Obey Me, For I am Your (Ticket) Master

Oh, how I wish Pearl Jam had won their case against the evil mega-corporation Ticketmaster all those years ago...

It's funny how there's all sorts of "laws" and "rules" to prevent monopolies from dominating our economy, and yet somehow, Ticketmaster has managed to sidle past them all to become our sole ticket-bearing god.  And what a spiteful and vengeful god it is.

This morning, I eagerly waited for my computer clock to slip from 9:59 to 10:00, credit card in hand, ready to buy tickets to the recently announced Billy Joel/Elton John concert next March.

I consider myself an old pro at this.  In my youth, I was famous for knowing which Ticketmaster locations were the least populated, resulting in the shortest lines and therefore best seats.  With the onset of the internet age, I quickly learned how to prepare for an onsale date like an athlete training for a big race...I get up early so that I'm clear and focused.  I sign into my Ticketmaster account ahead of time to avoid wasted time during the purchasing process.  I have all of my information laid out in front of me, knowing exactly how much I'm willing to spend and where I want my seats to be.

It's all a little excessive.  But it's proven successful many times, resulting in great seats at some awesome concerts - I've never been front row, but I've been lucky enough to avoid the nosebleed/back-of-the-stage/I-can't-see-over-the-6'5"-dude-in-front-of-me seats.

Until today.

I followed my usual routine.  I refreshed the event page precisely at 9:59:59 a.m.  The ticket page appeared, I clicked on my choice of ticket price (the middle selection of only 3 options for this show), and I waited for several minutes while the site told me my wait would be "3 minutes...6 minutes...9 minutes...13 minutes...8 minutes...4 minutes...6 minutes..."  You get the point.

After about 3 1/2 minutes total, the ticket screen came up, offering me.....nothing.  There are no tickets available at this price.  

Huh??  But it's only 10:03!  I was literally one of the first people in line - and you're telling me that an entire third of the seats have already sold out??

So I swallowed my pride and started over, this time choosing the - eek - lowest price option.  I was still hoping for a decent seat - sure, I'd likely be way high up in the rafters, but maybe I could snag front row of the uppers, or at the least an aisle seat.

This wait time was much shorter.  WIthin a matter of seconds, I was taken to the ticket screen, seeing that the search resulted in.....no seats.

Ok.  Now you have to be joking with me.  Two thirds of the seats sold out in less than 4 minutes??  I've never, ever had this happen to me before, not for the most popular shows, and I've seen a few spectacular ones.

And that's when I saw it.  To the right of the somewhat apologetic but somehow snide "no tickets available" box, there was an ad.  An ad to try to purchase my tickets for this show elsewhere, namely, on a ticket broker website.  A broker owned by.....

Ticketmaster.

Seriously.  My jaw dropped open.  I mean, I already knew that there were scores of ticket brokers out there who grab up thousands of tickets in order to re-sell them to us, the innocent public, at ridiculously inflated prices.  But how innately wrong is it for Ticketmaster to own one of them?!?!?

They even had ticket prices listed...at FIVE TIMES the original sale price.  Specific seat numbers.  All within a few short moments of the tickets going "on sale" to the general public. Clearly, Ticketmaster allowed this - ahem - broker to buy up a goodly amount of the tickets before anyone else could even bring up the purchasing page.

I call bullshit.  Big time bullshit.

So here's what happens (it seems to me):  Ticketmaster advertises tickets going on sale for the price agreed upon with the artist and venue, etc etc.  They then leave a minimal amount of those tickets for sale to the public, while scooping up the majority of them to re-sell on their "broker" website at a much higher price.  They make the face value on the original tickets PLUS whatever extra they can tag onto the bloated broker price.  They're effectively cheating both the public AND the artists!!  But because they can skate around arguments by showing that they do indeed sell SOME tickets at face value on the actual Ticketmaster site (mostly the higher end tickets, natch), there's not much anyone can say or do.

It's a scam.  It fucking sucks.  And I'm not going to this concert now because of it.

Isn't there anything we can do about this???  I wish I could band us all together, we could all rise up, march against the evil overlords, and encourage venues to sell tickets themselves, abolishing the massive greedy monopoly that is the Ticketmaster.

But if Pearl Jam couldn't do it, then I doubt that one measly unknown blogger chick can.

So I'll skip the Joel/John concert, albeit in a rather peeved state of being.  And I'll continue to hope that the government or perhaps another popular artist with a conscience will eventually step forward to challenge the Master.

Until then, I'm renting "U2 in 3D."

Ego Bruising and a Serious Lack of Mayonnaise

Mayonnaise.  It's one of those words that, if you say or write it too much, begins to look like imaginary alien language. Please tell me you know what I mean.

Moving on.

Yesterday I was blessed with a temp job at a top cable network.  Before you get too excited, let me assure you that I wasn't doing anything of significance, and also that I use the word "blessed" purely in a financial sense, as in I'm flat broke and desperately needed a gig.

Now that I've made sure you're on the edge of your seat, I'll break the tension and tell you that I was called in yesterday morning to fill in for an executive assistant who threw out his back.  Settle down, folks, I'm not signing autographs...yet.

My favorite part about doing temp work is that it's temporary.  Before you can truly, deeply loathe a job, you stop working there and move on to an entirely new peon position.  Or that's the way I felt when I first began temping.  Now I've found within myself the capability to fully despise a job, any job, about five minutes after I walk in the door.

I partially blame this problem on my age.  I'm 31, for Christ's sake.  I shouldn't be doing this stupid shit anymore - I'm smart, damn it!!! I should've been a doctor, or a lawyer, or a...manager at a Tastee Freeze, I don't know, but something where I'm not drowning in a sea of eager beavers ten years younger than me who just adore being asked to make photocopies for snide execs who have no idea where the copy room is - hell, they probably don't even know the term 'copy room.'  They've never been there.

In these moments, I find myself desperately wishing I hadn't chosen the path of chasing my artistic dreams.  I mean, I could've BEEN one of those assholes!!  I had been on my way, but I set it all aside for the sake of chasing the unfulfilled career goal of sitting in a trailer for days on end.

So.....I was talking about the good part of temping.  Heh.  Now for the bad part.

Some places are really cool.  Sometimes you get to work with awesome people, doing interesting things - once I helped put together packets for volunteers who wanted to help impoverished children learn to read.  It didn't pay well, but it was easy and I felt good about myself and my tiny contribution to the world of literacy.

Most places are nothing like this.  Most places, like yesterday's job, walking in the door is the equivalent of falling off a fun-filled cruise ship into shark-infested waters, nobody saw you go over, and oh yeah, you never took those swimming lessons at the local Y.

Yes, folks.  I was drowning.  And being eaten alive at the same time - just the way I always wanted to go.

So here it is, the worst part of temping - the people you work with somehow expect you to enter their building full of knowledge about what it is you're supposed to be doing.  They think you already know their 20-line phone system.  They assume you can figure out necessary passwords.  They know that you know all that technical jargon that only applies to their particular line of work - so when they yell, "Hey, bring me that 4-ply poly-rhythmic sheetscrob," you not only know what the fuck that is, but where they keep it.

Basically, they expect you to be the person you've replaced.  They think you're possessed with the spirit of the departed, which you can easily exorcise at the end of the workday so that he/she can show up in corporeal form tomorrow.

But while you're there in their place, you're treated to a plethora of eye rolls, exasperated sighs, and sniffs of disapproval, all while trying desperately to figure out why you can only find the 3-ply poly-rhythmic sheetscrob, damn it all to hell.

You're probably thinking about now, "yes, but what about the mayonnaise?  I was promised mayonnaise on this story."  To which my answer is, "See?  I can't please ANYBODY!!!!!"

To add insult to injury, when I ran to get my lunch - a ham & cheese sandwich from the cafe downstairs - I was in such a hurry to get back, I only grabbed one small packet of mayonnaise from the condiment tray before rushing off - and I only grabbed that because I like an unhealthy amount of mayo on my 'wich.  But I had made the gross assumption that no cafe would make a sandwich that didn't already come with a sauce of some sort, only to be rudely awakened when I opened my styrofoam box to find a dry sandwich.  On top of which, it was made with extremely thick, crumbly bread which appeared to be composed of a sawdust-like material.  (Oh, and my side caesar was topped with bean sprouts, which I found interesting, disturbing, and nauseating all at the same time.)

So I squeezed my tiny packet of mayo onto the most moist portion of the sandwich I could find, proceeded to eat those four or five bites, then tossed the remainder in the trash.  And I hate wasting food.

What made my lunch truly satisfying, though, was knowing that twenty minutes later I would be given the opportunity to continue my fruitless search for 4-ply sheetscrob.

The moral of this story?  Be a Boy Scout.  Always be prepared.  Learn every single goddamn computer program and filing system out there, memorize it, keep a notebook or twelve filled with detailed instructions on life, the universe, and everything.  Then you'll never, ever find yourself in need.

In this life, I guess you've gotta be your own condiment stand.

For the Love of Saltwater Taffy - a Novel

So I haven't done much blogging lately.

The month of November was a bit of a doozy for me.  First there was obviously the presidential election, which I was following closely, and then there was the apartment move that took place over the span of about two and a half long weeks.

Oh, and of course there was that little thing called Thanksgiving, along with all the requisite cooking, gorging, and shopping.

To top it all off, I decided to attempt the Nanowrimo program - the National Novel Writing Month - for the first time.  Needless to say, I didn't quite reach the goal of 50,000 words in the month of November.  Heh heh....ah, no.  But it did succeed in taking up any spare time I had, which effectively kept me away from my dearly beloved blog.

So I thought to myself today, you know what?  I should get back at it.  Write a blog.  Let the world know I'm still here, whether or not it cares!

And then I hit a wall.  Wait...what do I write about???  There's no more election coverage to delve into, no more Sarah Palin to gape at - there's not even a horrible landlord to gripe about!!!!  The candidate I ardently supported won the race, I moved into a wonderful new apartment that is everything I hoped for and more - what the hell am I supposed to write about??????

Panic sets in.  Concentration is becoming difficult, and I'm enveloped in a cold sweat.  Cold because the new apartment does tend to get drafty from time to time - hey, nothing can be perfect, ya know.

Then I thought, wait - maybe I shouldn't try to jump right back into blogging, perhaps I should attempt to re-start the ol' novel instead!  Yeah, that'll be SO much easier!!

Or maybe not.

A novel is such a daunting task.  Yeah, I already knew that, but once you really start trying to sit down and write the damn thing, you start to understand just how painstaking it really is.  I thought the words would flow out of me like a river of imagination, that I would just need to focus on keeping my fingers moving as quickly as my mind.  Instead, the process has been somewhat akin to eating taffy (which I hate) - you sort of dig your teeth in, then you pull and you pull, the taffy ever so slowly stretches, then suddenly it snaps, and you have a few short moments of sweet reward before it's gone and you've gotta go back to digging your teeth in once more.

I mean, it is tough, people.  And with all that I had going on during November, I was only able to make it to about 10,000 words - a measly fifth of the way to the nanowrimo goal.

But I'm trying to focus on the positive - hell, I got to 10,000 words!!!  That's 10,000 more than I had before I started.  It may not be a novel, but it's a chapter or two at the very least.  I've got a base.  I've got a platform to dive off of.

So yeah, it's fucking daunting as all get out, but I'm gonna get back at it and try to keep digging my teeth in until the taffy runs out.  I gave myself a little reprieve first - did a few chores around the new place and told myself I could write one little, teeny blog to get the gears turning - oil up the ol' candy factory, so to speak, before I start trying to crank up the big assembly line.

Wish me luck, friends.  And if all turns out well, maybe I'll even let you read the finished novel one day.  Like in 2014.