post piano pissonance

You want a bad day? I'll give you a bad day.

I bought a piano by mistake. And my car broke down in the middle of an intersection.

The impulsiveness of my purchase started sinking in, yesterday, manifesting into an LC the size of a Steinway.
A little something marketers like to call “post-purchase dissonance.”
Us retrads just call it “Regret.”

('Retrad' is the PC version of 'retard,' also it sounded good when I misspelt it that one time.)

I have gone and bought a piano. By accident.

You see, yes, I want a piano. And yes, it is something I intend to buy.
But I didn't give this particular purchase much thought. As in “Where am I going to put this fucking thing?”
On my kitchen counter? Or perhaps, in the bath tub? Or wait, I know, I'll sell a couch/my bed and just whack it there.

Also this piano, after I mistakenly failed to read the fine print in all my excitement of finding the deal of the century online, is one godawful ugly instrument.

It has gargoyles ok. Gargoyles.

It's more gothic than a really really gothic thing.

It was a steal. And for R3000 and 50c - the 50c means I have won this auction, by 50 fucking cents - I got all wrapped up and pressed 'submit.'

I have to get a delivery van to fetch it in Pretoria with four strapping men who can actually carry it and then maybe hoist it over my balcony, because it ain't gonna fit through my door.

I see smashed neighbours windows and a flattened cat.

So. Apparently if I win this auction, I have to buy it. It's in the fine print. And I don't see anyone upping my offer before the auction ends at noon on Friday.

Which, evidently, makes me the proud owner of a 70 -year old piano. Which Ches pointed out is being sold because the guy died. (Something about a 'deceased estate?')

“You can't buy a dead man's piano! Fuck! You're going to have to get it cleansed by a reverend.”

Peas: Fuck. Another 500 bucks I need to fork out.

Ches: “It'll be playing Phantom Of The Opera all by itself! ...But maybe if you cut the piano in half.....you can store one half on one wall, and the other on another wall. But that might piss the dead guy off.”

My American colleague made me feel somewhat better when she piped up that once she bought a car on eBay. A 1972 Mercedes. An indescribable tank, on a whim, (ooh, what a great weekend car! The picture is so pretty!) Which backfired all the way back over the Bay Area bridge. And she had to re-eBay it for half the price.

Can't even claim temporary insanity. Or lie and say I ate nine ecstasy tablets by accident and therefore wasn't all there.

In the course of 24 hours, I've tried to sell my piano to about, oh, 65 people.
I've asked all my colleagues. Twice. The people in my dance class. My boss. My mates. Passers-by on the street, and the tow truck driver.
No dice.

About the tow truck driver. There I was, push-starting Ludwig, in the middle of a road, somewhat flustered and yelling, with a t-shirt on that said Steve Biko Rules O.K., getting him towed, but then all the way to the battery shop his alarm was going off, (nothing else works, except for his alarm which was but making a bloody racket and causing people to openly stare) while at work a shit storm was occurring in my absence, and I was thinking:

“This rocks so hard.”

The guy at the shop said, “Next time don't phone your insurance company to get you towed, we do call outs.”
Thanks Mister. But I like to do things the hard way.

So I almost-own a piano. Which if I can sandwich it into my house somehow without snapping my balcony off, I'll host a Christmas soiree involving shitloads of eggnog and Joseph's Technicoloured Fucken Dreamcoat in A Flat Minor.

My guests might have actually to sit on the piano, or hang out in the bathroom.

Oh and the TV? Looks like that baby is also going to have to perch on the piano too.

DVD night at Peas' place! Oh wait, I don't think so. Gargoyle obscuring view.

Christ.