't like middle school that much I at least found some a bit of good in my time there whether in or out of class (more times out of class). College, on the other hand, I feel I'm stuck getting punished for a school life structure I can't work around well enough since I have such a hard time concentrating.

College better than high school? Where on this forsaken Earth is everyone going to high school and college?

All I'm going to say is this: Forge

Yes, my new addiction has come out of the Halo 3 map editor, I'm surprised how much I enjoy editing maps in the game, I've once again found more reason to back up why I like Halo 3 so much more than Halo 2 (if this little addiction keeps up I might start saying I like Halo 3 more than Halo 1, I'm having that much fun). I just send all my friends on Xbox Live a map I made a week ago for Snowbound called "Meltdown", my friend made a frantic, cluttered map varient for Cold Storage titled "Lockdown", I recently made a map varient on Last Resort called "PlatformArsenal" (couldn't put a space in-between the two words) and just last night spent about 2 hours making what would likely be considered one of the worst map varients if made popular enough: a Standoff map called "Blitzkrieg". The only one I've sent out is "Meltdown" but if I have your gamertag on my friends list then I'll send you any of the ones you want (if anyone reads and comments this I'm willing to be you'll want Blitzkrieg just to see how messed up it is). But the PlatformArsenal map I'll likely make a couple changes to since I noticed many things I didn't put in after I played a quick deathmatch in it.

I'm actually shooting to make new maps every 2 weeks or every month. Who knows, if they're actually good enough they might get me somewhere (it's a long shot, but I can dream).

Until recently it had been a while since I had listened to pre-Nostradamus Judas Priest material, but I decided to finally give my favorite band the last first-time listens as I listened to a few albums for the first time and a couple for a repeated listening. After hearing every Priest album they are still far and away my favorite band, though that's not to say I loved every single album. I'll try to do a Judas Priest discography review blog down the line, though I'll likely need to divide it up into more than one blog.

As for my other completion, I finally got around to finishing MGS4, which didn't take too long since I was only the last act. While I won't give my final verdict I will say that the game won't be getting that close to a perfect score, more or less for a couple design choices but this doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the game. If I can afford the time I'll write a full-fledge review. Otherwise I'll just break the game down into what I liked, didn't like, get out a few of my pondering thoughts and my final verdict.

And a couple sidenotes, is there anyone else here who feels there's a lack of quality games and movies coming out for the rest of the year? I mean, as far as movies go, the only ones I'm really looking forward to are Body of Lies, Quantom of Solace, The Soloist and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Likewise, as far as games are concerned the only ones I know for a fact I'll be buying are Need for Speed Undercover and Gears of War 2. The only other games that I'd consider trying out down the line are Saints Row 2 (that game's an almost buy for me right now), Call of Duty 5 and Midnight Club: Los Angeles. NO I am NOT looking forward to Guitar Hero: World Tour because the soundtrack doesn't impress me (the only songs on it that I care for are "Hotel California" and "Crazy Train" and since it's by the same guys that did Guitar Hero 3, a game that got on my nerves more than entertaining me I have little impulse to even try it) and NO I am NOT looking forward to Left 4 Dead. Please stop bringing that game up, every gamer I run into always gives the "ZOMFG UR NUT GETIN L4D UR SUCH A N3WB U MUST BE HUNG!!!" for saying that I'm not looking forward to it. I'd rather save further judgment for when the demo is released, it just doesn't look like something that would excite me, and the more everyone brings it up and how much they think it'll be the Game of the Year (the guy at my Gamestop always resorts to it getting the number 1 game at E3 in Game Informer, but since they put GH:WT over RB2 that to me is like saying GTA4 is truly a perfect game...which it is far from) the more I look forward to it less and less and don't even want to give it a chance.

Okay, I'm done.

As I type this I'm listening to "A Charge To Keep" by Iced Earth off the CD Framing Armageddon, which I intend to listen to all the way through (previous listens I only got up to the end of "Ten Thousand Strong") and I've realized that in-spite of the roughly 20 bands I have in a Word document titled "Bands To Remember To Download", I'm still lacking bands that I really want to get into, especially since I don't want to spend money on a band/CD I won't like. Of the bands in that little document only a couple of them I'd likely actually go for, the others every time I listen to them I wind up not liking them that much, if at all (the only two I think I'd get into are Disarmonia Mundi and Cloudscape). So if there's a single soul out there who can give me some bands to get into that you feel I'd truly have a chance at liking please do fill me in (I'm a very tough person to satisfy musically but I still try to be open). And no, Last.fm sadly isn't cutting it. I guess I should break down my current desiring with a few details:

Current Favorite Bands (in order):

1. Judas Priest

2. Scar Symmetry (I'm very aware that their singer just left, I'm very, VERY upset about that, he literally MADE me like them, the only exception is their second album Pitch Black Progress, but Holographic Universe is amazing)

3. Dimmu Borgir (but I've listened to them so much over the past year that whenever they come up on shuffle I skip their songs, I guess their music is on a hiatus for my preferences)

4. Slayer

5. In Flames (same as Dimmu, but I still listen to "The New World" whenever it comes up on shuffle)

6. Shadows Fall (I really need to remember to buy The War Within)

7. Metallica (yeah, went that high up, the only reason I really like them is for the first four tracks on ...And Justice For All and the entire Ride the Lightning album)

8. Killswitch Engage

9. Hatebreed

10. Sixx A.M.

But as of now my music taste is longing for something a little different, something close to power metal for some reason, like "The Gunslinger" by Demons & Wizards and "Ten Thousand Strong" by Iced Earth are two songs that I'm listening to a lot (along with "Ghost Proto Type II" by Scar Symmetry, albeit to a lesser extent). I don't know, maybe it's time to finally buy a Heaven and Hell album? Perhaps Demons & Wizards' first album? The Glorious Burden by Iced Earth might be a consideration since I'm really liking Framing Armageddon. So maybe something that's like a mix between power metal, Scar Symmetry (specifically Holographic Universe) and maybe a little bit of thrash metal, but only a very little.

Actually, if anyone can even give me ONE band that fits my current desiring and I wind up liking, then I will forever be in your debt. And I guess I'd better give you a list of bands to not recommend to me in case you're planning to tell me of them:

Eternal Tears of Sorrow ("Sweet Lilith of My Dreams" will keep me coming back to them for a bit)

Blinded Colony ("Revelation, Now!" and "21st Century Holocaust" are doing me well)

Blood Stain Child

Disillusion

Akimbo

Modern Life Is War

Wintersun

Satariel

Mercenary

God Forbid

Heaven Shall Burn

Still Remains

Norther

Jag Panzer

Nevermore

Sanctity

Amon Amarth

Bloodsimple

Insomnium

Imperanon

Mnemic

Disarmonia Mundi

Nightrage

Naildown

myGrain

The Duskfall

Cloudscape

Anterior (This Age of Silence is good, but needs better song structure for some of them)

Chimaira

Sea of Treachery (At Dagger's Drawn was great the first two times I heard it, but I've been listening to them sparingly)

Sonic Syndicate (have their CD Eden Fire, "Jailbreak" and "Soulstone Splinter" are great)

The Red Death (have the CD Godmakers, decent but not a band I'll likely listen to in a while, too basic)

Emperor (only listened to the first and second to last track on their album Anthems To the Welkin at Dusk)

Demon Hunter (on and off with them)

Darkest Hour

Forever In Terror

Kalmah ("Heroes To Us" is amazing)

Spineshank

I know with all these bands listed I'm asking a lot, but I'm desperate!

Can't stand the following movies:

Sin City

The Departed (and I haven't even seen Internal Affairs)

The Godfather

It's cold when you're the only person who hates/loves a certain movie.

And I saw Eagle Eye hoping it would be an at least entertaining return to the movies for me...it wasn't. If you want to know why, head here: http://mrblacksreviews.com/forums/index.php?topic=4339.msg59969#new