Another Game Show Thing!

Time for me to flaunt my talents as an obscure movie quote rememberer... Holiday Style!
NAME THAT CHRISTMAS MOVIE!

1. "Then I'm going to spend four hours skiing alone. Completely and utterly alone."
2. "I don't pay extra for the warmth you know." "You should, it's the only warmth he ever had."
3. "This is a very interesting situation!"
4. "Do you like kids?" "On a case-by-case basis."
5. "It's turbo time!"
6. "That was the speech?" "It was dumb!" "It was obvious!" "It was pointless!" "It was short..." "I LOVED IT!"
7. "How are you doing?" "Mutual I'm sure."
8. "Because Santa is watching Saturated Fats!"
9. "Forget it. We'll get a funnel cake. It will be the highlight of my week!"
10. "Is it taaaastey? Is it scruuuuuuumptious?"
11. "Look what you did you little jerk."
12. "Hoity toity Mr. god-like smarty pants!"
13. "Wanna pick some snowberries?" "Not now Arctic Puffin!"
14. "You couldn't hear a dump truck driving through a nitroglycerin plant!"
15. "It's the first season of Lost on DVD." "That's the meaning of Christmas?" "It's a metaphor. It represents lack of payoff."
16. "Everyone stay perfectly sincere. Humbugs are attracted to sarcasm."
17. "There's children throwing snowballs instead of throwing heads! They're busy building toys and absolutely no one's dead!"
18. "Ceaser Romero is not Spanish." "I didn't say Ceaser Romero was Spanish." "Well what did you say?" "I said Ceaser Romero was tall."
19. "Every family has a kid who doesn't eat. My kid brother hadn't eaten voluntarily in over three years."
20. "Later Dudenator!"

Why I Can't Write Love Stories

"Hey Todd! Why don't you write a love story, since you're so knowledgeable on the subject?"
Said no one ever.
Well guess what, randumb imaginary fan... I can't because my love is like the love of a Jedi: it's so deep and profound that I'll probably wander the universe completely alone for the rest of my life. So, akin to the reason I can't ever invent children's games, I simply can't in consideration of other peoples' souls. I mean, if I wrote a sappy love story, the critics would say things like:

"Oh man, I feel like I just got punched right in the feels! Sixty-eight times!"

"Am I done reading yet? I can't see through all the tears."

"After reading that story, my love life feels like a dried up dishrag with boogers on it."

"I think I forgot the meaning of life. Where's my gun?"

"If Stephanie Meyer and Nicholas Sparks had a baby and made Jack Weyland the godfather, this story would still be ten times sadder than that baby."

"I want to hug all the people in the world, which is weird because I'm Satan."

And then, everyone would have to reinvent their acronyms and replace all their "l"s with "c"s. Like COL (crying out loud), ROFC (rolling on the floor crying), YOCO (you only cry once), cmao (crying my... yeah you get the point). 

And then all the macho dudes on the earth would have to accept their more sensitive side on such a grand and universal scale that bronies would become the new paradigm of manliness.
So that's why I will never write a story about love or whatnot. Peeps need their balance in life!

Reason to stay a bachelor for life number 11: The man of little consequence remains so, much to the delight of his audience!

Things That Really Irk Me!

It's December, so it's time to write about something that really irks me. "Since when do you write about things that irk you in December?" you ask? Shut up.

Today I want to talk about the newest Kia Soul commercial. It REALLY irks me!
Those friggin hamsters have always been creepy and annoying to me. First of all, they're giant rodents! Not all that different from rats, really. Secondly, I hate to break it to them, but you can't solve the worlds problems by driving around and dressing all gangsta and having rave parties. You'd probably make the world worse actually.
The most recent depiction of these life-size dancing balls of fuzzy disease REALLY gets me! Yes, it irks me so much that I want to not-so-randumbly vandalize every Kia Soul I ever see and NEVER buy one in my whole life! Way to go ad wizards, this one really backfired. I mean, they slimmed down the hamsters which made them even CREEPIER with their disproportionate heads and bodies and then gave them a giant splash of tool, haircuts and everything. I mean, it's like taking something creepier than the Furby and Muppet ghost of Christmas past combined and dragging it through a sea of d**che (pardon my french) and poisoning ESPN with it! Curse you Kia Soul for ruining my Christmas Spirit!

In essence:

Plus

Equals

Plus

Puts you in the neighborhood of:

Which is in the Top Ten Worst Things of 2013 According to Todd Martin Who Happens to Be a Guy Who Knows About Things.

Reason to remain a bachelor for life number 25: One of the worst things you experienced this year was a really annoying commercial.

...Which is also consequently reason number 25 to graduate from bachelorhood. Sigh...

Dream Journal

Last night, probably at the very hour that daylight savings quit, I was having the cutest dream!
Gross. I can't believe I typed "cute" on my blog.
Anyways, it starts out with me inheriting a "prize running kitten." It's like a prize running horse, but it's a kitten, right? A little gray kitten actually. And what did it run? The 400 (you know, that event in track and field when you sprint a lap). Who did it run against? Puppies. All kinds of puppies.
So we were there all staggered for the beginning of the race. I was standing next to the little gray fuzzball and in all the lanes around us were puppies and their owners. I didn't think we would do that well, because I was the only guy on the track with a kitten instead of a puppy, but once the gun went off I just started jogging along the side of the track and the kitten kind of bounded along next to me. Before I knew it, we were way ahead of the rest of the pack, which was weird because it didn't feel like we were going that fast--almost like a "Woops, we're winning!" I guess the puppies were very slow or very blind. Anyways, we were just leaving everyone  else in our dust so much that we were about to lap this old person with his bulldog puppy--which is incredible because it's impossible to lap anyone in the 400. Somehow, the owner stepped out to the left or something and stepped on the kitten's paw which made the poor little guy just collapse. I tried to encourage him to get up and finish the race, but eventually all the puppies were passing us up as the kitten was curled up in pain and mewing in a way that would make your heart just melt. So, I decided to pick him up and take him to the vet.
The vet's place was more like a newspaper stand run by a guy in a white coat, but he took the kitten and looked at him and declared him ok. He then set the kitten down and the little guy started bounding about like nothing ever happened. I was wondering if I had put too much pressure on him to win that race; he was just a kitten after all.
I then woke up thoroughly disappointed that reality hasn't yet caught up with my dreams of kittens-vs.-puppies races or puppies-dressed-as-cats races. It's just so adorable when they run! Eccckk... what a gushy post.
Notice the kitten never really got a name. What's that all about, Freud?
Anyways, I had this other cool dream a few weeks ago about how I did that thing that you only see in the movies or in the tv shows, you know when people are talking about you and all the sudden they turn around and there you were where there was nobody just a second ago. Like a Batman or a Rumpelstiltskin kind of trick. I felt so cool when I did it, because I saw one of my friends and his wife sitting at a table next to a fountain in some sort of mall and they were expecting me and they were debating whether or not they should even wait for me and then they turned away from the fountain and I jumped/glided down from the upper story I was on and landed quietly enough right on the edge of the fountain that they turned around and there I was just sitting there with one leg over the other and a smug look on my face thinking, "OH man, I just rocked your world!!!"
And that was the whole dream. Not  a whole lot of substance to it, but I can still say it's one of the best ones I've had in 2013. Probably second after prize racing kitten.

Auchh(flem)tober

Ah, the most wonderful time of the year... now that summer means nothing because I'm not in school.
Seriously though, you walk outside to beautiful weather. The sun is pleasant instead of oppressive, the air is crisp, the degrees are in the sixties, and the smell of everything is just so nostalgic... reminiscent of a time when Halloween was so magical that just pulling the box of decorations out of the attic was like the first Christmas of the year. Also, Saturdays just burst into life with college football, and though the Texans are a bit disappointing this year, at least ESPN has something to show other than difficult but repetitive baseball highlights because the NFL is in full swing and the NBA just launched. And now calls to family always include plans for Christmas. It's that time of year too. Bust out the Bing or the Harry or the Muppets or the Manheim or the TSO, whatever gets you in the mood for that one season that people actually don't think just about themselves all the time.
So why don't I care much for that "holiday" called Halloween? It's been more of a "my dad's birhtday" than a "glorified set of traditions that were great in elementary, died in high school, but came back in force in college because we all suddenly realized we loved our childhoods" for the last decade for me. I want to touch on that decade a bit to try and explain:
My senior year in high school, I remember going to play football against the Boling Bulldogs with one, Carlton Waddy--I remember his name, yes, and the feeling of his and his whole team's cleats on my face as I pulled grass out of my face mask play after play. That game really defined my role, not as outside linebacker, but as "speed-bump." Even the coach told me, "Martin, this is a rough game for you." What can you do when the guys you are going up against way an average of 45 pounds more than you do? Go for the knees!
For all the college Halloweens, including freshman year pre-mission, I can sum it up with iffy dance parties and everybody and their dogs going out in couples to haunted houses or scary movies and crap. This is probably the biggest deal that marginalized Halloween for me--three words, one alliteration: bitter BYU bachelor. Crap, I just published that shameful bit... With that in mind, Halloween is only number two on the list of least favorite holidays; it should be pretty obvious what number one is.
Mission Halloweens don't really count because they were just another day wherein we worked hard and then went home early so people didn't egg us in their chaotic revelry.
Now post-BYU, Halloween hasn't been so bad. I spent the last one away from family, but the one before that I got to enjoy it with nephews and nieces in Texas, which helps to recapture some of the magic that defined it in my youth. Oh the ambivalence of nostalgia... how we humans crave such things! Or maybe that's just me...
Still (back to whining), I am amazed at how everyone puts so much creativity and resources into their costumes and the best thing I've come up with in the last decade was intramural referee... which really was just me walking home from work. I NEED MY ATTENTION PEOPLE!!
As such, as a sort of "sticking it to the pagan traditional man" statement, I carved a cantelope instead of a pumpkin.

And then I didn't eat it!

So enjoy your zombies and ghosts and things for those people who really dig the 31st. If it's your thang then it's your thang, but it ain't my thang. I never understood America's fetish with zombies and vampire romance and watching movies with enough gore and creepiness to keep me awake for several days, but I guess I lived a happy childhood. Not saying you didn't... 

I also just remembered that I forgot to get candy in case kids actually knock on my door tonight. I better go outside and collect some rocks.

Happy 64th pops! I wouldn't know how old you are if I didn't go back and check how old you were last year in my journal.

Reason to remain a bachelor for life number 31: You can spend Halloween doing what you really want to do: watching NBA and eating Denali Xtreme Maximum Fudge Moose Tracks. 

Oh ASUS, how you Ruin Me!!

I rant sometimes about electronics. It's time to do that again.
My work computer, I swear, is trying to foil me!
I'm like, "Man I have this important job tomorrow!"
And it's like, "Great! Let me give you a white screen and nothing else. Yup. I just got a virus even though you use me for work and skype and literally nothing else! Good luck keeping your job after that ten hour debacle!"

And then I'm like, "Ok, let me get you that audio as fast as I can because it's after 10:00 PM and we just finished this job."
And it's like, "Well, I really don't feel like recognizing any thumbdrives at all, except the one you have on your keychain, but I'm just gonna tell you that it's WAY too full. Those Word docs and powerpoints are weighty stuff, you know. See you at home around 11:30!"

And almost every time I open it, I'm like, "Hello!"
And it's like "Shut up!" and it shuts down for some reason that I have yet to discover.

But it still manages to do its job mostly and I am learning to work around its eccentricities. Still... sometimes I feel a little like Sparhawk and this computer is my Faran.

Reason to stay a bachelor for life number 24: You can get home from work at 10:30 PM, and the day is only beginning!

Gnats

Have I complained about gnats before? I don't think I have... enough.
Can I just say that I wish that all the gnats in the world had an aneurysm  right about now. I mean, I just had one fly up my nose! Just when you think you've gotten rid of the little buggers, all the sudden they start flying out of your disposal again!

Reason to stay a bachelor for life number 52: Bugs in your place aren't that big of a deal.
Reason to graduate from bachelorhood number 51: Bugs in your place become a big enough deal that somebody actually does something about them.