i've decided to start kicking it old school and try to take up posting on the old horror thread again

it's really not that good. or news. it's just something i'm doing.

"that's it. she wouldn't make out with me. i'm fighting someone tonight" - the chad, who is back

success! after weeks and weeks and weeks of trying i've finally been able to teach a child something useful. i'm not sure if i've ever really mentioned this, but teaching kids stuff is hard. because, first of all, kids are dumb. they're like little retarded people on speed. only instead of finger painting and staring at trees all day they prefer punching me in the nuts, and driving me insane with their constant "why?"-ing. plus, and this is important, they don't speak english. i mean, if someone had told me that foreign people didn't speak english i never would have agreed to come over to this godless place. but this week i had a major breakthrough with one special little child. she is 7 years old, and her name is sue. and for the past 4 months, i've been calling her chop suey. for a while she hated it, as all these kids do when you fuck with their names (so, naturally, i do it constantly. louie is louie armstrong, but he came up with that. alvin is now simon, sally is mustang, all jacks are jackjack, and so on) then she learned to tolerate it, when it became apparent that i would never stop. now i think she kind of likes it. all the other kids also join in the fun, and use the stupid names i give them, and it makes them feel important. so anyway, i've been telling her that sue is, in fact, short for chop suey, and that shortened names are low class and vulgar. even though the kids don't understand me, i still enjoy imparting my wisdom on them. she never understood. not with my diagrams, hand gestures, sock puppets or anything. then this week it hit me. the korean teachers! they're bilingual. but they don't understand enough english to question anything i say. so i got kelly to come in and explain, in korean, that sue is short for chop suey. apparently she didn't know that either.
this week was hella exciting, as my old pal the chad is back from his two month hiatis. and to celebrate, we had ribs. well, we didn't really. i just enjoy saying that. i was, however, forced to abandon my "no weekday drinking" rule for once, and party it up on thursday when he got here. so we all met up at pearl jam and drank some drinks. drinks with some sort of ingredient in them that somehow alters one's perception of the world around him. or her, i guess. i found myself thinking that i was the strongest and most handsomest guy around. and that's just not true. caleb beats me up constantly, as he's a moose in a plaid shirt. anyways, we then went to buzz bar, where the chad went on to ooze up to every korean girl in the joint and hit on them in front of their boyfriends. he came back with more numbers than he should have, considering. the guy at buzz loves us. he kept giving us free nachos. and we ate them with gusto. then we went to the noribong, which i haven't been to in forever, and spent like 2 hours there, singing our little hearts out. it was hot as balls in there though, and we all almost died. especially me. but they had Yatta there. we sang it like 9 times, though we don't speak japanese. if you don't know what yatta is, then you must watch this. and yes, i know you've seen it joey, cause you're a big dork, but this is for people who don't.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-feLDOpJfYg
this weekend we raged hardcore in seoul. because raging in seoul what you have to do. we went in in the afternoon and went to wesley's cause i had to drop some shit off. then we went off. the boys were playing a show in a new place on hooker hill. you know what? i'm sick of typing. and you guys are sick of reading i would imagine. so fuck this. i'm out. see you in hell bitches. ok, i'm sorry. you're not all bitches. just some of you. and little phil is a fucker. all you really need to know is that i stayed at adams and when i woke up this morning he was passed out in his shower. and he threw a hamburger at a passing korean at some point. and that i am a god damn dancing machine. and the chad had sex, cause he always does. it was good times. we also spent an ungodly amount of time deciding which transformer we all were about about 6 this morning. i was bumblebee, but i demand a recount. good bye. i love you all.
matty

"Cunting, Arsing, FUCK!!!" - Amy, after burning herself on her stove

why is it that a scottish person can say things that would sound offensive in a north american accent and make them charming? it isn't fair.

have i ever told you guys about the beatings that go on at my school. i hate them so much. not because of the actual beatings, which i totally have no problem with, but because 1) they're very loud and interupt my phone teaching and 2) i'm not allowed to get involved. i usually finish my classes at about 7:15, and then have to do an hour of what is called, appropriately, phone checking. this consists of me calling various students on the telephone and chatting with them for a few minutes. it's alright most of the time, considering they don't speak english, and i can't use my hands and body to get my point across. however, at this time the high school kids come in for their classes, but we don't teach them. they have some korean ringers in to teach them. but they don't really teach. they just wander the halls watching the kids while they study, or do tests, or something. but it has to be total silence or else. or else what? or else they get beaten. in the feet. very, very loudly. it usually goes like this. translated for your convenience
teacher: shut up.
student: ok
*five minutes later*
teacher: shut up!!!!
student: ok
*two minutes later*
teacher: god dammit! come with me.
student: no. i'll be good!! noooo!!!!
and what follows is that the student gets taken out to the lobby, has to put a foot in the air, and the teacher will beat the sole of that foot, vigorously, for quite some time. using a...i actually don't know what they use. then the student limps back to class, i assume plotting a way out of this turkish prison. either way, i want to do it. and the parents have no problem with it. it's so awesome. it's like the 1950's all over again. back when being a nun had the sole benefit of a hittin' stick. kids these days are too damn cushy, with their cell phones and MTV....sock hops.
i'm sick and tired of people refusing to ride in elevators with me. it's ridiculous. i'm a teddy bear. i don't look or act threatening, but if i happen to enter my building at the same time as a korean person, even if one elevator is on the 1st floor and the other is on the 15th, the korean will, without question, push the button for the 15th floor one, and wait for it, so as to not ride with me. which makes sense, as elevators provide the ideal location to put my "rape and/or murder any asian person i see for the rest of my life" plan into action. and i think they can tell by looking into my eyes. my freakish, blue eyes. anyways, it makes me sad. i usually end up spending the rest of the night curled into a fetal position in the corner of my apartment, sobbing.
this week was good. as i mentioned above, amy cooked me and ross dinner on thursday. something called "stovies". which i'd never heard of, but is apparently quite popular on the other side of the pond. well, the atlantic pond. all i have here is the god damn china sea. and the sea of japan. either way, seas are totally gay. stovies are quite delicious. it's really just potatoes and onions and corned beef and other stuff. we also watched the royal tenenbaums and drank some beer. jesus, it's like god damn family day here in this pc room. it's all fathers and sons and mothers and daughters, not communicating in any way, but playing warcraft next to each other. warms the heart.
friday night a bunch of us went to see the prestige, which i thought was kick ass. after that we went to road king and got drunk and sang beach boys songs. that brian wilson was a genius. saturday me and the sauce got some pizza and finished season one of the shield, which is a great show. then we watched a movie called green street hooligans, about soccer hooligans. who reside on a green street. it was good. lots of fighting and general no-good-ness. then i went home and showered and the like, and then went over to caleb's and played cranium with caleb and ike and the sauce and ryan and brinny and carrie-ann. then went to road king again, because the footie boys had a game in town that day, and the visiting team stayed over and some of them had a band, which played. they were alright. no g-jay though. that's caleb and ike and tony the pony and ryan's band. which played at pearl jam later that night. also, amy gave me her old mini mp3 player. it's quite small, but she filled it with new pornographers and tool, so matty is a happy boy again.
that's it for this week. i love you all
matty

"matt-teacher!! korea speak!! yes! yes! yes! come on!!! now now now now!!!"
- little harry potter

that's his english name. little harry potter. he chose it himself. anyway,
my younger students have become enamoured with me speaking korean to them in
class. they think it's the most entertaining thing since everything else i
do. other inane things i do to impress them and make them love me include
dramically whipping off my glasses and doing a very serious face, saying
"yes" in the style of that simpsons character that had a strooooke when they want to ask a question, kicking them, having mad stare-offs with them,
pretending to fall down, actually falling down, calling them stupid,
refusing to call them by their real names, and other such tomfoolery. i love
these kiddies. i'm taking them all home with me. why is it that little china
kiddies are so much cuter that little punkass white kiddies? well, to a
point. once they hit 8 or 9 they stop being cute and start irritating me to
no end. and if they're fat, or ugly, man don't even get me started. but that
there is my problem, so you don't need to worry your pretty little heads
about it. and chubby little whities are cute too mandi. eliot is a fine
looking little chap. heh. little harry potter. just looking at this kid
cracks me up. because he has a voice that sounds like he's been smoking for
about 40 years, and his mom dyes his hair. he's got highlights all over his
little head. plus he knows kung fu. but then, i AM in asia. it should be
assumed that everyone does.
this was a good week. things have still been pretty quiet, as me and the
sauce still have no friends. but next weekend should be epic, cause the
chad, ike and caleb are back in the ju. it's all very exciting. me and hs
decided that we had to finish off the deadwood seasons before people got
back, so that's how we spent most of our nights. on monday we went out to a mr. pizza to buy pizza. this was because tae kyeong, who is the only korea
who knows jason's address, and therefore is the only person in the world
that can order pizza for us over the phone, wasn't around. i think she was
at a belly dancing class or something. so we had to go buy our own. and we
caused quite a stir among the employees. during the 15 minute wait for our
pizza, we had to take pictures with three different people, and have a
broken english conversation with pretty much all of them. but they gave us
free coke and a bunch of extra dipping sauces, so i guess in the end it all
worked out for the best. except that night i had some crazy insomnia. i
turned out the lights at around 3 and i tossed and turned until close to 7.
it's really annoying seeing your room slowly fill up with light when all you
want to do is sleep. i love sleep. it's like crack to me. and not getting it
when i want it makes me want to punch babies. i demand instant gratification in everything i do. i've always said that anything that doesn't pay off
instantly isn't worth doing. which is why i'm not a gymnast, a karate
master, can't play the drums, or the guitar, am a poor water polo player at
best, can't juggle OR ride a unicycle, and everything else i've ever tried
and quickly stopped trying. effort is best left up to the oxen. anyways, the
rest of the week passed uneventfully. well, thursday was parents day at
school, so i had to dress up spiffylike and try to talk to the parents, who
speak less english than their kids. basically myself and barney were eye
candy. which is fine, seeing as how we're both sexy-ass gentlemen. then they had a seminar and me and barn had to take the kids downstairs for ice cream cones. it was horrible. having to deal with 20 screaming 6 year olds, all either vying for your attention or trying to run outside, is not what i
signed on for. at least in a classroom you're somewhat of an authority
figure. this was neutral territory, and all bets were off. but in the end no
children died, and we only had to smack around 5 or 6 of them.
friday we went out a-partying, and saturday we did the same. you know how that goes by now. alright, that's it for me. have a good week everyone. i love you all.
matty

Shanghai. was. AWESOME!!!

it was all full of homeless chinamen and people trying to steal our money and crowds like you wouldn't believe. i mean, like, picture an ant farm, but with buildings and shit. gigantic, multi-colored, ridiculously shaped buildings. and there's techno music blaring at you wherever you go. here's the breakdown, for those of you who care to read it. adventures galore. i'm sure i'll forget alot, but you'll get the gist
DAY 1: i spent the night with wesley in seoul so i wouldn't have to wake up at 5 to get the bus from the ju. we caught a bus outside his house and met gunner at the airport. we checked in and wandered around, looking for something to drink. the koreans, it seems, don't care for liquids when travelling, because we found nothing. except soju, of course, but that's a given. then our flight was delayed an hour, so we decided the make up our china aliases. i called short round. so gunner figured it would make sense to be indy. adam, true to his character, was kate capshaw. flew over, no problem. except koreans are unable to sit down on airplanes ever, and mill about like it was an indian flea market. it's annoying. we took a bus into the city. this bus claimed it would drop us off at the proper place, but he just wanted our money and did not drop us anywhere near where we needed to go. that pretty much set the tone for the week. we wandered around looking for a cheap hotel since we'd made no arrangements for anything beforehand. anything at all. because that's how we roll. we figured since everything was super cheap we'd stay in a nice place, so we checked into the pacific hotel, which, before shanghai's boom, was it's fanciest place. it's gone down in stature some, but it's still pretty ok. then we went to a restaurant and ate snake heads and bullfrog. and some sort of mushroom and crab dish that was awfully tasty. snakeheads, however, did not live up to our expectations. anyhow, next came the shanghai'ing. apparently, when someone in this city comes to you and asks if you like ladies, you just walk away. but we said "sure" and then he asked if we liked beer. once again, sure. then he asked if we'd like to come to a club for a beer because it was very nice and there were many ladies. we figured why not. but his club turned out to be a series of rooms with couches. we sat down and they brought three girls in to hang out with us. and then proceeded to serve these girls drinks, one after another. after their third whiskey, we figured it was high time to get the fuck out of dodge. but we were stopped by the owner and some other gentlemen, who insisted that we pay him $350 for our three beers. we told them to get fucked and tried to leave, but the owner (who could say three things: "you sit!", "you pay!!" and "i shanghai number 1!!!", while hitting his chest) decided to go crazy town and started ranting and screaming. then he broke a martini glass on a table and held it to my throat. since i enjoy my blood, we gave them a hundred bucks. he wasn't happy about it, but he no longer had murder on his mind. after that we went back to the hotel and turned in.
DAY 2: we wandered around shanghai checking out the sights. not much happened. the chad came to meet us that night and we went to eat. we ordered duck, which on the menu was a full duck, but when served was only the skin. once again, this is common knowledge. but, once again, our lack of research bit us in the ass. then we went to bar hopping aound town, careful to choose our own, well-lit, crazy chinamen-free places. eventually we ended up at the place called windows, which is the chinese equivilant of old school junctions. it was pretty awesome. sweaty drunken dance parties with chinamen featuring the hottest hits of 2002 and dollar rum and cokes usually are. got home around 5.
DAY 3: the next day we had to stick around the hotel area to wait for hot sauce to get there. there was a famous park across the street called people's square. so we just hung out there, sunning ourselves and drinking tsing tao beers and enjoying not being gawked at. nobody in china cared that we were white! we got no stares, or glares, or leers, or.....whistles. the sauce got in around 5 and, for some reason, we ate at a mexican restaurant next to our place. the food was ok, but they let us wear mexican hats, which are usually for the waiters only. hmmm....that night we....went to a pub that some guys told us about which was alright. full of whities though. i didn't travel to shanghai to NOT hang out with chinamen. so we went to a place called bonbon, which was jampacked with eurotrash. and i mean, jaaaaaaaaaaam paaaaaaaaacked. and if there's on thing in this world i hate, it's eurotrash. they're all snobby and smellly and travelling around on daddy's dollar. or euro. plus, a lot of them don't speak english, which i just don't abide. we hung out there for a bit, but it was all rave-style, and we weren't on ecstacy, so we left not long after. god damn eurotrash! we hit up a few other places, and eventually ended up back at windows, and partied with the chinese students again. goooood times.
DAY 4: we went downtown, to the downtown district. where there's all kinds of crazy ass shit. we wandered around, taking pictures. then we went to the world-famous shanghai aquarium. world famous for what, you say? well, for having lots and lots of crazyass fish that i'd never seen before. it was pretty awesome. then we decided to go up the space needle, or whatever the chinese name is. what we didn't know, however, is that about 4 billion people had the same idea, and they make you pay before you go in, so we were standing in line for about 9 hours. we had tickets to go on a boat tour of the river, but we missed it, due to lineups. we got some kickass pictures from the top though. it was an amazing view. we were pretty wrecked by the time we got back to the hotel, so we just ordered in some food and drank some beers. and wine, called great wall, which was the equivilent of 3 dollars a bottle. we determined that if we drank a bottle of it a day it would be the same thing as actually seeing the great wall. and i stand by it so all you nay-saying motherfuckers can just cram it. everything there is so cheap. we could get 24 beer and 2 bottles of wine for about 12 bucks.
DAY 5: this was our first day with a tour guide. who we hired. his name was phil and he was awesome. he took us, first, to a outdoor market in the old area of town. it was the most crowded place ever. every 100 feet took us about 10 minutes. it was infuriating. then adam's shoe broke, and there was a merchant stampede towards him. it was the most terrifying thing ever. there were instantly hundreds of little chinamen screaming "shoes!!! SHOES!!! YOU BUY!!!! BUUUUUUYYYY!!!!!!" all around us. and there was no escape. after we got ourselves out of there we went to a giant, 6 storey indoor market, with about 1000 stores on every level, just crammed in wherever they could go. it was there that i learned how to haggle, hardcore. they start of ridiculously high, and you go ridiculously low. i got a quicksilver zip-up hoodie for 10 bucks, down from 60. and a bunch of other crap too. it was nuts. and all the stores had spies out monitoring us, so as soon as you said something like "you know, i could use a new pair of sunglasses" you instantly have 3 guys on you, pulling you in different directions. then phil took us to a restaurant where we ate chinese curry, which leaves much to be desired. then we sent old phil home and told him to come back the next day and take us somewhere cool. we then drank more tsing tao and great wall, which were our real tour guides. then we went on our delayed boat tour. the city is amazing at night, especially from the water. i took a bunch of pictures, but you should really try to find a picture of the shanghai skyline at night. we met some koreans on the boat and chatted to them for a while, but they were, naturally, sojued off their asses. when that finished we went out in search of adventure. we bar-hopped again, meeting chinese people left and right. but as the closing time in most places is 2, we inevitably ended up back at windows. crazy things happened, involving scottish girls and a guy that looked like terrence trent d'arby. i actually thought it was him, but he set me straight, in a most eggregious matter. but you people don't need to know about that.
DAY 6: phil woke us up, since we all forgot to call for a wake up call, since we got home at around 6. he took us on the subway, which is a level of hell that i hope never to experience again. at least until i die, cause that can't be avoided. then we got a bus to a town about an hour and a half outside the city. we spent the trip singing songs and doing stuff to wesley, who kept falling asleep. the town was cool as hell. it's 1500 years old, and is the venice of china. it's built on a river and people gondola their way through it. we did as well. halfway through our ride a group of old ladies started screaming out "banana, banana!!!" from a restaurant on one of the banks and beckoning us over. so our rower steered up over and she gave us cupcakes. it was unsettling. this town is also the most confusing place ever, as it consists of only narrow laneways that twist and turn wildly. it's also the home of the first ever silk factory. we visited the museum, which has 1500 year old silk clothes on display. well, in glass. i don't think people are allowed to touch them. adam bought a samuri sword for 12 bucks, but he had it taken from him at the airport. we got home pretty late. went out for one last chinese dinner and then went to sleep. the next morning we set off. i got gypped at the airport. i ordered a cup of coffee and after i drank it i found out it was 10 dollars. so i raged all over that bitch. the shanghai airport won't soon forget matt conway.
so that's my shanghai trip. if you actually made it this far, congratulations. that's like 7 minutes of your life you'll never get back. i love you all. i don't want to work tomorrow.
matty