The worst license plate ever?

A red sun rises... blood has been spilled this night.

This morning I went outside, and the sky was covered in a cloud of smoke. It looked like it was foggy everywhere, except it was all smoke. It smelled like fireworks. And then I looked up and saw the red sun.

Now it's not nearly as smoky anymore. I'm not sure how the entire sky got covered with smoke, or how it disappeared, but now it's just smoky in the north again, like it's been for the past 4 days.

I can see the smoke from my window

This is the closest I've ever been to a fire. Now the picture above doesn't look too bad, but that fire is like a couple of miles away and spreading all over the hills. The picture below is the same view as the one above:

So yeah, closest I've ever been, and closest I'd ever care to be. The air's difficult to breathe. Just walking down the street to take these pictures last night took the breath out of me... Natural disasters are the most devastating and yet beautiful things. Funny how that is.

The wise words of my brother

Over the years, I have learned so much from my older brother. I have always looked up to him and admired everything that he did. So today I decided to share some of the things he has told me, so that you too can bask in his knowledge.

Do you like pool? If so, I've got the balls if you got the rack.

You remind me of a blue ribbon bass - I don't know if i should mount you or eat you.

Wanna try an Australian kiss? It's kinda like a french kiss, except down under.

It's true that there are plenty of fish in the sea... but you're the one i want to catch and mount back at my place.

If you can't find a job...

it's your college's fault?

There are so many things wrong with this situation...

She graduated in April, then sued her college 3 months later for tuition and "the stress of her three-month job search." Makes it seem like she was only looking for jobs once she got out of school, which is one way not to get a job.

And of course, all reasonable employers love people with 2.7 GPAs and solid attendances. After all, as long as someone shows up to work, they're a valuable employee, right?

And apparently the career center is supposed to make companies interview with students. I'm sure the career center should go out of their way to make sure each individual student gets plenty of job offers. The student shouldn't need to be proactive at all (granted, she did send her cover letter and resume and make phone calls, and she did get some responses, but still complained that she didn't get enough).

Plus, it's so unfair that the career center favors people with better grades. The people with better grades get jobs more easily.. it must be because the career center favors them.

This article is a great example of how not to get a job coming out of college. So I just need to remember to do the opposite (or at least not the same).

Inspiration

I've taken to taking more pictures now. Maybe it's because I have more time and I'd like to experiment more, or maybe I want to edit the pictures. But some pictures don't need photoshop to make them look weird. Like this one... the blur is a person on a swing. It was taken at night without a flash, so she just showed up as a blur.

I've also started taking more videos of random things. We made a silly video today. It was tons of fun. I took lots of clips using my digital camera, and then we put them together and added music.

Maybe I'm just in an artistic expression mood, because I also made two song parodies today. That's pretty fast for me... I think I got a burst of inspiration today. I love the summer...

Life...

...is amazing.

Every day, I fall into my usual routine just to make it to the end of the day. I take every little thing - my food, my friends, my ability to breathe decent air - for granted. And it is so easy to fall into this monotonous lifestyle. It is so easy to forget that I actually love living life. But I do. As cliché as any of this may be, I love my life and everyone and everything in it. I love waking up after four hours of sleep to see the sun shining into my window. I love eating my simple breakfast of cereal and milk. I love driving to school/work and slowing down for traffic. I love seeing my friends.

But it takes the opposite of life - death - for me to remember. I wish I could remember without that reminder. I wish I could say that I don't need that reminder to enjoy my life... but as sobering as death is, it makes me appreciate the things that I have.