my new robot

a new robot has been added to the schoolpants family. his job is to heat things up. he is a heating robot. his name is randy. here's a comprehensive list of things that randy is good at heating up:

1. my foot (only one at a time);
2. the part of my blanket that hangs off the bed directly in front of randy.

welcome aboard, randy!

new year's evening bracelet

hey so, on new year's evening, my friend margaret put this bracelet on my wrist because it's supposed to be good luck or something and it's supposed to mean something. she told me that yellow and green stand for power and love. i said "oh, i love huey lewis and the news." i don't think she got the joke.

anyway, i had to make a wish when she tied it on my wrist and supposedly, when the thing falls off, that wish is supposed to come true. well, it fell off today but here's the thing, i was drunk when i made that wish and i honestly don't remember what the hell i wished for. so for all i know, it came true already.

anyway, i tried to look up what the thing meant and wikipedia gave me an answer in stinking portuguese for crying out loud. fat lot of good that does me, wikipedia!

grocery list

the other day when i was grocery shopping, i found this in my cart. some nerd had made an excel spreadsheet for a grocery list and printed it IN COLOR and on GOOD, SHINY PAPER.

FURTHERMORE, the nerd spaced out each grocery iteam so they wouldn't touch each other.

AND this nerd shops at SIX DIFFERENT PLACES.

one thing that is awesome though is that the last two items on the list are "crock pot liners" and "butter (sticks)."

i don't even make grocery lists. that's how cool i am. i just walk around like an idiot and throw hot dogs and sandwich meat in my cart. grocery shopping is easy.

thowback dew

a week or so ago, my friend jon had a can of pepsi. only it didn't look like a can of pepsi from a week ago. it looked like a can of pepsi from like 1993. i immediately got pumped up. i like those cans way better than the new cans. he told me they're doing throwback cans and the soda pop inside contains real sugar instead of artificial sweeteners. that pumped me up even more because my favorite kind of pepsi is mexican pepsi which, i think, has real sugar.

anyway, long story long, i went to get some throwback pepsi but they were out. they only had throwback mountain dew. which also pumped me up. i used to drink a lot of mountain dew. anyway, they went with the really old can instead of the 1993 can. i would've preferred the 1993. but i do like the old old can. it has an old-timey woodsman holding a jug and the jug is shooting a cork through his old-timey woodsman hat. and that's just great if you ask me.

but mountain dew with real sugar kind of just tastes like diet mountain dew, which isn't as good. so, i'm not that pumped up about throwbacks anymore.

catchphrases

people love catchphrases.

new plan against petition people

this should've been a part of the last post. but i didn't think of it until just now. here's what we should do the next time the petition people try to bug us. right now, i'm thinking specifically of the greenpeace people but i think we could tweak it to work for any of these bullies. i remember greenpeace people would always say thinks like, "hey man, want to take a minute to help save the world?" then they ask you to give them a bunch of money.

well, next time that happens, as soon as they ask you if you want to save the world, get a crazy look in your eye and say "yeah! but i'm gonna need your help. i have a plan. it's perfect but i need about eighteen thousand dollars to get it off the ground. any amount that you could donate would be a huge help."

that'll show 'em!

and it works for anything. if someone's asking you to sign some petition to change some law. be like, "it's funny you should ask because i have a similar thing going. do you want to sign mine?" and then hand them a piece of paper, like an old receipt or gum wrapper, whatever's in your pocket.

if they try to sell you some garbage about how their organization is more legit, just kind of scoff and say, "oooohkay. but ... how do i put this nicely? ... hmm. see the thing is, people respond to me. i'm what you call a people person. i feel like - and don't get me wrong, i think it's great what you're doing - but i feel like i'm a better face for this cause, do you know what i mean? does that make sense?"

and if they still refuse to sign your petition or donate money to you, say something like, "okay, i feel like this discussion is just going in circles and meanwhile, neither one of us is saving the world. here's what we'll do. just have your supervisor give me a call and maybe i can work something out with him. here's my business card." and then hand him an old receipt or a gum wrapper, whatever's in your pocket.

petition people

back when i lived in boston, everyday when i got out of work, there would be these jerks who would ask me to sign some petition or give money to them to save the world and junk. it was annoying. because i am a nice person and when people talk to me, i usually can't help but pretend to listen. i would always fantasize about having the balls to turn the tables on these jerks. sometimes i would daydream about doing silly things like just screaming and running as soon as they approached me. other times, i'd dream of going on angry rants like, "don't you see? don't you know this isn't normal?! i'm a stranger! don't talk to me! you're breaching a social contract to which we are all bound!" and so on.

but most of the time, in real life, i'd just pretend to be on my phone or i'd tell them i'm in a hurry.

i don't see petition junkies in my new neighborhood much. but a couple of weeks ago, walking out of work (just like in boston), some weird girl asked if i had a minute to help out a good cause. i said "eh, sorry" and kept walking. she said, "all we need is your signature. it's fun!" and i said, "that doesn't sound fun." which i thought was insightful. but apparently, she just wasn't ready to hear the truth about Fun. she gave me a really dirty look.

j d salinger is dead

j.d. salinger is one of my favorite writers. he's dead now. like most of my other favorite writers.

hyper color!

so a couple of weeks ago, i bought what i thought was an ordinary blue t-shirt. i only wore it once and i actually wore it underneath another shirt. then today, i did laundry. when i was folding clothes i came across a white t-shirt that i didn't recognize. i checked the tag and found out that it was my new blue shirt. the color must've bled or something? i checked my other clothes to see if they were slightly bluer. they weren't. strange. but oh well. the shirt was only like 4 bucks anyway. i got it downtown at the american apparel factory. it was one of the reject shirts. maybe that's why they rejected it. the color comes out in the first wash. they should've told me that. i'm going to make some tea.

so i made some tea and went back to my room and holy crap there's my blue shirt. right where it was a moment ago, folded just so. and it's blue again. i've lost my mind. i am a crazy person now. dammit. i knew this would happen. how long until they put me away?

BUT WAIT, there's more to the story. i was recounting this tale to my roommate adam when i realized that upon touching the shirt, the color would fade a bit. "it's a hypercolor shirt!" exclaimed adam with joy. and it's true. i have a hypercolor shirt now. accidentally. check it:

hot dogs n' jesus!

so there's this button up at the top of blogspot blogs and it says "next blog" and if you click on it, it just takes you to another blogspot blog. i've clicked it a bunch of times just to see what other people blog about. i've found out that a lot of these blogs are about food or religion. both are very blogworthy topics, in my opinion. and both are topics that i don't discuss often enough. so, i've decided to try to incorporate both into my post today. here it goes: for dinner tonight, i had hot dogs. hot dogs taste good.
and here's something funny i thought of about jesus: wouldn't it be funny if you saw jesus in his day-to-day life, and he was getting ready for work, and he had a big heavy carpenter's apron on, and big heavy carpenters gloves on, and he grabbed a huge chunk of carpenter's wood and he put in a big carpenter's vice and he was all set to do carpenter stuff to it, and then right before he got started, he put his hair in a pony tail so it wouldn't get in his eyes.

i think that's hilarious. because, he had really long hair in the pictures. it probably got in his face all the time. why aren't there any pictures of him wearing a headband or a cool doo-rag or something?

glow worm

i bet if i, for some reason, turned into a glow worm, i'd have a real crummy attitude about it. i'd probably just complain all the time about it.

red oval

have you guys had red oval? it's a beer. it's an awesome beer. it only costs $2.99 a six pack. and it has really cool cans. do you know what my favorite things about the can are? if you said the red oval, you're wrong. i like the gold/red/gold stripes at the top and bottom. i also like the amount of blank white space. i used to always say if i ever make my own beer cans, they'd just be white and say "BEER."

like the beers in repo man and in lost.

but now that i'm older and wiser, i think they would say "BEER!" with an exclamation point and they'd have stripes at the bottom and top. just like red oval. here's a rough sketch.

party RIGHT NOW

this fire-breathing T. Rex has the right idea. let's all stop what we're doing and party. right now!

conan rally street fight

funny or die made this funny video at the rally for conan. i got to be in just because i was there!

Conan Rally - Late Night Street Fight - watch more funny videos

my very LA day (part 2)

okay, so after seeing conan, one of my favorite funny people in the world, i thought the excitement was over for monday. it was not. i performed in an improv show at iO West, which was pretty exciting, i guess. but after THAT, came the really crazy part. i was walking to my friend george's apartment after the show, because i needed to get my car, which was parked there ... at george's apartment.

anyway, i'm walking along, i'm walking along, minding my own bee's wax. there's not too many pedestrians around. it's nearly 1am on a monday night. i notice a nice car park on sunset blvd. four gentlemen get out. they're all dressed like rock n' roll people. most people are in this neighborhood. i'm only noticing them because they are walking four-wide, taking up the whole damn sidewalk and they're walking slower than i am. i just wanted to get my car, get home, and get to sleep because i had to be at work at 6:30am.

so i pass them, making it obvious that i'm annoyed by the fact that i had to really squeeze past. but then we all get to a stop light and i have to wait because there's an ambulance and fire engine coming down the road. there's a bar across the street where hip people hang out. i figured that's where they are going. and it looks like that's where the emergency vehicles are heading too. one of them made a funny comment about how "uh oh, that can't be good. we're never gonna get in" or something like that. i thought it was witty. maybe these guys aren't so bad after all. so i turn to see what they look like and they look like my absolute favorite band of all time, radiohead. the witty comment came from none other than thom yorke. the whole band was there except johnny greenwood. we all crossed the street together. for a moment it was like i was the fifth member, instead of greenwood. it blew my puny little mind. i just stared at them.

the ambulance went to the motel next to the bar and took some old person away. i stood outside the bar for a few minutes, trying to figure out what the hell to do next. i've never been so stunned to see anyone. i called adam and told him to meet me there and then i went inside and got a beer and stood awkwardly by myself, pretending to do things on my phone, until adam showed up. the guys all sat in a booth. thom was very animated and seemed to like the music. he whipped his head around a lot and danced with his arms. just as he does on stage. it was great.

i looked into it and apparently, they're working on their new album somewhere around here in hollywood. i still can't believe it. fucking radiohead.

my very LA day (part 1)

typically, i'm not all "blah blah blah i saw a famous person!" but yesterday, the fates smiled upon me and i was in extremely close proximity to some of the coolest/most talented/most important people in the world (in my world). and in TWO separate, unrelated incidences! i feel each deserves their own post. so this is part one and it belongs to conan, andy, max, la bamba, and the masturbating bear.
yesterday around noon, my friend george and i decided to go show our support for conan at the big rally, despite the hurricane-like rains. we took the subway, which was fun because neither of us had ever taken los angeles public transportation before. it was actually quite nice. probably the cleanest subway i've ever seen. i hope to make use of it more in the future.

anyway, the rally was great. everyone was crazy. i would've taken more pictures but it was seriously raining harder than i've ever seen it rain in LA and it rained pretty consistently all day. until conan came out. he ran down the street and was mobbed by all the fans. i'm typically not a "mobbing" type person. but i wanted to be in there. i was one of the first and when i got to him, he stopped running and started hopping up and down. without thinking, i started hopping along side him and patting him on the back. it was weird.

then he ran like 2 blocks to gate 2 of universal studios. everyone ran with him, but man, he's fast. i couldn't keep up. then he waved to all of us from a building. and he bought us pizza that we passed around the crowd. there were a lot of funny chants and there was a lot of camaraderie. and the funny or die people shot a funny video that i am in. i play a very prominent audience member. and my performance is pretty genuine, if i do say so myself. you can watch the video here. OH, also, andy richter gave a nice little speech that i recorded.

the bert sampson show

have you guys seen the Bert Sampson Show*? it's this hilarious cartoon on canadian tv. it's about this young troublemaker named bert. he's always saying funny things like "holy cow, buddy" and "eat my shirts!" his dad is funny too. he'll bonk his head on the overhead cabinets and yell, "duh!"

everyone cracks up at this show.

*i wish this was a real show.

Day 10,000

so thursday was my ten thousandth day on planet earth. it was a decent enough day. except for i have a bad sore throat.

but it felt like a landmark day. not because of anything that happened. just because from now on, i will be beyond the 10,000 day mark. time to grow up.

my resolution for the next ten thousand days: be less like george mcfly and more like marty mcfly.

day 9,999

so, i was bored at work a few weeks ago and i was playing with a calculator. i added up how many days old i was. it was close to 10,000. so, just for shits and laughs, i marked the 10,000th day on my calendar. that day is tomorrow.

anyway, 9,999 seems like a pretty big number. it seems like i should be an expert by now. like, i should know how to make the most of a day. but today, i did almost nothing. almost nothing at all. i'd say of my first 9,999 days, well over half were like today. that's no good.

i would estimate that i actually remember close to 500 of my days. probably 100 of those were good days. that's not bad, i guess. but it's not enough.

who knows. tomorrow is day ten thousand. maybe everything will click into place at dawn.

marioworld

when i was eight years old, my family took a vacation to Orlanda, Florido to visit world famous Marioworld. my sister laura didn't get to go because she was in college. college is a place you go to be away from your parents but still act like a child. so the rest of us took a plane ride to florida. it was my first time on a plane. i wasn't scared because i didn't give a shit. i don't think i was even paying that much attention. i don't remember paying much attention to anything when i was a kid. mostly, i just watched tv and sat around just thinking about stuff. now i'm older and people expect that i grew out of that but in a lot of ways i'm even worse than i was then. anyway, we went to marioworld because that's where all little kids want to go. mario is this italian mouse who is an expert in plumbing. it's like every kid's dream. we all played the video games and watched the cartoons. we all kept pet mice. we all drew little mustaches on those pet mice. we all tinkered with the backs of toilets and the underbellies of sinks, pretending that we, like mario, were little mice plumbers. we all dreamed of someday moving to a little town in italy, learning the language, maybe finding a nice italian girl and falling in love and opening a little combination plumbing service/pet mice store.

but those dreams are long dead now. i've watched the better part of my 20s fall to the wayside and here i am, barely conversational in italian, little to no real plumbing experience, and i'm less like a mouse than ever.

how did this happen?

not special

i drew this picture back in april. i think i was planning on making it a t-shirt. but who gives a shit?

an open letter

dear dog across the street,

why are you such a dick? you bark really loudly. don't you know that i'm trying to watch television? i like to keep the television volume at 30 because it's an appropriate volume and it's a nice round number. but when you're barking like a dick all the time, i have to turn it up as loud as 38 sometimes. 38 is not a nice round number.

also, there's absolutely nothing happening outside right now. there is NO reason for you to bark. your hours and hours of barking accomplish nothing. you are wasting your life.

in closing, just knock it off.

i hate you,
schoolpants

fire!

i used to love playing with matches. still do. in the third grade, my friend troy and i were playing with matches out on the playground during the girl scout carnival. the girl scout carnival was this annual event organized by the girl scouts. they would have it in our school's gymnasium. they'd have all kinds of games and prizes. they also had a maze where junior high kids would make out because it was dark in there. i was supposed to make out with a girl in there when i was in the sixth grade. but i chickened out. we just stood in there silently for like 20 minutes, then she tried to kiss me and i panicked and she kind of got me on the cheek. it made me really uncomfortable. then in seventh grade, i was supposed to make out with this other girl. we stood in there for like 20 minutes and then SHE chickened out. i was pretty relieved.

anyway, so in the third grade, we were outside playing with matches and this dude caught us. he was somebody's dad or something. and he gave us this big lecture about how we could've burned down the whole school and killed everyone inside. i pretended to cry and i apologized a bunch. he asked us where his parents were and we said inside. so he walked us inside, like he was gonna take us to our parents and tell on us. but as soon as we got inside, troy and i took off and lost him in the crowd. then we met up in the bathroom and talked about how crazy it was.

i still play with matches. i don't care what that guy says.

nortoli pratman

this week's schoolpants art project was a portrait of italian singing sensation, Nortoli Pratman.

all proceeds go to the Nortoli Pratman Center for the Treatment of Animals Who Have Experienced Inhumane Conditions (NPCTAWHEIC).

letters to schoolpants

i get lots of emails from my readers. day after day, hundreds of thousands of millions of letters appear in my inbox. some of them carry messages of thanks and encouragement. others contain marriage proposals or erotic photos. most, however, are letters asking for advice. i do my best at responding to every letter personally. actually i don't. but from now on, i'm going to reply to some in a segment i like to call LETTERS TO SCHOOLPANTS. here is today's letter:

Dear Schoolpants,

Hi. How are you? I'm lousy. I'm bored out of my mind all the time and I'm sick of everything. All I do anymore is work and sleep. In my free time, all I can think of is how rotten everything is. There's nothing to do. I try to eat but every type of food sucks. I try to watch tv but who wants to watch a bunch of morons pretend to do stuff. I try to read but everything's so damned boring. It just pisses me off. You seem like a nice enough guy. What do you recommend I do?

Sincerely,
Sleepless in Seatle

well, here's my advice: Seattle has two t's not one. my second piece of advice is: what your experiencing is a case of the doldrums. there's nothing you can do about it. just ride it out. write a blog or something. write anything. write about writing. write a letter to yourself and respond to it. it doesn't have to be good. just do it to pass the time. you're gonna be okay. and if things don't get better in a few weeks, you can run away and hitchhike across the USA and live like a hobo until you die. doesn't that sound like fun?

if you would like to contribute a letter, please email schoolpants@gmail.com

vomiting light

did you know that if you go three days without eating and then you get so bored that you barf, your barf will be a stream of pure light. it's true. actually, i don't know if it's true. but i feel like it should be true. because why isn't it true? i want more stuff like that to be true. real life is such a bummer. nothing bizarre or cool ever happens. i'm sick of it.

cartoons in real life

i don't like cartoons in real life. like when you go to disneyland and miggy mouse (who is a cartoon) is there with a human inside him. it's creepy. i went to disneyworld when i was 8 and i just remember being really turned off by the characters in costume. i found it really unsettling seeing these characters, who i liked, in this weird way. their faces were frozen in these creepy smiles and they can't talk or blink. they just move around in really strange ways, trying to communicate with their big stupid hands. i remember being especially disturbed by the way they laughed. these guys can't make noise OR change their facial expressions, so, to show laughter, they would shake and cover their mouths with their hands.

that's not how people laugh.

it pissed me off when i was 8 and it pisses me off now. miggy mouse should look like this.

bummer's disease

i don't think i've told you guys about this but i suffer from Bummer's Disease. bummer's disease was first discovered by Dr. Fredrick S. Bummer PhD., or "fred," as he commonly asked his students not to call him. fred was a professor of history at the University of Califlorida, a now defunct liberal arts school.

fred was always pretty down but when the university shut its doors for good, fred was especially bummed out. he stayed in his apartment for the rest of his life.

when fred died at the ripe old age of 99, scientists dissected his body to see why he was so bummed out all the time. they found a protruding lump in the back of his head, where his spine met the base of his skull. inside that lump was a peanut M&M.

apparently, certain people produce too much of a hormone which releases M&Ms into our body. this condition is known as bummer's disease. i've been told that my peanut M&M is really only about the size of a regular M&M. so, in theory, my bummer's disease is manageable.

some people think bummer's disease is a good thing. just when you start to think you're a real hot shot, you get a bummer's disease flair up and you remember all the reasons you're awful.

some people think bummer's disease is a bad thing because apparently when your bummer's disease is reminding you of all the reasons you're awful, it's lying or at least exaggerating. so it's making you feel worse than you really should feel.

some people think a lot of things.

if you or someone you know suffers from bummer's disease, give them a hug (if it's you, hug yourself. no one's looking).

stoolpants

you know what piece of furniture i think gets no respect? ... the stool.
it's the working man's chair. you're practically standing, you can easily change direction to face a different way, you're supporting your own back, so you're still alert. the stool is the piece of furniture of choice for any true man of action.

L right; R left

wouldn't it be cool if when you put the L headphone on your right ear and the R headphone on your left ear, the music played backwards?

one time my friend kienan asked me if there was anyway to play video besides forwards and backwards. i said "what do you mean? how else could you play it?" and he just kind of shrugged and said it'd be cool to play it another way. it was funny but i think kienan seriously might be from another dimension.

dirty dishes

everyone gets upset when their roommate doesn't do the dishes. here's a movie about it: