Nano & Blackbird

Monday, Sept. 29, 2008 - 12:59 a.m.

John and I had some fun with the new Nano early this morning; we discovered that the firewire connection is only used for charging it, and not for importing music, and the USB connector was not present among the seller's Nano accessories.

We shall hie ourselves to an Apple Store, or at the very least, back to the seller's house to see if it can be found!

Details as they break. If you give a patoot.

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Yesterday I had the pleasure of running into an old friend from high school.

Edward Evan (not his real name) was one of the students in my Radio & Television Broadcasting class, under the tutelage of the late Jay Norton. We adored each other, kissed a whole bunch, but that was pretty much about it. Two seventeen year olds who don't drive have limited options in the privacy department, so that was that. Anyway, he and I sat at a table with several other people in the class, almost all of whom remained intertwined in his life.

Edward has caught me up. Again, not real names.

Evette R. -- Brash and funny and multicultural and beautiful and never giving anybody a break, she has ended up being married at least a half-dozen times, and her daughter has ended up living with Edward and calling him 'Dad'. Evie went to school and learned a trade.

Harry W. -- Harry was tall, fanboyish, and for reasons that mystify me to this day, he despised me. Once, I found a pen under the table and held it up and asked whose it was, and he accused me of stealing it. Jay made the two of us sit in a room until we were done screaming at one another, and after that, he and I tolerated each other until school was concluded. We became better friends after I graduated. Harry lived in the area for a number of years, was friends with Evie, and went to the same vocational school as she did and now works in Nevada.

Donald P. -- Donald was intelligent and kind and about a half-bubble off plumb, but while he was in high school, still seemed very average, if that makes sense. He borrowed my Out Of The Blue LP from me in 1981, and mutual friends have reported seeing it at his place for the last quarter century or so. After Donald graduated, he remained in the area, was married to Evette for awhile, and then finally figured out that he was homosexual.

As for the teacher, Jay Norton? That's his real name. He died of cancer.

Jay Norton was the single most influential instructor in my entire educational history. I have had teachers who I've genuinely loved, and I've had teachers who came perilously close to treating me like their peers -- but Jay was unique. He taught us all how to listen to a news story, separate the wheat from the chaff, and assured us all that no matter how sincere the platforms and advertising would look, that all politicians were ass-bags, and that most of our voting decisions would be between the lesser of two evils.

That's been true my entire life, and it's been influencing me since I have been voting.

In fact, this election year has been the closest I have ever come to thinking that I'm not actually doing the 'lesser of two evils' decision making.

But I still cast a jaundiced eye, courtesy of Jay Norton.

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As for Edward's own history? After high school, he was in the Air Force for awhile, bright enough to ask for what he wanted to do assignment wise, and after his stint got called back a number of times as a civilian technical specialist who worked with the SR-71 Blackbird. I knocked him over when I told him that the only modern technological representation among the sacred items in my altar (well, okay, except for the stick lighter I use for the candles) is a scale model of the SR-71.

He's recuperating these days from what was essentially a war wound, consisting of a bullet fragment that pierced his pericardial sac and began tickling his heart muscle after the pericardial sac became infected. His doctor very somberly told him he had a sixty percent chance of survival if they laproscopically went in and removed the fragment and put stitches on the sac and a little reinforcement patch on the heart muscle. Since the other option was to eventually die of heart failure, he went for it.

What was the bullet fragment doing there in the first place? Simple: Once in awhile, civilian workers at military installations get shot at. Especially Caucasian civilian workers who have the hard luck of being sent to the Korean Peninsula right after the KAL 007 incident.

The bullet fragment had been left inside him during the first surgery as it was considered benign, but then that little motherfucker migrated. He was finally let out of the hospital after about six months of push-pull that begain this previous spring, and he's on the road to recovery from something that should have killed him.

And get this -- he was under strict orders not to laugh too hard. Jesus Maria Jose, he called ME.

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So, that's what I did between Saturday and Sunday. I finally managed to crawl into bed around eight in the morning, and I regained consciousness around one in the afternoon, and managed to remember how to make scrambled eggs to supplement our Sunday Brunch Graze, then John went and got his Nano.

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Nothing else to report. Have a good Monday!

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