What have they done to my ignition?!

The white wire in your case is not the trigger. green and violet should be connected to the distributor pickup wires (brown and black or orange and black I believe). The "white" wire should be going to a different connection on the MSD from the timing controller called the tach output. The "white" wire that is in the bundle with all the others is not used in this application unless You are using the stock ignition box as the trigger.

This may help
[ame]http://www.msdignition.com/uploadedFiles/MSDIgnitioncom/Products/Accessories/8920_instructions.pdf[/ame]