Roland JP-4 synthesizer "Introducing the new standard..." ad, Contemporary Keyboard 1978

Roland JP-4 synthesizer "Introducing the new standard..." full-page black and white advertisement from page 55 in the November 1978 issue of Contemporary Keyboard.

I picked this advertisement for one big reason in particular. I'll let you listen for yourself.

Yup. The arpeggiator. I ***love*** arpeggiators. ***LOVE*** them.

In particular that riff from Duran Duran's Rio!

And now, every time I hear that arpeggiator I get a little weepy.

Let me tell you a little story.

I live in Canada. The middle of Canada. And around this time of year it begins to get cold. Right now we are hitting 0 degrees Celsius at night. The garden is done and squirrels are getting drunk on fermented crab-apples that have fallen off the trees. They are brave little suckers when they're bagged.

Anyways, last Sunday morning I decided it was finally time to turn on the furnace. After a couple of minutes, the familiar warmth that usually begins to slowly permiate my house was... well... it wasn't. No heat!

Huh.

So I ventured down into my basement and took the cover off the furnace. I could feel the vibration of the furnace fan, but I swear I couldn't feel air flow. So, without thinking my next action through to its possible logical conclusions, I stuck my left index finger into the fan motor.

Hey neat - blood!

Lots of it.

Wait... that's MY blood.

That's when I realized the fan took off the end of my finger. Not a lot of it. But enough that the nurse at Urgent Care would later describe it as a "gaping hole". A "gaping hole" deep enough that the doctor was concerned about bone infection. 

It was a stupid thing to do. And I felt pretty foolish. 

But those good peeps at the hospital fixed me up and sent me home in under two hours. Who says Canada's health care system sucks?*

*Not me.

And I gotta say, the nurse that first bandaged me up was super nice about it. She calmed me down and was very understanding and kind about the whole thing.  All I could think about was how she probably had a shitty week of no sleep and here I was taking time out of her busy schedule to attend to the result of my extreme stupidity when I'm sure she had a lot of other things to do.

Nurses are good people. Okay, she may have been kinda hot too. Just sayin'...

Anyways, it took a few days before I finally man-up'd and posted a photo on Facebook for my friends. Mostly because when I went back yesterday night for a check-up, the nurse did an awesome job of creating a harness-like system to keep everything in place.

I also posted it to get some group sympathy. And it worked.

But one commenter in particular said something that struck a chord (pun intended):

"EEEK! Your arpeggio finger!"

LOL!