moving day!

Hey everybody. The internet has informed me that I'm not allowed to upload anymore photos to this blog unless I start paying a monthly fee to do so. And if I ever stop paying said monthly fee, my photos/drawings/etc disappear.

If you know anything about schoolpants, you know:
a) a robot wearing pants is funny;
b) schoolpants DOES NOT negotiate with terrorists.

anycrap, i don't know how internet works really, but i do know this: i don't feel like paying money for this right now.

SO: from this day forward, schoolpants is now living at www.schoolpants.tumblr.com

thank you and may cod have mercy on your sole.

VIVA LA SCHOOLPANTS!

premium weiners

weiners is a funny word and it always will be. deal with it.

new knapsack

i got a new knapsack! it's so great finally having a new sack for all my knaps. my previous knapsack was old and weathered. it had gotten to the point that it could barely hold a knap. i was losing have the knaps i was putting in the sack. you think knaps grow on trees? think again! they grow on hills!

photo courtesy of tim neenan

future gas station!

this gas station is from the future!

*spoiler alert* gas is expensive in the future.

flying cars: it's about time

back to the future part II promised us flying cars by 2015. finally, it feels like we might meet that deadline. this flying car, or "roadable aircraft," sells for $194,000 but i'm sure that the price will come down by 2015. my plan is: by the time i'm able to afford a new car ... the price of the flying car will drop to a price i can afford.

so we're probably looking at about 2037, maybe. if i'm lucky.

happy inauguration day

we got a new president today. that's always pretty exciting news. i woke up early to watch the festivities. one of the funniest parts (for me) was when they announced that john williams had prepared a piece for the occassion. i'm a fan of his movie scores and immediately named "back to the future" as my favorite. boy did i have egg on my face when my roommate, adam, corrected me, "alan silvestri did back to the future." serves me right for illegally downloading that song my freshman year of college and believing it when it said john williams was the composer. anyway, williams did the scores for star wars, superman, indiana jones, hook, home alone, ET, and jurrasic park - all of which are among my favorite theme songs.

adam was telling me about how a lot of classical music buffs dislike john williams because of his tendency to "borrow" from other composers. i quoted swingers, "everybody steals from everybody." adam agreed. then, about a minute twenty into this song that john williams wrote for the inauguration (called "air and simple gifts"), the song starts to sound uncannily familiar. "it's the beef it's what's for dinner song!" i immediately exclaimed. and it was. it definitely was. "air and simple gifts" is four minutes and twenty-four seconds long and literally two minutes and sixteen seconds of it is the "beef it's what's for dinner" song (aka "hoe-down" from "rodeo" by aaron copland.)

but after doing a little research i found out the melody was actually from an old quaker song called "simple gifts" that was written back in 1848 (that explains the williams' title) but there's even some speculators that think it was an old celtic tune before it was a quaker tune.

like i said, everybody steals from everybody. stole that from swingers. and it was said a million times before that movie was ever written. anyway, it was a nice inauguration. the inaugural address was very well done. and the song john williams wrote was cool as well. check out "air and simple gifts" if you like:

ed poe: dead at 200

edgar allan poe would've turned 200 years old today. the only thing that stopped him: death.

poe is just one of dozens, literally dozens, of great americans whose lives were cut short by death. most famous for inventing the po'boy, the sandwich that made new orleans famous, poe also dabbled in writing. awhile ago, i bought this book of short stories that he wrote. the first one was called "the black cat" and it was totally awesome. after that, i didn't really finish any of the other stories because he uses SO many words. and i have no attention span. still. black cat was awesome.

at work, there's this calendar that has birthdays of famous musicians and it said that today was janis joplin's birthday. then some customer came in wearing a janis joplin t-shirt and i was like "hey it's her birthday today." and i think it made the customer uncomfortable. she avoided eye contact and mumbled something like "meh, yeah. i heard that on the radio, meh." she was trying to play it off like she's not a joplin-nerd. but c'mon. there's nothing wrong about being nerdy about stuff you like.

the calendar also told me that today is dolly parton's birthday. she's 63. what's weird is: i remember seeing dolly parton in a movie or something when i was like 11. and at the time, i figured she was like 50. and, for whatever reason, when i remember someone as being 50 when i was 11, i assume that now, they must be like 87. which is ridiculous because it hasn't been 37 years since i was 11 years old. not yet anyway.
so tonight, i was checking out other birthdays and i found this awesome website (with a sweet cosmic background) and it told me that LOADS of cool people were born on january 19. for instance: jodie sweetin (stephanie from full house); shawn wayans (of wayan's brothers fame); junior seau (pro footballer and children's advocate); desi arnaz jr (illegitimate son of lucille ball); dewey bunnell (of pop-rock trio "america"); paul cezzane (post-impressionist painter); and robert e. lee (leader of the douche bags who fought to keep slavery legal).

more importantly, today was doctor martin luther king jr day. and that dude was awesome.

get ready to get bummed out

the nineteenth of january 2009 is "blue monday," which apparently is the most depressing day of the year.

good thing the optimists' society is here to save the day by sending cheer packages to such celebs as jeremy paxman.
"who the crap is jeremy paxman," you ask?
"is he the inventor of arcade favorite, paxman," you ask?
... "no," is the answer. and the name of that game is actually pacman. not paxman. common mistake.

jeremy paxman is a english journalist, author, and television presenter who invented the arcade favorite, miss paxman.

why does he get a cheer package and i don't? i dunno. i didn't read the whole article. i'm tired. you read the whole article if it's so stinkin' important to ya. here.

uh oh, jesus is back

crud. so, apparently, a new baby jesus got born on christmas. his dad's a carpenter and his mom's name is virgen maria. i don't really know what the "bible" says about all this. but i'm pretty sure, according to modern folklore, that we've only got about 33 years until all that "apocalypse" business starts happening.

have your fun now. clock's tickin'.

worse than ED

in a startling blow to both the evolutionary theory and the existence of god, two british doctors have found that some people have uncontrollable sneezing fits whenever they think of sex. "how could god or any logic account for this?!" shouted one american boy, upon discovery of this BBC article. no answer was given.

i, for one, will no longer being saying, "bless you" when suspicious looking characters sneeze near me. rather, i plan to offer a sidelong glance and mutter "perv" under my breath.

maybe as this study develops, the traditional "bless you" will transition to a more appropriate "get your mind out of the gutter" or at least, the already popular, "get a room!"

payback time

after centuries of being terrorized by cats, a few brave mice said enough was enough. we've all seen the way mice and cats bicker in such famed television series as Tom and Jerry, and Tom and Jerry Kids, and others. in a one-on-one battle of wits, the little mouse is able to out-maneuver the rage-fueled (some might expect amphetamine-fueled) feline. however, in a place like an animal shelter (housing nearly 100 cats), those poor mice don't stand a chance.
... That is, until now.

mice in toronto showed a majestic display of unity and ingenuity by joining forces to start a fire, taking out nearly one hundred murderous cats. unfortunately, three dogs and some rats were also killed. but like the old adage says, "you want to make an omelette, you've gotta kill three dogs and some rats." read more about the cat fire here.

robot girlfriends ... FINALLY

This morning, my roommate sent me a link to an article titled "Inventor builds his own girlfriend," in an email titled, "this reminded me of you."

and i'm trying to figure out why this reminded adam of me. does he know about all of the girlfriends i have invented for myself? sure he does. or maybe it's because i, like Le Trung (the inventor), have "never had the time to find a real girlfriend," but probably have the time to create a robot that could act as my girlfriend. or maybe it's because he's read a short script that i wrote a few years ago called "my best friend, my robot."

any way you slice it, it's not flattering. and neither is this article about Le Trung. it tells that the robot's name, Aiko, is japanese for "love child" but Le Trung denies the robot was made for sex. and then he adds that her software could be tweaked to "simulate her having an orgasm." also, pictures and comments like this on his website are not helping his case:


that comment "AND yes Aiko is still a virgin," really troubles me. i feel like that implies that she is capable of having sex, she's just saving herself for someone other than Le Trung.

Le Trung has videos of his girlfriend on youtube so you can see their playful interactions. watch him flirtatiously pinch her arm, as she responds sternly "i am starting to feel it... please let go of my arm. you are hurting me. why did you do that for? it's hurt ... i don't want to do this anymore" then he squeezes her breast and she tries to smack him, stating, "i do not like it when you touch my breasts." it's just like having a real girlfriend!



really all of this makes me sad. not just because of the blatant creepiness of the whole thing. but also because this guy is clearly a genius yet he doesn't have the imagination to create a girlfriend who is even remotely attracted to him. it's heartbreaking. he doesn't stand a chance with Aiko ... but he still loves her ... and he still squeezes her breasts despite her countless slaps and cries of "i do not like it when you touch my breasts." poor le trung. unrequited love really is the saddest thing in the world.

amster! amster! dam dam dam!

i just saw this article on the bbc news website that dutch authorities are trying to "clean up" amsterdam by shutting down HALF the city's brothels, sex shops, and marijuana cafes. i put "clean up" in quotes because i think the correct phrase they were looking for is "water down."

they're also planning on reducing the number of "sex windows" from 482 to 243. "sex windows" is a bit of a misnomer. they aren't windows you have sex with. that would be weird. even for amsterdam. they are just windows, through which you can view prostitutes. no big deal. and for people too proud to pay for sexual favors, but still curious enough to want to see the red light district, amsterdam is spectacular for window shopping. but don't make eye contact! when i was in amsterdam, we were checking out the red light district and saw this LARGE prostitute sending a scared looking young man out of her booth. we were laughing because she was sweaty and gross and out of breath and he looked like he wanted to sit in the shower and cry for a few hours. the big prosti caught our eye and started yelling for us to "come here!" it was terrifying.

but it was all part of the experience. and i didn't really experience anything TOO crazy. and part of me kind of regrets that. i mean, i don't wish that i had visited a hooker or anything like that. i just feel like i should've done something more amsterdamy, ya know?

there were a few semi-crazy stories from the trip. one night, we got a little too drunk at this campus bar and i convinced the girl we were staying with (a friend of my friend, mike's) that we were sober enough to go into the city to check out some more bars. on the train to the city, my friend mike somehow fell and cut his head open and was bleeding pretty badly. but we were still smooth enough to convince everyone we were with that we could totally still go to some bars in the city. so mike is like all sprawled out in the train, with his head tilted back, holding a tissue to the gash, trying to stop the bleeding. suddenly he lurches forward and barfs all over the floor of the train. finally, the girl hosting us is like, "okay, we're not going into the city. we'll get off at the next stop and turn around." then one of the conducters comes back and sees mike, bleeding profusely from the forehead, sitting in front of a bunch of barf, and the conducter asks, "is he okay?" i'm wasted and say something like, "yeah, just needs another beer." and the conductor actually laughs and just walks away. looking back at it, i can't believe we didn't get arrested or at least thrown off the train or something.

then later that night, mike woke up and started making a ruckus. he somehow thought he was still on the train and he wanted to get off. we couldn't get him to realize we were back at his friend's flat. it was kind of scary. kind of comical. funny what alcohol and headwounds can do to the brain.

oh and another story from that trip: we were at a party one night and it was a lot of international students. and this one guy and girl call me over to them and the guy asks me where i'm from. i say the states and he reacts disappointedly, the girl seems triumphant. i ask what gives and they tell me they were just looking around the room trying to guess where people were from. i ask where they guessed i was from. the girl guessed ireland or america. i tell her that's a good guess because i'm going to school in ireland, but i'm from the states. i ask the guy where he guessed i was from. "portugual," he says. "portugual?" i say. "yeah," he says, serious as hell.

it's not a very interesting story but for a minute it made me feel like i looked exotic.