DenyConformity.com

or, Why you should live on the first floor.

Read part one

"Do you want to help me unload an organ from my car?" Andrew Monkey said to me at about 11 Saturday morning.

"That's the second time someone has asked me to unload an organ today." I responded. "And the first time involving a car."

After I left him the night before, Andrew unloaded his coffin, got some cash and went back to the gypsy's house. He only had fifties, so he asked for ten dollars back. If you remember, the gypsy said, "the asking price is fourty dollars." Well, when Andrew asked for the ten dollars in change, the gypsy said, "the asking price is fifty dollars."

"Eh, whatever." Andrew said. Fifty dollars is still a pretty great price for an organ in which 'everything works perfectly.' The gypsy's mexican helper helped Andrew load the organ into his car. They didn't know which way was up, but they did the best they could.

Now we're back to 11 on Saturday morning. "Ok, well, I'm downstairs, so I'm coming up to your apartment for pizza rolls." Andrew told me. I put some pants on and started some pizza rolls. The pizza rolls were good, and the pants too short. I took a look at those lego sets I bought the day before. That leads me to:

CONSEQUENCE NUMBER 1: MISSING LEGO PIECES

I expected to have some pieces missing. After all, I bought a lego set at Goodwill. I expected to get passed the second step of the instructions, though. When I was missing such a crucial piece, I knew my future looked grim. The Lego set was not just missing a few pieces, it was unbuildable. That was dissappointing. Little did we know that it was only a small symptom of a larger problem. We just blindly went off to his place to unload his new organ.

Andrew lives on the third floor of his building. The organ weighed about 200 pounds. Maybe some of you have lifted 200 pounds up two flights of stairs, and maybe you haven't. If you ever get the chance to do it, avoid it at all costs. We took 15 minutes pushing and pulling that thing up the stairs.

We took a break half way through to plug it in and see if it worked. We figured we should see if it did actually work before we lugged it all the way up the stairs. If the gypsy lied to us, then all the work we did would be for nothing. The building had a few outlets outside by the stairs, probably for just such an occurance, in case someone needed to test an organ before they take it upstairs. Andrew tentatively plugged the cord into the outlet. No explosion (good sign). The power light came on (good sign). Andrew tentatively pushed one of the keys. No sounds (bad sign). I pushed a lever, and the organ started playing a simple beat. We smiled at each other, and took it the rest of the way up the stairs. "It's probably just something I have to figure out." Andrew said.

The organ is a Lowrey Mardi Gras. It has:

1. Levers to control the lower key volume, the beat volume, the bass volume, and the beat tempo.
2. A row of switches to select a beat pattern (two per switch!).
3. A row of switches to select the upper key instrument.
4. Switches to toggle the "genie bass", "magic swing bass", and "magic chord system."
5. Switches to select the lower key instrument.
6. Switches to select the presets (we don't know what these do).
7. Levers to control the sustain, swing piano volume, and vibrato.
8. Buttons to toggle vibra trem flutes and flute celeste (whatever those are).
9. Thirteen foot pedals to control the bass.
10. A master volume pedal.
11. Two rows of piano keys.
12. A power switch.

Of all of those things, most of the piano keys don't work, and as a result, some of the switches don't seem to do anything. The piano keys work some times, and sometimes they don't work. The one exception to this is the mid-range 'B' on the lower keyboard. That baby works perfectly. This leads me to think that it's fixable, and all it will take is an electrical engineering major (Scott) to get in there and solve the problem. The keys that do work are pretty amazing, so if this thing is going at full capacity, it would be devastatingly awesome.

The only downside is the whole curse thing.

We removed the back panel, to see what the organ's organs looked like. "You know, we did buy this from a gypsy." I mused. "There's a pretty good chance that it could be cursed."

At any rate, the organ's presence brought about many delicious organ related puns, such as:

• "We just wanted to organize the place a little bit.
• "We should move it into your room, taking it along the organ trail."

After a few hours playing around with it, it was adorned with all sorts of labels and stickers. (actually, only two sorts: three labels and one sticker) None of these things were on the organ when we got it. Andrew had that weird egyptian sticker for a while, and he never knew what it meant. We just knew it had to go on the organ.

The most exciting part hasn't even come yet. We've already seen one effect of the curse, and many examples of fate's shadowy hand in these events. Stay tuned for more shocking tales in The Curse of the Gypsy's Organ!!!

Read part 3 of The Curse of the Gypsy's Organ