Just this one thing that keeps life from being perfect right now...

I just don't know what to fucking do, and I'm ready to explode!DX
What do you do when one of your best friends just disappears on you? She just stops talking to you, ignores you any time you text, call, or see her at events... she finally tells you what's going on, and it was just a misunderstanding of some sort. You correct the problem after 5 months of darkness, or so you think. A week or so passes, and things go back to how they were earlier in the year. Sudden drop of communication of all forms. You fool yourself, saying "oh, she's probably just busy or something" knowing full well that she's just forgetting you, not caring. She posts on facebook, and tumblr all the time, she's not busy you dumbass. A couple more months pass, and you see her a few times at friend's parties or whatever. She ignores you... What a shocker -.-
You text her every so often, send facebook messages, post to her wall... still ignores you. when you see her again in person, she says "oh, sorry about not getting back to you, I've been busy" but that's obviously bullshit. Every post from the last month or 2 has been stuff she's been doing with other people. You slowly see her forget about you through all those posts, letting other people take your place. The thought slowly starts to creep in to your mind that you were never really that important in the first place- she was just humoring you, or using you to entertain herself because you were all that was around. 
You decide to give her a final goodbye, a quick private message online, telling her how much she means to you despite how hurt you are. Out of 7 or 8 people out of the thousands you've met, she's one of them- those people you are truly yourself around, you keep no secrets from. You that tell her that no matter what, she's always going to be one of the few best friends you've ever had... that you love her in every way, and that you'll be right where she left you if she ever decides you're important again. 
Every day I am reminded of this torturous emotional pain. Every day, I live this personal hell. My life is going incredibly well for once, in every way outside of this. But like anyone with a problem, even the smallest imperfection can outweigh the happiness. I try to enjoy myself as much as I can, but it's hard. I miss talking... that's the least I want. Can we at least TALK again? Even just ONCE a week?!
No, I am not allowed such reprieve. The possibility of forgetting that person, and all the impacts she made on me... isn't actually a possibility. She resonates in my thoughts, my dreams, within our group of friends, and online. Every waking moment of every day, I see the phantom of what I thought once was. Maybe it really was just a very strong illusion. I may never know, but it doesn't really matter now.... does it?

Columbia College of Chicago

Well, I finally got my roommate and dorm building info!
All that's left is orientation and move-in, and I'll officially be a student again. It was awesome having a whole semester AND summer off, but now it's time to get back to the books and build my career. It's hard to believe how far I've come all these years... going from that kid everyone hated in grade school, to starting to live my dream and having few significant problems left in my life. I'm infinitely glad I made it this far, and my parents are excited for me, as one would expect. I mean, who expects to actually be able to make a career and a life off of video games? I sure didn't expect to. Can't say my life has been perfect, but it indeed has been worth it so far.

Well THAT took long enough!

Well... it finally happened... MLG is coming to regular tv! CBS is taking on a Starcraft 2 stream in the Fall. For a gamer like myself, this is a huge deal. For us... it means we're finally not such outcasts of society anymore. And yet, at the same time... I'll miss it a lot. I didn't mind being made fun of for being a gamer, or a nerd. While others would take it as a taunt, I take it as a compliment, no matter the intention of the person saying it. I took pride in being different and damn good at what I do. But now, it's wont be so unique anymore. It'll be something anyone, anywhere can watch whether they're into it or not. It'll be like other stuff on tv. A good chunk of the views and ratings will be from people who are just watching due to boredom and not actual interest. But I guess I will take pride in saying the same thing here, as I do about society. I am part of the last good part of society (in this case, gamers) left. Because, in the future, everyone will be working off of the benefits we worked for. They won't have worked for it themselves, and a lot of them won't even care. They'll all be dumb, and not as amazing as we were. They'll take it for granted, and assume we always had those privileges... like kids do today with cell phones, or internet. When a person says "I remember dial-up internet..." people of the same generation or general era would recall that it sucked, but we now look back on it with nostalgia for some reason... Kids who never had dial-up would say "what was that?" and when we explain it, they'd laugh at how we miss slow internet connections. Idk how to explain it really, but long story short, I'm both happy and sad.

Birthday!!!!!!

Soooooo my birthday is in a few days and I'm pumped! :D
Not only will I be getting some very useful and highly anticipated gifts, but most of my friends will be home from their respective schools, so hopefully, I can see everyone around then.
Also note that today is the birthday of Colleen's brother, Matthew. We'll be going over to celebrate in a couple hours (and at that time I will participate in many a warhammer match, woot).

Another thing I'm excited for is the Diablo 3 release. Which is quite well timed, being the day after my birthday. Stawicki and I plan on going to the midnight release, and then nonstop marathon-ing it for days afterward. It shall be epic.

The bullshit with my extended family continues to drag on... but that's a story for another post.
And I think that's it for now... oh yea, almost forgot- I'm not sure how.... but I LOST a page-view on here XD no idea how that works, but it happened ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Letters that will never be sent

At some point in their lives, everyone will write a message to someone that will never be sent. Recently, I've been writing more of those than usual. They all have reasons for being held in the safe confines of my computer's hard-drive. The point is though, that it's just a great way to cope with a problem you have with or against someone. It can help to just have ideas written down, and also you don't have to risk a bad reaction from the recipient. But at the same time, don't we wish, if only a little, that we could send one or more of those letters? Just so we can finally let it out to an actual person, and maybe if we're lucky, get the reaction we hope for... I myself will probably never let any of those letters be read by anyone but me and me alone. It's just a great coping mechanism, that I hope I won't need for much longer.
So yea, that's just me ranting 'cuz I felt like it, and I really had nothing else to do at 1AM...
Also, Happy Birthday to one of the few best friends I will ever have; Kelli. Turning 19... 3 weeks before me >.>
Hope it's a good one :)

Gaming History

So, as some people know very well, I am an avid gamer. I play a lot of games, and I'm good at any game I want to be good at. Recently, I made a video detailing my history in gaming and what it means to me. To watch, just click the link provided. To not watch, just sit there and think about your own life, and how it will never be as awesome as mine XP
JK, I'm not that mean... or am I? D:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCK9e3QsaIE&list=UU6V9ARbDPzGy9hULnCxfHuA&feature=plcp

People need to learn to take a hint...

Specifically, these 2 friends I have on Facebook. They feel the need to talk to me EVERY single time they see me online... they always start conversations which revolve around them. Then they complain that I never start conversations with them. Or they ask if I have anything I want to talk to them about... NO! I DON'T! If i had something I wanted to talk to you about, I would have messaged you first!
It's also worse that they get annoyed or concerned if I don't INSTANTLY reply to their message or start typing as soon as they send their messages (which btw, might as well be a freaking novel...). By the time I get to finish reading their message, they expect me to have started replying with my own long-ass answer.  That is, assuming I have any idea or interest in what they're talking about... It's just as bad if I happen to be talking to more than one person at a time. god-forbid I talk to anyone but them at the same time as they're talking to me. Oh no, that just won't do :/
Then, to top this all off, they feel the need to explain everything. Everything they said, what it means, why they said it, and why it's relevant. I can't go ONE DAY without hearing from them... it's gotten to the point where I don't want to go on Facebook at all, because they'll message me even if they see me go from online to invisible. And they'll keep messaging me until I reply...
they're messaging me RIGHT NOW... as I type this...  I just want one day of peace PLEASE! DX

Losses

My family has suffered hard loss in the last year. A year and 3 weeks ago, my grandfather died at 84 years old. This past Sunday, my grandmother died, also at 84 years old. Today was her funeral, and she was buried next to my grandfather, though they had divorced many many years ago. We were never close to either of the grandparents on my dad's side, but we understood that they lived harsh lives. Having survived WW2 as kids, being uprooted and escaping alone to England as teenagers, making their way to America and struggling to support their 5 children together, and having constant other hardships. All we 9 cousins have left of them is memories from our own childhoods, which were exponentially better than our parents' were. Our parents were not brought up in a good home. Life was tough for them all. Back then, our grandfather was abusive and always working; grandma had to keep all her emotions in and hide her support of her children from the ever peering eyes of grandpa. But as time went on, the kids grew up and the parents divorced after 15 years of marriage. They lived close though, and got along at family gatherings. Many years later, all of us grandkids came into view, and they became incredibly loving adults with bottomless resources and gifts, due to a lifetime of saving money and playing their stock options well. The roughest part of what I'm saying is that now both of our grandparents are gone, and we have no link to the family history but the few stories our parents remember being told when they themselves were children. We miss and mourn them, wishing they could still be alive with us. But they cannot, and we celebrate the long lives they had, and the memories we had with them. We will all miss you Ernest and Elizabeth Andruszko. Rest in Peace <3

Fighting game! Let's kick some ass!

Here we are. Street Fighter X Tekken aka "cross Tekken" or "Street Fighter cross". It released the midnight between 3/5/12 and 3/6/12. Brandon and I went to the Gamestop down the street, as usual. But funny story, the Gamestop was packed with Mass Effect fans. Because the midnight release shared the same date with the 3rd mass effect game. so we were 2 of the 3 people there for SFxT.
The game itself is awesome, but it lacks a little bit. Capcom will be releasing some free updates and content, but I'm not sure how far along that will come out. The only problem I have with the game itself is the stupid 'gems'. It's basically a system of boosters to attach and use in combat that give you a slight advantage when you need it. It was thrown in to balance the game out, but really... it just made certain match-ups annoying as hell. ANYWHO! please enjoy the related pics below. not bad for wallpapers, if one would like to use them for that :P

Pleasant Irony

Anybody else out there every have something good, yet a little unexpected, happen and the best possible time? Yea, that's sorta what happened to me in the last couple days. I've been in a really shitty mood for along time, for reasons I will not yet vent on here. But last night/this morning, some pretty awesome shit happened, and it kinda made me feel okay for awhile. I'll probably be back to the shitty mood soon enough, but yea... I really like random good stuff happening when I need it to most.

MLG weekend

So multiple times a year, Dale, Stawicki, and myself get together at either mine or Dale's house to watch the MLG (Major League Gaming) streams online. MLG weekends are massive tournaments of pro gamers of many games- Halo, Starcraft, League of Legends, Call of Duty (lmao, it's funny cuz CoD sucks...), and in some of the future competitions,  Street Fighter. Normally, we get together and watch all weekend, just like jocks would for a baseball and football championship or something like that. But not this weekend! Sadly, the genius head of MLG decided to make the whole thing pay-to-view. So now, to watch, each person would have to pay $20 to stream anything in their own home. I would understand a fee to enter the actual gaming venue where it is being held, but at home??? Where we expect it to be FREE like it always as been in the past?? Come on... So now, we pretty much have nothing to get together for, and our plans for the weekend are dead in the water. Hopefully, the next MLG will NOT be pay-to-view so we can actually WATCH the epic madness :/

Minecraft

So in the last year, my friends and I have REALLY gotten into minecraft. In September of '11 we figured out how to set up a server and play together. It's a private server and it's insane. When we first started, we spawned as a group in the mountains. And instead of building shelter and playing the normal 'survival mode' we went out to find a village to take over. after hours of searching and getting attacked by creatures, we stumbled past our spawn point and find a village in the desert right near where we started off. So we make our way to the village and exile the npc's. We choose our homes and start farming, leaving the more advanced stuff for later. Overnight, creatures spawned (and note, they only spawn and walk where there is weak light) in the town and destroyed most of it. Daytime comes, and we walk out into what we dubbed as "Detroit 1.4". What made it worse, was some enemies were still left, despite the sun being out. There is one type of creature called a 'creeper'- they explode if you come too close to them. the explosion kills any player close enough and blows up the ground beneath it. We isolate the creepers and start making weapons to kill them. But at some point one of us got too close to a creeper and it blew up. This happened until they all were gone, but as was our town. it was absolutely wrecked lol. First mission after that was to fence in our village, and make sure everything is properly lighted. Each person did their own part here. Stawicki and Dale lit the town while I made the fence. While they ran around placing torches and glowstones in every possible place, I harvested cacti... yes, cacti... and made a full fence for he whole area out of cactus. Once the town was safe, we started stuff like customizing our houses, filling in craters, having fun (such as Brandon's famous "LET'S BOW UP A MOUNTAIN" idea that made the server crash that one night. Pics of that are on Facebok...). Fast forward to January of this year. Dale and I were getting tired of our town looking like crap, so we took a night and fixed the whole place up in 'creative mode' where we had infinite resources. So basically, we now do our stupid stuff, but the difference is, our town doesn't look like a war zone anymore. Pics below  of the not-ghetto town. Sorry, I don't have pics from before :(

This... is our chicken cannon :D

When we first found the town, Dale went AFK for awhile. So to freak him out when he came back, Stawicki and I entombed him in stone. Ironically, He came back soon, only to find his character was starving to death. By the time we came back to the town, Dale had died and respawned. So we made a sign to post on here in his memory XD

Trust me... DO NOT go in that shed... It's just a ladder down to a cave full of creepers.... :P

And finally............. An ACTUAL POST! About an ACTUAL experience!

One of my favorite stories to tell, is always the story of Thanksgiving a few years back. If memory serves correctly, it was in 2009. Most holidays, my family gathers with my dad's side of the family (long story for another time, on why that is). So we're at my grandfather's house (who passed in Feb of 2011) and dinner was over. Not all of the family was there, but the majority was present. After the massive meal, a few of us older guys decide to go outside and talk. At this point, note, I was the youngest present, being 16. My mom was kind of paranoid about this, since there was a small rumor in the family that smoking pot was getting popular in some of the older cousins.

So we get out on the front porch and have a pretty damn long conversation about usual stuff. Catching up, talking about each others' love lives (or lack of one... :P ). after about an hour and a half, my cousin Bob says he's going to go get something from his car. As soon as he gets off the porch, my cousin Patrick also speaks up, saying he'll go with. This leaves just me, and my cousin Chris. As soon as Bob and Pat are gone, Chris turns to me and says "Eric, just so we're clear... that was a drug deal, right?" We laugh about it for a bit, and then I agree with him that it probably was. we go back inside and sit down to watch some TV. After about 20 minutes more, Bob and Pat come back in as well... eyes REALLY bloodshot. They were stoned. Chris and I just laughed, cuz we were right in our suspicions. The rest of the night before and after all this was completely un-noteworthy.

Let's talk music

Music should be easy to choose right? Find a band, or song, or genre you like, and listen to it 'til you're sick of it. I'm not that simple. I pick apart every song I listen to and decide if it's really worth downloading or whatever. Then again, that's assuming I'm inclined to like it at all. There are some genres I hate and others I'm just not into. For example- I HATE country music. It's all the same thing pretty much. Same goes for modern rap. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate rap. I just can't stand pretty much anything of that type made after the year 2003. Sometimes I find a rap song I like, but it's rare. I can keep going and move onto modern pop music or reggae, but my talking will become just like the music I hate.
On to music I DO like! My favorite genres would probably be metal and techno (or electronica. I don't care what the genre is called. pretty much anything made with a computer and not instruments). Others that I like would include pretty much anything from the 90's, classic rock, some other classic pop stuff, alternative, classical, indie, and a few others I know I'm forgetting right now.
One thing I'm glad about though, is the fact that most of my friends have really similar if not the same musical tastes as I.

First blog post... Why am I even doing this?

Well, here we are. My first blog post. Why am I doing it? I honestly have no idea. It's almost 1 AM on Feb 20, 2012 and I'm BORED AS HELL. Anywho... where to start...

Let's start simple. Self description of a sort, cuz, y'know, every blogger needs one, respectable or otherwise.

I'm a gamer. That's the first way I describe myself to anyone who asks. I've been gaming since very early childhood and it would take something pretty significant to get me to stop. I mean, i have self control, but I'm good at what I do, and I enjoy it, so might as well let the good times roll.
As well as being a gamer, I'm a skater, nerd, artist (former), boy scout (just recently finished), musician (former, but might get back to playing guitar at some point), and a college student. I'm actually one of the rare and fabled 'romantic guys' out there. (Ladies, you need not contain your orgasms. Lol, I'm kidding, I know girls aren't into me XD
Also, I have a very weird yet broad sense of humor. But the best jokes to me, are video game/anime related, or sexual/dirty jokes.

Let it be known that every friend of mine I mention on here is someone who I care about a lot. I wouldn't be here if not for them. I mean that literally, for many reasons. Family and whatnot... eh, they have varying degrees of importance, but are relevant nonetheless. Over time, I shall talk about experiences I have/ had in excruciating detail. I'll probably try to post every few days, if not once a week. So please people, enjoy the insanity that is my life!