The end of term and a hiatus...

Term ends today, and Easter Break officially starts. Our group will be split up for the next month, each engaging in separate activities along an entirely different path. Almost everybody is returning home to see their old friends, eat an overabundance of delicious food, and to beg parentals for money (The only three reasons why a student would ever return home). I, on the other hand, am experiencing life in a foreign country, an ocean apart from my intermediate family. So, what am I doing over the next three weeks of break, you ask? Flower (who hates going home), Flower's friend Simon (who doesn't have a home), and I are heading to France for seventeen days. We leave Sunday morning, first to Dover in the south to catch a ferry to Calais. We'll make our way south to Amiens and then Paris. From there, we'll turn northeast and go to Amsterdam, stopping at Charleroi "the city of cafes" and, if we feel like it, Brussels. I'll spend my 21st birthday (April 11th) in one of these cities. We'll stay in Amsterdam the remainder of the trip before heading back to Calais and then Newcastle. This is the plan we laid out, it's all subject to change, but I won't be writing any more entries until I return on April 17th. So, reader(s) of my blog, I bid you farewell for the time being, but I shall return with a great deal more life experience than I have at this moment...

As food for thought, I present you with the last pictures of my friends and I before we split up for break. They were taken this morning at 6 AM, after we collectively stayed up together reminiscing about the past two months gone by...
Be back soon..:-)

-Matt

Insomnia, the secret to creativity...

This post will establish the fact that I'm not writing this series in any type of chronological order. The stories will, of course, all be insomnia inspired, written stream of consciousness, and take place between August 2005 and May 2009, hence "College Chronicles"...

College Chronicles Part 2: The Pinnacle


"What kind of beer do you want at the party?"

"I don't really care. I'm so used to drinking absolute shit, whatever works for you is fine by me."

"My friend might be able to get shrooms."

"No shit! I can't wait."

It was the end of February, second semester freshman year. At the time, I wasn't allowed a a car on campus, so my parents would come pick me up and drive me home for monthly visits. They couldn't wait until my sophomore year when I could make the sixty mile trek home myself. Neither of us knew at the time that my monthly visits would turn into holiday visits, then just break visits. Since I had class every day of the week, my stay at home would begin Friday afternoon and end Sunday night, the time spent gorging on home cooked meals and sleeping for twelve hour intervals in my luxuriously comfortable double bed.

"How's college, Matt?"

Family members always ask this. I never know how to answer. I could choose between spewing forth a monologue about how Dr. Smits droned on and on about the Plains Indians of the 16th century, letting them know about the six hour bong sessions and the subsequent journeys to the dining hall to feast on macaroni and cheese and chocolate covered pretzels, or give a play by play of "Intense Ball", a game that I played with my floormates that involved smashing a volleyball around a fully furnished 10 x 6 dorm room at four in the morning. Any of these would describe my freshman experience.

"It's great."

A few days before heading home, my friend who goes to school in Philadelphia called me and invited me to a housewarming party as his new apartment the following Saturday. I had no transportation, but I could easily convince my parents to bring me home for the weekend where I'd have access to my car. When I told them that Kahle was having a party, they were more than willing to let me go (we had been good friends for fifteen years, his mom used to babysit me), but they insisted on dropping me off because I was too inexperienced a driver to handle the city. Fair enough, I was sure I could convince somebody at the party to drop me off on their way back home.

Kahle was a college freshman at Temple University in Philadelphia. His dad worked for the school, so he and his older brother Jesse went there for free. They lived together in an apartment in the city just off campus. Jesse was three years older than us. We all used to hang out over the summer when my mom dropped me off at their house before work. I spent every summer there from kindergarten to high school, remaining in contact with both, albeit on a less frequent basis. This was the second time I had ventured to their apartment for a party since I started college. It would be the last.

My parents dropped me off at the apartment complex at 8 PM. I told them I'd be back at some point the following day, and I'd call them if I needed a ride. They drove off, and I headed inside. I called Kahle and he came down to sign me in at the front desk. He led me through a few long corridors, a maze of identical white walls and blue doors. Somehow, he was able to identify which was his, and he brought me inside. The apartment was quite small, an oddly shaped kitchen and shared bathroom squeezed between two tiny bedrooms. The first thing I noticed when I walked in was the collection of beer cases displayed between the top of the cabinets and the ceiling. Every bit of cabinet space was covered. There had to be at least thirty boxes, each advertising a different brand.

"That's what we've drank since we moved in."

"How long have you been here?"

"Three weeks. But that's nothin', take a look at this!"

He opened the refrigerator door, revealing the most artistic display of alcohol that I've ever seen. Every square inch of the fridge was packed with Keystone Light beer cans. Each of the three shelves and the door were covered. He slid the two drawers open to reveal several cans laying down, unable to roll up or down from being packed so tightly.

"These five cases are for tonight. You want one?"

He handed me a can. I cracked it open and listened to the carbon dioxide hiss as it escaped from the tiny crack I had made in the lid. I thanked him and took a sip, the night had begun. He took me into one of the bedrooms where his friend was stuffing a clay hookah bowl with weed. I recognized him as Cherry, Kahle's friend from high school. I had smoked weed for the first time at Kahle's house nearly two years before with him. The three of us had waited until late at night before sneaking outside to smoke a joint rolled with receipt paper. We had come a long way.

"Hey man, don't you need to mix that weed with shisha? And where's the tinfoil and coals?"

"You don't need any of that, watch this."

He placed the packed bowl on top of a small hookah sitting on top of the desk. The water at the bottom of it looked like it hadn't been changed for weeks. The stem was sticky and covered in ash. He brought the hose to his mouth, pulled out a lighter, and lit the weed. The familiar sound of air being pulled through the water filled the room while the grimy glass chamber filled with smoke. After a few seconds, the noise stopped and Cherry let out a massive cloud of gray smoke.

"That's how you do it, motherfucker! Take a hit, pussy."

Cherry was an articulate individual. I grabbed the hose and lighter from his hands and repeated the process, but my inhale lasted a few seconds longer. When I exhaled, the room filled with smoke. Tiny specks danced in my peripherals.

"No, that's how you do it."

There was an eighth of weed in that clay bowl. That's three and a half grams. Under normal marijuana circumstances, one fills a small glass bowl with maybe half a gram and then shares it with a group of three or four friends. All parties involved will be plenty stoned for the better part of the evening. The three of us finished the clay bowl in fifteen minutes then walked to the fridge to put a dent in Kahle's art project.

A couple of hours passed and people started showing up. By midnight, I had smoked two joints and another bowl (the normal kind) and played two games of full cup beer pong. Normal people distribute a beer or two between six cups, resulting in just the lowest quarter of each cup being filled. We had six cups, so we used six beers. I'm 5'9" and, at the time, I didn't weigh more than 125 pounds. You do the math.

By 1 AM, thirty-five people were squeezed into Kahle's apartment. Other people brought other alcohol and other drugs. It was then that Kahle pulled me to the side.

"My friend is here and he is selling an eighth of shrooms. Forty dollars. You interested?"

"I want to see them first, but hell yes."

He led me through the party to the shadiest kid in the room. He was reclined in a chair wearing a trench coat over a wife-beater, torn jeans, and dirty shoes. He had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. It looked like he hadn't shaved in a few days and, if I had to guess, I'd say he hadn't eaten or been outside in a week.

"You want caps? I've got caps."

He pulled out a plastic bag with a few dried, brown mushrooms lying at the bottom. They were covered in blue bruises. That was a good sign.

"My friend grows his own up at TCNJ. He sells them to me for thirty."

"Man, I don't give a shit what your friend has. These caps are forty dollars. You can not buy these tonight and have a good night, or you can buy these and have an amazing night."

I've never been much of a haggler. I bought them for forty and, against my better judgment, ate the whole eighth. This was a bad idea for two reasons. The first, obvious reason, was that I had consumed way too much alcohol and marijuana to add psilocybin mushrooms into the mix. Mental effects aside, my stomach was filled with thirteen beers, and mushrooms give you food poisoning. Marijuana contributes to the mental and visual aspect, making the entire experience that much more intense. The second reason was that I had promised my floormates that I would get shrooms that weekend and that I would hang out with them while I tripped. I guess when you are that intoxicated, you don't think about consequences so much.

Forty minutes later, I started coming up. I watched as the popcorn ceiling transformed into an army of ants crawling down the walls. I laughed with delight as a dry erase board covered in multi-colored signatures turned into a three dimensional sculpture that took various forms. Then, I blacked out.

I must have opened my eyes a few times while I sat unconscious on the bed. I saw a kid that I recognized from elementary school, one of Kahle's friends. I shot back through time and saw my seventh birthday party at pizza hut. That kid threw up all over the pizza that day. I traveled further backwards and watched as flying saucers danced in geometric patterns as they built the pyramids with two dimensional cartoonish Egyptian men wearing tie-dye loin clothes. I opened my eyes again, revealing a waterfall of some brown substance covering the floor. Next I was standing in a doorway and somebody that I vaguely recognized said, "Everybody leave, the cops are here. Hey, are you okay?"

I came to in a small tiled room. I had no idea who I was, where I was, or how I'd got there. I looked down. The floor was covered in vomit. I followed the trail to the toilet which was filled with vomit. The walls were smeared with vomit.

"Oh, shit."

It slowly came back to me. There was a party. I took mushrooms. I need to get home. I opened the bathroom door and found a disaster area. I barely recognized the place as Kahle's apartment. Empty cans and bottles covered every surface. To walk was to wade through a sea of glass and aluminum garbage. Two people were passed out on the floor. Kahle was sprawled out on a chair unconscious, his face covered with black ink penises. There was one guy still awake. He was drinking a bottle of water in the kitchen.

"Hey, man. You've come back. You were fucked up, dude."

"Where am I? What day is it?"

"What day is it? Dude! It's Sunday, you are messed up, man."

"I need to get home. Can you take me home?"

"It's six in the morning, man. I don't even know where you live. I'm about to sleep in my car, you can come if you want."

"Sure."

I grabbed my coat and walked outside into the freezing February morning. He led me to a dirt parking lot a few blocks down the road where sat a 1988 white piece of shit. I curled up in the back seat and slept for half an hour. When I woke up, I couldn't feel my toes and we were moving.

"I'm going back to my house in Shamong. You're welcome to come along. Call your parents or something, man."

He dropped me off at a Wawa pretty close to my house. I called my mom and told her to pick me up. It was then that I realized my pants and shoes were covered in vomit. I stank. I must have looked like death. My mom pulled into the parking lot twenty minutes later.

"What the hell happened to you?"

"I'm fine. I was helping out this girl who was ill and she threw up all over me. Everything was okay, though."

"Right. You need a shower. Throw out those clothes. Let's buy you some new shoes, too."

"Thanks, mom."

I love my mom..:-)

-Matt

As promised, a documented journey into a surreal world...

This past Wednesday, I went to Wallington Hall, an 18th century mansion located on the center of hundreds of acres of beautifully landscaped property. Much like a previous field trip experience, I was not allowed to take photographs. Unlike that past experience however, my amateur stealth skills were up against touch sensor security alarms, security cameras, and two dozen armed-to-the-teeth security guards instead of a mostly deaf grandmother. I attempted pulling out my camera only once to photograph a display of 3,000+ metal Napoleonic soldier figurines, but an adept security guard heard me unzipper my camera case from three rooms over and was immediately on the scene. Luckily, I was able to shove my camera into my coat pocket and innocently turn to an unrelated display in the time it took him to cover the distance (under five seconds). So, instead of going on and on about all the paintings I saw and hand woven rugs and first edition autographed Alice in Wonderlands, I'll move on to the outside portion of the experience which can be aided by photographic evidence...

So, here's the entrance to the estate...
When you walk through that cool tunnel, you come to the "not very impressive" back of the mansion...
We then toured the house, resulting in the above experiences. Then we left and went around to the "more impressive" front side...
After that, we backtracked to the "somewhere between not very and most impressive" side..um..side...
From here, the field trip went from a fully guided, heavily guarded, information-filled tour of a neat 300 year old mansion to a full-fledged acid trip. Journey with me into the forest of mental solitude as we partake in the visual delights of 19th century landscaping...

Nothing on the Wallington Hall grounds is natural. It was all carefully planned by expert 18th century landscapers and sculpted by their laborers. That means that this lake was the product of some poor working class guy and his trusty shovel...
No, not another lead mine. This was built about a quarter mile from the house to store a big block of ice. That way, a servant could come here with a chisel to fetch ice cubes whenever his master so desired...

All of a sudden, we came upon the garden maze and the greenhouse which reminded me very much of my psilocybin mushroom experiences was filled with beautiful plants and flowers...

After spending a couple of hours gallivanting through the garden maze, I started coming down it was time to leave. The bus pulled up and brought us back to Newcastle, and, once again, I was filled with awe at how amazing this place is..:-)

-Matt

Overwhelming...

I went on a field trip yesterday to a 17th century mansion. I'm a bit overwhelmed with the sheer beauty of the place, and it'll take a while to photoshop the large number of pictures that I took. Here's a preview so that you guys can understand what I'm going through...

No, you aren't tripping on acid. You haven't mentally immersed yourself into a Sgt. Peppers era Beatles song. That is a real place. I really stood there and took real pictures with my real camera...

I guess what I'm saying is that I need some time to formulate the next field trip entry. I hope that's okay. Thanks...

-Matt

Late night insomnia yields blog entry...

It's 5:08 AM. In the past 24 hours (constituting my "today"), I spent a remarkable amount of time at Digg, slept way too long, then accomplished nothing. And here I sit in my room, 5:11 AM...

Sure, I could present my half hour trip to the convenience store to buy dish soap and yogurt in a humorous fashion, but, ultimately, that's a really boring story. So, instead, I'm going to talk about me. Not me right now, this blog has already gone into lots of detail about the current me. No, I'm going to talk about a past version of me. Without further ado, I present to you, the reader(s) of my blog, to Matt Brinn circa 2006...
College Chronicles Serial 1: The Lonely Semester

I had just returned to my room from dinner. Another meal alone, fifteen minutes of pacing the empty corridors of the ABE basement waiting for a quarter pound of pasta to cook on a grimy stove. Tonight's meal was a bit better than usual, somebody had left a plastic container of Parmesan cheese in the community fridge, and I was happy to 'borrow' some. Plain pasta with vegetable oil and a pinch of Parmesan. Delicious. That's an absolute lie, don't believe it. Plain pasta is boring as hell and only serves to remind you that you have no food. I was poor but refused to sit alone in the dining hall eating shitty food all by myself. Better to eat dollar pasta cooked to perfection then the dog shit that was served at Eikoff. If I was going to eat alone, I'd at least cook for myself.

I plugged in my guitar and played along to the Porcupine Tree song blasting from my speakers. Everybody else was eating dinner, I could play as loud as I wanted to. Just as I began ripping a solo in C Lydian, I felt a familiar vibration repeatedly jabbing at my right thigh. It was my cell phone. I put down the guitar, turned the amp off, and answered the call. It was my roommate, Greg.

"Hey, man. I know it's short notice, but I was hanging out at my friend's house and I'm bringing a girl back. I'll be back in about fifteen minutes, can you give us some alone time?"

"..Sure..."

Click.

Cell phones don't click when they hang up. That was added for dramatic effect...

What to do, what to do. I scoured the internet trying to figure out someplace I could go for the next few hours. Jazz club? None were close enough. Restaurant? I just ate, and I can't afford it. Besides, who goes out to eat by themselves? Open mic night? Perfect. Now then, where can I find an open mic on Monday at 9 PM? I found a website that had nationwide open mic listings searchable by zip code. Thank you internet.

My destination was The 449 Room, a shabby three room building (Bar room, Stage room, Back Entrance Storage room) in the center of Trenton. I knew where to find it because I had seen my guitar teacher's band, Disciples of Groove, perform at the place next door a few months prior. It was a ten minute drive, half the time it would take to walk all the way across campus to my car which, for some reason, was the lot designated to me.
It was a particularly cold December night with a heavy wind. These days I'd say it adds to the solemn mood of my story, but at the time I was just mumbling, "Fuck! It's cold as fuck! I hate fucking winter! Fuck this shit!"

I'm a poet, I know...

I drove through Ewing, a quaint suburb town filled with tiny little houses side by side, tiny strip malls, a plethora of Chinese takeaways, and a nice Shoprite supermarket. A couple of miles down Pennington Road, however, changes everything. Suddenly, as if pulled through a vortex into an alternate dimension, I found myself avoiding dangerously neglected potholes as I drove down the dark road. I passed an Acme supermarket. As the once over-quoted Dave Chapelle once said, "I was driving down the road, and I see a liquor store, liquor store, liquor store, gun store, liquor store, crack head..SHIT! I'm in the ghetto!!"

Right smack in the middle of this strange and dangerous world was The 449 Room. I parked a couple of blocks away, then totally oblivious to the parking lot behind the building, and made my way to the entrance. I walked into the bar area, populated only by a plump thirty-something bartender. She looked tired and annoyed. She was wearing sweatpants. I said hello, then walked passed her into the Stage room. Three tables, a pool table, and a plywood stage. At least the sound system was decent. It was easy to tell where The 449 Room's meager budget was going. There were five people in this room. I would meet and become friends with all of them, so I'll introduce them by name.

Jo was the first to catch my attention. He was wearing a button-down shirt covered by a leather jacket, his long greasy hair pulled into a ponytail. He was the MC. His days were spent working a crappy job that he hated so that he could drink his nights away in places like this, inspiring the next generation to embrace art in the way that he once did. Jo was the ultimate eccentric genius.

Kelly Carvin was a hippy. She owned a 1985 conversion van with over 200,000 miles on it that she used to drive across the country, playing shows and dropping acid along the way. It doubled as her house. She had the voice of Janis Joplin and loved The Grateful Dead.

Dana helped start open mic night at The 449 Room. He wrote humorous songs like "About a Song". He was a chilled out guy, but I barely got to know him because he stopped coming to The 449 Room a few weeks after I started going.

I don't have Youtube videos for Shane and Bill. These two were my age, but had chosen a completely different life path. After dropping out of high school, they got minimum wage jobs and tried to make it on there own. I stayed at Shane's house for a night once when I was in a pinch. He lived with a Mexican couple that had a cute two year old daughter. The mother had cancer or some other disease, I didn't ask any questions, but she was definitely in bad shape. The walls of his house had cigarette smoke embedded in the paint, the toilet didn't flush, and there was no food. I stayed one night. Early the next morning, I was jolted awake by a loud knock on the door. It was a very angry landlord demanding three months overdue rent. I left shortly thereafter.

I met these five that night. We all sat around in our private venue, playing songs and making jokes. It was 2 AM when I left. As I drove back to campus, I thought about the previous month, how I had gradually stopped hanging out with my friends from freshman year, how my girlfriend dumped me for getting too drunk at a party, and how I'd spent the last month and a half sitting in my dorm room alone watching movies and eating Oreos. I was in a bad place and needed an escape route. I didn't know it at the time, but The 449 Room would be exactly what I needed...

To be continued...

Now it's 6:52 AM. Still not tired, but now I feel productive. Let me know if you guys liked this, I might turn it into a late night/early morning insomnia inspired series..:-)

-Matt

A cruel day of March...

The plan today was to wake up at noon and go into town to buy food. I went to bed about six and it took a while to fall asleep. When my phone's alarm went off at 12, adrenaline rushed through my body and propelled me towards my desk to end the worst sound in the world. My first thought of the day then hit me like a brick wall. It's Sunday, the market is closed. With the knowledge that no food would be bought today, I collapsed onto my bed and immediately fell asleep...

Fast forward to 4 PM. This time, I woke up for real. With the day's sunlight waning, I rushed into the shower. I was determined to see the sun today (it is SUNday after all). I walked outside, camera in hand, ready to feel the warm rays of happiness envelope my body. No such luck...
Yes, they're beautiful and I love them. They make for awesome photos and they are big and fluffy, what's not to love? How about being composed of matter that floats DIRECTLY BETWEEN the sun and my face? These thoughts were my first as I stepped outside. Shortly thereafter, an icy wind picked up, reminding me once again that March is the worst. month. EVAR!!!

But when I see two artsy farts kids outside of an art gallery, with their designer jackets, thick pretentious glasses and fancy dyed hair, a half smile comes to my mouth, and all is well with the world..:-)
-Matt

After a short unscheduled hiatus, I proudly present...

...a post in which I purport premeditated propositions prepared primarily post-haste (or in that fashion)...

And that makes absolutely no sense at all. It's 4:30 PM, and I just woke up. Welcome to my world, it's always cold outside, light is only seen when diminished by clouds in a sunset covered by tall buildings, and my blog entries are surely affected by an early onset of dementia exacerbated by extreme cabin fever. Translation? I'm CRAZY..MWAHAHAHA..!!!!!

It's the middle of March, still cold outside, and I have officially lost my mind. On the days that I attempt to leave Knoll Court, I'm blasted by freezing winds and sometimes rain, leaving me in a condition of absolute mental turmoil. So I've stayed inside. For three days. I finally drift off to sleep around 8 AM, waking up at about 4 PM, just in time to watch the shops close and the sun set. My life is shrouded in darkness and I've officially run out of food. WHAT AM I GOING TO DO..!!!!!!?????

Well, I guess Eugen could get a bass...
Flower could make some milkshakes...
And then, in pure Rush fashion, we could dine on honey dew and drink the milk of paradiiiiiiiiiiiiise whoah PARADISE..!!!

That would probably make me feel better...

I feel better now..:-)

-Matt

My first guest blogging experience...

Today's entry can be found here. I wrote a guest entry for HBoO while she was gallivanting in New York City with her friends and cousins and seeing Spring Awakening..!!!

The jealousy is surging through my veins at the moment, but it shall pass. In the mean time, go read about my thoughts on poetry dealing with weekly chores..:-)

-Matt

Remember kids, don't talk to strangers...

This is a darkly humoured post. You have been forewarned...

My body's clock is complete shit right now. Since I've arrived, my schedule and eating habits have shifted dramatically. For the past three weeks, I've practically been nocturnal; waking up as the sun set and staying up until it rose. I tried fixing this by pulling an all nighter and then going to bed at a normal hour. It worked for a day. Yesterday, I woke up at 11:45 AM but, for some reason, was unable to fall asleep last night. I stayed up until 4:30 AM watching Easy Rider. At 6, when the sun began to rise, I found myself really awake, so I got dressed and walked to Quayside to watch the sunrise. It is here where my tale gets a bit weird...

I'm walking along the Tyne while bits of light peer out from beyond the horizon, and the place is completely deserted, as always...
Completely deserted except for one guy standing by the river watching the sun rise about fifteen feet away from me. Naturally, the right thing to do is to start a conversation, so I did...

Me: Sunrises are really nice... *snap picture*
Guy: Yeah...

Me: I couldn't sleep, so I decided, what the hell, I'll go see the sunrise over the Tyne...

Guy: Yeah, they are. I'm gonna walk down the Quayside, wanna come..?

Me: Sure, I'm Matt...

*handshake*

Guy: Alan...

So we're walking along the Tyne as the sun comes up talking about random stuff. He figured out I was American and told me that he had been to America a few times while I told him about how I want to move here after Uni. The conversation goes on for about five minutes, him walking slightly ahead of me. Suddenly he stops, and puts his arm out in an attempt to GRAB MY CROTCH..!!!

Me: What the hell are you doing!?

*a second grab attempt, which I stop and push his arm away...*

Me: What the FUCK are you doing!!?

Alan (Creepy Craigslist Guy): Uh..sorry? I thought that's what you were in to...

Me: Um..no...

*speed walk in the opposite direction...*

I was nearly raped by a creepy old guy. I was NEARLY RAPED by a creepy old Geordie guy. WTF!!! Okay, calm down. Just pretend that didn't happen. Go back to Knoll Court, burn all your clothes, take a scalding hot shower, then curl up in a corner in the fetal position and cry for a few hours. It's gonna be okay. Somebody PLEASE tell me it's going to be okay..!!

Since when does watching sunrises make you a target for casual homosexual encounters? This is a crazy world we live in...

-Matt

A new kind of adventure...

I awoke today at 5 AM. No, wait, that's wrong. Let me start again. At 5 AM, I was still lying in bed, awake. I decided I wanted to alter my schedule a bit to allow myself to see more than a sunset's worth of daylight each day. The past few days have been awful on my psyche. So, at 5 AM, I threw away all hopes of getting to sleep at a decent hour and got out of bed. The logical thing to do was to sit up for a few hours on the computer reading blogs and refreshing Digg, but I'm determined to defeat my SAD, so I hopped in the shower and got dressed...

At 5:30 AM, I left Knoll Court and headed to the Millennium Bridge to watch the sunrise. As I was leaving the building, however, I realized that the sun never rises in Newcastle until about 7 AM (I know this from being up full nights and going to bed as the sun rises), so that gave me an hour and a half to wander the streets and find things to photograph. It's strange what you find lying around a silent city before dawn...
I say silent city because after about 2 AM, nothing in all of Newcastle is open for business (except 24 hour Tesco's) and everybody is either asleep or being quiet in their houses. I walked along Quayside and through Eldon Square, the two busiest places in the city, and there was nothing...
The Quayside...
and Northumberland street. Here's what it looks like in the middle of the day, as a reference...
So by this time, the sun was ready to come up. I decided to walk about a mile and a half to what is, in my opinion, the best view of the city. I stood at the middle of a bridge and took pictures nonstop for about half an hour. It was amazing...
Yeah, it was awesome...

Having completed my mission, it was time to return home, but not before walking across the city to take a stroll through the mall, where I finally saw another person...
Going to the mall was only to rest and get warm, the real reason I walked across the city was to get to the market just as it opened, where I could buy sausage and eggs fresh off the truck. I don't remember the last time I've had a proper breakfast, so I bet this one will be damn good. Also, because I've stayed up all night, I should be able to fix my sleeping schedule within the next couple of days..:-)

-Matt

I love this place...

What have I been up to the past few days, you ask? Well, mostly nothing, not gonna lie. Today I woke up at 4 PM, but I still find myself having to run outside and see the light at least once per day. The past few days have been filled with little adventures to the Quayside or in town to explore. I found a really cool music shop in town with Flower and Eugen the other day and played a £539 guitar, roughly $1000. Today I took a trip to a free art museum, The Baltic, but arrived just in time to see it close. It's okay, though, because I got a few cool pictures on the way...
I'm not sure I've posted a picture of what it looks like in town, but...
This is where I go shopping every day..:-)

And, last but not least...
Another picture of the amazing English sky. This one is straight out of the camera, unphotoshoped...

That's all for today..:-)

-Matt

Consolidation of ideas...

I like a lot of things. Unfortunately, all of those things will never translate into what everybody keeps referring to as 'my future career'. Having an extensive knowledge of the physics of the Gundam universe or all of the Dragon Ball family trees doesn't do much when listed on a job application under 'skills'. Knowing that sus2 chords always resolve to minor 7ths won't impress many future bosses. My latest financially devoid passion has been photography and blogging (don't worry, reader(s), I'm not going to stop blogging to pursue hobbies with more monetary value). Basically, my current skill set and various hobbies add up to me being poor and lonely in the distant future (the year 2000). What, then, am I to do..?

Here's an idea. What if I go home on May 31st and spend the summer paying off car insurance and then buying a digital SLR camera. Then, with my new beast camera, take as many photography classes as possible in my last year at TCNJ, graduating with my degree in history and (hopefully) a photography minor. After I graduate, I'll buy a plane ticket to Newcastle and live with all of my friends, working as a tour guide or something while trying to make money with my artsy farts pitchahs..?

I'll live in a place that I love surrounded by friends, I'll have not wasted away my college career on a major that is totally devoid of career opportunities (outside of teaching..bleh), and I'll get to enjoy my hobbies on the side, hopefully replacing my day job with the funds provided by my hobbies. Sound like a good life? I think yes..:-)

-Matt

New twists on some old stuff...

I've been looking at some of my older pre-photoshop pictures and, even though I'm proud of my earliest attempts at artsy farts, I think a few minor adjustments did some good. Without further ado, I present to my reader(s) with some vintage Matt photos, newly remastered with Dolby 5.1 digital surround sound and with Hi-Def video...
But, no. I'm not completely starved of original content at the moment. I have a picture which has NEVER BEEN SEEN on the internet. HBoO is gonna kill me for this one...
She doesn't like it because it makes her look really sad and teary-eyed, but I think it's beautiful. What do you guys think..?

-Matt

Squishy things...

Here are a few leftover pictures from the past few sleepless nights (don't worry, I don't have insomnia, it's just that everybody sleeps during the day)..:-)
This is the result of a Trailer Park Boys marathon being more important than eating dinner...
Why eat a bowl of rice when you can eat a pyramid of rice..?
I don't care what you guys think about waterboarding, but Chinese noodle torture is cruel and unusual punishment...
This sticky pink blob is either on the ceiling, the wall, or the floor. Can you guess which? First person to do so wins a FABULOUS PRIZE (Disclaimer: Fabulous prize may or may not be a figment of author's imagination)..!

The sun will soon be up, which means it's just about time for bed. Goodnight all..:-)

-Matt