Vanilla Twilight Interlude Tab

The basic chords for the song are A, E, F#m, D.

A

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E

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F#m

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D

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Solo Tab

Fingerpicking:

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Easier version:

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Onions

Crying and onions go together like corn dogs and mustard.

Confession: this week's video was a last-minute effort to not miss a Friday video upload. I didn't upload anything last Friday, and I felt really bad about it. Then I procrastinated for another whole week and still didn't have anything by Friday afternoon. So I snatched my tripod, my camera, and a couple of onions and whipped something together. It's not very profound, but hopefully it's entertaining.

I was inspired by Pippin's song from Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. It is sad and heartfelt, and Pippin cries a little while singing it. (Watch it here.)

I was also inspired by a Spongebob Squarepants episode where Spongebob gets a seahorse. He eventually has to let it go and is emotional about it. The cynical Squidward has no feeling on the matter, but he ends up crying at key moments due to a bowl of onions that mysteriously appears under his face.

I took a bite from the raw onion. That reminded me of an incident involving raw onion eatage in Louis Sachar's book HOLES. Read it if you don't know what I mean. Mmm, nothing like the spicy flavor of fresh, raw onion!

Later as I was riding in the car with Mom and Dad, Mom said, "Phew! Did someone eat an onion?" I admitted that I was the culprit. Apparently my unpleasant, pungent onion breath was permeating the interior of the vehicle. Haha.

Later,

Jordan

Nicknames Aren't My Thing

I'm not a very nicknamey person. I rarely ever coin a nickname for any of my friends, and nicknames given to me by other people don't stick and soon go out of use. If your name is Carl, I call you Carl; it never crosses my mind to start calling you The Stomp. I'm not against nicknames. I just can't get the hang of them.

My older sister used to call me Norny. I have been called Guppie, Glucose, and Rockstar, among others names. Some people still call me Zac Efron.

This week's video is self-explanatory. I believe we all do crazy things in front of the mirror, whether we admit to it or not. I admit to it unabashedly. In the video, I get carried away talking to myself and giving myself wacky nicknames. All of these nicknames were thought up on the spot; what came to my mind, I said. I had to splice it together to make it rapid and more interesting.

Here is a comprehensive list of the names used in the video:

Sleepyhead

Wet Face

Dump Breath

Nappy Noggin

The Gopher

Suaveness Itself

The Special One

Gratuitous Hotness

Monkey's Uncle

History

History Adams

A Distraction

The Masked Offender

The Official Jive

A Mystery for the Ages

Twiddle Thumbs

The Eccentric Baboon

The Playful Platypus

A Rambunctious and Wily Man

Harpoon Eyes

A Mystical Potion

The Uppity Doormat

A Way of Life

Toothbrush Smith

Diabolical

Petty Lampshade Thief

The Brute to End All Brutes

A Drop in the Bucket

Swifty

Muffin Nose

The Glorious Little Handkerchief Waver

The Ostentatious Cactus

Beet Red Barnum

Toothy Timerson

Midnight Ripcord

The Dark Side of Neptune

A Wallaby's Best Friend

Giggles

The Serendipitous Segue

Scrip Scrap

Back Pocket Brigadier

Swoop of the Eagle

The Successful Graft

A Mayan Wonder

A Sweet Surprise

A Political Fudgesicle

Mateo Mateo

Brick-a-Brack the Towel Rack

The Sagacious Sow

The Fated Swan

Hospital Hugo

AstroNOT

A Woven Blanket

Cretaceous Capsaicin

The Cat's Bark

Heckler of Dancelantis

The Reason Why

A Mistletoe Wish

Shah

Mickle-Mickle-Mickle

The Underside of a Barnacle

The Slithering Mosquito

Custodian of the Illuminati Dollhouse

Thunder Breath

Frank

The Scourge of the Land

The Scourge

Scourglicious

Ebenezer Scourge

The Good, the Bad, and the Scourge

The Scourge of the East

The Scourge of the Bathroom

Skiggity Scourge

King Scourge the Fourth

Scourageous

The Low-Fat Scourge

Street Scourgin'

The Scourge That Made You Blink

Sweet and Scourge

A Residual Scourge

Scourge on the Wall

Vitamin Scourge

Whew, that's a lot of nicknames. Fortunately, I don't have to go by all of them. Maybe I'll pick a new one from this list each month as my nickname of the month. People would get so confused.

Confused friend: "Wait, I thought you were Scourageous ..."

Me: "That was last month. Now I'm The Uppity Doormat."

Confused friend: "Can I just call you The Ridiculous Nickname?"

Me: "No."

Whoa! *dun DUN!*

DIY DOF

Do it yourself depth of field adapter.

There are many articles online detailing how to craft these, such as http://www.ehow.com/how_4748289_build-mm-depth-field-adapter.html

I've seen some examples of cheap DOF adapters on YouTube, and I wanted to try my own. I snagged a 35mm lens from my grandmother, who just happened to have one attached to a vintage-looking camera stashed away in her closet. I used a scrap of plastic grocery bag as my screen on which to project the image that comes through the lens. A few cardboard tubes and some duct tape later, I have a working prototype. It isn't very good quality, mind you, but this project for me was more of a proof of concept rather than a performance rig. I'm happy that I could achieve the results I did with only household materials.

The idea is to use a 35mm lens in front of a digital video camera to give the video a filmier look and feel and more depth of field (DOF). The lens inverts the image onto a screen (usually ground glass, but thin plastic in my case) which the camera is focused on. Since the image is recorded upside down, it must be flipped in post-production.

I had to perfectly space the lens from the grocery bag for the image to be clear. I kept shaving off bits from the end of the cardboard tube until it was exactly the right size. The tube is too narrow; a bright circle appears in the center of the image and the periphery is dark.

I rigged up a simple wooden base to steady the contraption. It looks pretty silly. I had fun making it. I had even more fun not spending hundreds of dollars.

Until next time,

Jordan

Time to Buffen Up

Fat jokes are overrated. I know that. I don't particularly enjoy fat jokes. But I really enjoyed thinking up / filming this video. It takes the focus off of figure and puts it on ... lifting weights? Haha. I'm such a punster, am I not?

You may have noticed that I put my hair up in ponytail fashion. I've never done this before. I did it merely to have a somewhat different look than I normally have. I don't want to appear too much as myself—I want to be a character. An unknown personality.

I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my brother Clint for his cooperation with this. He hurt himself as he dove over the bushes, and he was still plucking pine straw from his armpits when he suited up for work a while later. Poor guy. Help me make it up to him by subscribing to his YouTube channel and leaving him a kind comment: www.youtube.com/clintorion

On a personal note, I don't expect to be in danger of excess weight in the near future. My mom's side of the family is pretty fit and trim, and I seem to have the same type of build. However, I do want to start exercising again. I used to lift weights, do crunches and push-ups, and go for runs, but I haven't done much of any of those in recent months. I'm getting soft! Time to buffen up. Perhaps I'll post something about my progress later.

Until then,

Jordan

Drangs and Frills

Honestly, I didn't have any video plans this Friday. Usually I have the video recorded and edited BEFORE Friday rolls around, but this time I was at a loss. I don't know how it happened, but I just couldn't get anything together in time. Thus, being pressed for time, I decided to revisit my roots and do a random vlog-style video in the tool shed. The beauty of these kinds of videos is that they require little planning or preparation, no location changes, and no costume changes. Oh, and no script. That's where the editing comes in handy: it's easy to cut out all the boring parts. (A script minimizes boring pauses.)

The only real plan I had was to try my rapid talking experiment. I've done this in front of the mirror before, but that's not as big of a deal. I wanted to try it in front of a camera. What is it about a camera that makes your brain blank out? The experiment went okay, but not as well as I hoped it would. I paused too much, wasn't fast enough, and relied too heavily on stall words such as "Um, like, you know," etc. I'll face it: I'm just not a natural-born talker. I'll keep practicing.

I've wanted to do a vampire-themed series for a while. I was reminded of this because Twilight and vampires popped up in my spiel. We'll see what happens with that.

Buckle your seatbelts and hold onto your fangs, kids.
-Jordan

A New Cornucopia of Chances

New Year's has never been my favorite holiday. It is essentially a celebration of time passing, and time passing always makes me sentimental and dampens my spirits. The whole past year distills down to this one moment when the clock strikes 12:00, and the old year magically becomes the new year. All the progress I haven't made comes into focus and robs my optimism for the fresh start ahead. I always have a sneaking suspicion that the new year is just the old one disguise. The new year has a new label, and that's it.

I agonize over opportunities missed. But as I contemplated New Year's last night, I realized that I really shouldn't. I should learn from mistakes, of course; but always regretting the path not taken is no way to live. If everyone waited for the absolutely perfect option to come along—the one that will erase any doubt about whether it is the right choice, the one that will preclude any fickle inkling of changing one's mind—who would ever do anything? Who would ever marry? Who would ever take a chance?

Chance is inherent in the nature of time. We cannot know most features of the future. We can sift through the past for clues about how things might turn out, and we can glean hints from present knowledge how we may expect things to happen; but, at the end of the day, the future is still inscrutable. We must take some level of a chance if we are to live at all. The passing of time makes it this way.

Thus, in a sense, New Year's is a celebration of chance. It looks behind at old chances taken—good or bad, fortuitous or not—and looks forward to a new year full of innumerable chances ripe for the taking.

Maybe the last year's chances didn't turn out as I imagined, but some of them turned out better than I hoped. This gives me hope for the new year and its chances. I embrace the uncertainty of time this year as I lean on the certainty of my God who said, "I will never leave you or forsake you." I know that everything will not turn out exactly as I envision it doing, but I know that it will be okay. I must release my fear of not finding the absolutely perfect option and act upon the past clues and present hints I have.

This week's video highlights the uncertainty of our time here on earth. We can't see the future. We like to think that we have plenty of time left to live, but the reality is this: we just don't know. With that acknowledgement, how will we choose to live in the present moment? I seek the Lord for His wisdom for all of us. "Teach us to count our days; let us know how transient we are."

I'm Jordan Powell.

I have lived on this earth twenty years.

That's 240 months.

1,040 weeks.

7,305 days.

631,152,000 seconds.

Moments fly by me in steady succession, marching towards eternity.

I'm not guaranteed even one more second.

I breathe in; I breathe out.

My previous breath tries to assure me that I will draw another.

But one day they will stop.

I'm here today, gone tomorrow.

Does that scare you? It scares me.

All I know is that I have right now.

I have one more breath to exhale.

One more moment to live.

How will I use it?

What about you?

How will you spend the breath that could be your last?

How will you live on what could be your final day?

"Lord, make me to know my end, and what is the extent of my days; let me know how transient I am. So teach us to number our days, that we may present to You a heart of wisdom."

Lord, help me to breathe each breath with purpose.