When I tagged my previous post “up all night,” I was speaking figuratively.
Little did I know that the onsale wouldn’t happen until 06:15 or something, at which point I’d already dozed off briefly a few times, and awoken in terror that I’d missed something. So there I was with my desktop connected to a wonky DSL connection, liable to crap out at any moment, and my wonky laptop connected to my neighbours’ wireless cable, which they were kind enough to share with me.
Both wonky items were wonky, but stellar performers compared to waste, which waited until the eastern seaboard was at work, and the western seaboard who’d slept all night, was up with its coffee, to push the magic button. The site was freezing and pissing about and moaning and I didn’t manage, in spite of diligent application, to get through to a shopping cart even once. Luckily, I have some good friends out there in Radioheadland, and one of them was able to get through and kind enough to buy tickets for me and get them shipped to me when I paypalled him the money. Yay Radiohead friends! they’re the best.
Someone posted on atease that Ed O’Brien said something to the effect of “Don’t bother staying up all night, we want everyone to have a chance, not just radical fans.” I don’t know if it’s accurate or true, but it kind of annoyed me.
Gee, Ed, don’t you think there should be some benefit to being the kind of “radical fan” who is willing to stay up all night? I think all of the “radical fans” I have met over the years have been the kind of people who will help a brother or sister out, sell tickets on to total strangers for face value, hold a place in line, let near-strangers crash on the couch or the floor, share a ride…in short, really good people, who don’t ask any more than a chance to buy tickets from waste rather than from scalpers. And the middle-of-the-night sales did a surprisingly good job of allowing that to happen, from what I’ve observed over the past five years. So why don’t you guys rethink that a little for the next onsale?
My language in this regard has tempered greatly in the past 24 hours.
