So I’m hanging out in Madison, WI this week looking for new apartments. I’m in the process of trying to move out here and I’m trying to get it done by the end of June. Anyway, as I’m hanging out one evening reading the Onion, my GF points out this advertisement in the AV Club section that is listingRage Against the Machine and Queens of the Stone Age are playing at Alpine Valley on August 24, which is right around my birthday.

Luckily tickets hadn’t gone on sale yet and weren’t going to until this morning. So I start getting all excited thinking “Sweet! I finally get to see RATM, a band I’d loved since high school! I make enough money now that I don’t think I’ll have a hard time managing to squeeze the $130 it should cost for tickets.”

So this morning, I wake up at 9:45 and get to the computer and start refreshing the TicketMaster website. 10 AM finally rolls around and I click the ‘best available’ option. After waiting 2 minutes, I finally get in and have the best available lawn/GA tickets. Why did I have to wait 2 minutes to find the best GA? Annoying.

Anyway, I finally get to the purchase page and the total price for two tickets for a $57 show is $153. WTF TicketMaster?! Why do you take something that should be as simple or fun as buying a ticket to a band that I love and turn it into some sort of moral quandry?

BTW, if you don’t want to do the math, that’s $39 in ‘convenience’ fees.

I understand that you want to make money TM, I really do. However, please keep it within reason. Heck, just reach an agreement with the venue and hide from me how much you’re gouging me for. Don’t flaunt your annoying monopoly in my face by throwing on ridiculous bullshit charges like this.

I love how in every other industry, the internet introduces cost savings and increased savings and efficiencies but somehow ticketmaster is charging me more money because I’m printing these things out at home!

I wish I didn’t care. I wish I could just ignore it. I wish I could just see Rage and Queens of the Stone Age. Now I won’t though because I’d just sit around being pissed about it every time I thought about my ticket and how much I paid for it. What was supposed to be a fun purchase this morning has turned into a moral quandary. It’s an effin’ rock show, that shouldn’t be how it goes.

dontEATnachos fascinating audiovisual exploits have been extremely informatiive, but we have been steadily edging into slimmer definitions of nerds. Our founding charter states that we must provide a font for all aspects of nerdness. dontEATnachos has lately been bringing it to the table in a form and style that can only be described as HARD and I feel that fulsome and I should at least match dEn’s efforts. Since fulsome is still MIA, aside from the music blogging robot that has recently been switched to ON, this task falls to me. In that regard, I am undertaking an assignment that does not include MS Paint.

Recent events in my life have reminded me of the reason why I started taking philosophy in the first place. I wanted to sound smarter than everyone else. I have a lot of questions about life and existence and I thought I would consult some experts, perhaps with the goal of becoming some sort of expert myself. Modern Philosophy has its faith and Socratic dialogues have their interlocutors, but Existentialism has only a certain je’ne c’est…you know?

In that regard, Martin Heidigger was a German philosopher and a student of Husserl. I was introduced to Heidigger in college in a way that has colored my limited exposure to his philosophy. I will do some research and then present my findings to this forum in one week’s time. I will also present a followup in one month’s time.

I say this because if I don’t, you are all free to mock me mercilessly for being a lazy ass.

As I mentioned in my post about the new TV, I’m in the process of trying to sell my old one on craigslist. This is only the second time I’ve listed something on there. The first time, I did it with my apartment and got about 40 emails in 24 hours. That thing was sublet in about 8 hours.

This time, things didn’t go quite as well. I listed it on Friday afternoon and over the first two days got about 12 emails about it. Some were people saying they’d just give me half of what I was asking for it while others were asking (legitimate) questions about it. Still about 4 or 5 of them asked for my address and said they’d be over to look at it. Naturally they would never show up.

Then Sunday afternoon I got an email from a guy who gave his cell phone number. I called him with the hope that if someone spoke to me in person they’d feel more obligation to actually coming over and checking it out if he said he’d do that. The guy though, didn’t sound too committed to checking it out. He said he worked in the city and that he carpooled and maybe he’d come over the next day.

Later that night I get another email. This guy is interested in it. He tries to haggle the price down 25%. By this point I just want to stop answering emails so I saw if he can give me $80 it’s a deal. He says he’ll be by Monday at 7PM to pick it up.

Today then I get another email from the guy I’d spoken to on the phone. He says he wants to come check the TV out at 5PM (and hasn’t tried to haggle the price at all). So now I’m actually slightly torn as to what would be the morally correct thing to do here.

The guy who wants to come at 5PM did actually contact me earlier and went out of his way to drive into work today. Meanwhile the other guy said he’d buy it before that guy gave me this info. I want to sell the TV but I also want it to be fair (although $20 extra isn’t something I would mind either). I think the best thing to do would have been to tell the guy who drove into work today that he could see it tomorrow but since he went to all the trouble of driving in, I don’t want to do that.

Plus, there is no way of knowing if the guy who says he’s going to buy it tonight may not show up. Maybe he’ll find a better one for cheaper or something. I don’t know.

Luckily, if neither of these guys works out, a woman I work with who I was telling this story to said she’d buy it if none of these guys do. So at least I can be pretty sure I’ll be rid of this TV in the next 2-3 days which puts me that much closer to getting a PS3 and doing some Blu-ray movie watching. I’m just waiting on some Best Buy gift certificates from my rewards credit card now.

[UPDATE]

I ended up selling to the people who came at 5PM. I knew the guy was Chinese but he showed up with his wife and she annoyingly haggled me down to $85. They were trying to get me to throw in the stand I had it sitting on in the pictures and I was like, “No way, that cost me $40 and I was going to use it. If you want it you’ll have to give me at least $20 more.” They wouldn’t bite.

They also wanted some kind of warranty to which I only said, “Look, if it breaks in the next 3 days let me know. I’ll give you your money back. I’m not a dick. After that though, you’re on your own.”

I actually actively tried to convince them not to buy it at some points because they kept asking about how good it was at receiving over the air signals (I said “not good at all … you have to have an extra antenna”) and that they wanted to hook a satellite box and a DVD player up to it (but it only has one set of inputs on the back) but they wouldn’t listen to me. So whatever.

I’m just glad to be done with it. Of course I then emailed the 7 o’clock guy to tell him. He didn’t respond (not sure if it was because he was annoyed or didn’t get the email) which then made me afraid that he was going to show up. I then called his cell to make sure he got the message and he seemed kind of annoyed with me. But whatever, it’s all done now.

Now I can get back to watching people freak out because it might snow tomorrow (it was like 40 today so how much can it really stick anyway). People in DC are so stupid about this stuff sometimes.

Ok, I just saw this joke circling the internet and I thought that I was duty-bound to repost it.

Q: How does Bush feel about Roe vs. Wade?

A: He doesn’t really care how you get out of New Orleans.

I don’t really know if this joke is distasteful but I certainly enjoyed it.

If you’ve got a problem with it, please let me know in the comments.

Click here for answer

To answer my question, no it’s not offensive. Why? Because it’s even been posted on CNN now.