Karma flip

Even though I'm older and generally like to think that I have life in perspective (my friends' health and the country's economy are more important than whether I go to a concert or my team wins), I'm still an irrational human.

So this morning as I counted down to the Radiohead ticket sale, I got a pit in my stomach (even though today was just a limited-availability presale and I'd have tomorrow's general sale as a backup). Careful planning with Amy meant that we'd each have a high-speed Internet connection and a KROQ password so that we could each try to score a pair. I was going for the 8.24 show, she was going for 8.25 so we wouldn't be competing against each other.

I went to the Ticketbastard website around 9:52 a.m. (for a 10 a.m. ticket release on the KROQ pre-sale). I logged into my account around 9:58 a.m. Then I changed it up—rather than an endless clicks of the "reload" button, I pressed "back" to leave the individual show page and go back to the Radiohead listings page. This took a little longer than reload so I did this only about 30 times instead of 75.

At 9:59 nothing. Apparenlty my computer's clock wasn't slower than Ticketbastard's. 10 a.m. still nothing. Apparently my computer's clock is faster than Ticketbastard's. 10 a.m. and several second ... BINGO! I fly through selecting the seats I want and then ...

... Processing ... This should take less than five minutes ... Processing ...

Less than five minutes becomes less than two minutes in about 1 minute. But then less than two minutes takes another 2 minutes to become less than 1 minute, which seems to have stopped time ...

Processing ... This should take less than one minute ... Processing ... Hitting "back" or "reload" will make you lose your place in line ... Processing ... This should take ... Processing ...

I am thinking only about how at least I have tomorrow, at least I have tomorrow when ...

The buy your tickets page comes up! Yay! And long story, longish, I get two tix, which is doublebubble good because Amy comes up snake eyes. When I IM her that we scored she says that she's still "Processing ..."

But now I'm faced with a bit of an ethical dilemma. (For some bizzaro reason I read that in a cockney accent I was typing it and it was quite a jolly good time, try it.) Should I go for another pair tomorrow? The I-work-at-a-non-profit-and-live-in-debt part of me says hell yeah. While the true music fan in me is conflicted. Clearly, if I score them some other fan might not. Duh. But perhaps if I score them I could be really ethical and sell them for virtually face value to a true fan thereby ensuring a broker doesn't squeeze the little guy/gal. Hmmmmm.

I feel like having majored in philosophy hasn't prepared me for this. This is what happens when the senior level ethics professor takes a sabbatical during your senior year.