From the folk song:

They wasted o’er a scorching flame
The marrow of his bones;
But a miller us’d him worst of all,
For he crush’d him between two stones.

Apparently, the prospect of a computer logging in is so, so terribly horrible that Ticketmaster (and others) have made it so that only a computer could possibly read the code words.

I tried to do a parody, below:


… but I failed to do something as broken and bleeding as the actual test that Ticketmaster wanted me to pass. It’s as if they took the John Barleycorn torture process and applied it to a made-up word.

Other than the fact that they have a monopoly, is there anything at all about their site that keeps them in business? If you sell something online, go to Ticketmaster… then do the opposite.

Here’s the "real" test. If you didn’t already feel stupid on their site, now you do: