my wonderful night in jail

Last weekend I got to do something most people only dream about...spend the night in jail. I was so excited when it happened I almost felt like I won the lottery. not really. I have never been so angry in my life. It all started when I was at Octoberfest with some friends. At the end of the night (11:00) when the festival was closing, about 2 or 3 thousand people had to squeeze through one exit. It was like herding cows. As I was walking out I accidently bumped into the gentleman in front of me. He promptly turned around and without hesitation grabbed me by my shirt and almost lifted me off the ground. With a evil smile on his face, his only words to me were, "you are going to jail!" he quickly ushered me to the side of the crowd and handed me to a uniformed police officer. I can only assume that he was a plain-clothed officer. In fact, this happened to quite a few other people at this time, including one of my friends. As it turns out, they basically had a sting operation set up, whereby the plain clothed officers would randomly grab people and pull them out of the crowd then hand them to officers as to avoid suspicion. It was complete bullshit. Then I was cuffed and taken over to their makeshift police station where I sat for about 30 minutes. I couldn't even get any of the officers to tell me why I was being arrested. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity one of the officers told me that I was being arrested for public intoxication and disturbing the peace. He also told me that "I was in enough trouble already and if I would like he could add some more to my arrest." How kind of him.
After my free ride in the police car to the jail I was processed and put in the drunk tank. It basically looked like a large hostipal waiting room. One side of the room was designated for the women, and one side for the men. Then came the telephone incident. As if it wasn't bad enough how the cops had been acting like compelte jackasses all night, they had to one-up themselves. I politely asked to look at my cell phone to get numbers out to call someone to bail me out. Of course, nobody remembers phone numbers anymore, everyone carries their whole existince in their cellphone. Anyway, he promptly refused to let me see my cellphone and only allowed me to use the "free" payphones. I couldn't figure out how to use the phone. He told me that if I wasn't smart enough to figure that out then I was "shit out of luck." Nice. Finally, after about 20 minutes I figured out that you need to put in your prisoner ID that is handed to you when you get processed. I figured this out by sheer luck because there was no prompt that asked one to put in their ID.
Now I am getting somewhere, I get the yellow pages and find the numbers of a bunch of bailbondsmen. After calling about 3 of them I realized that either I was going crazy or these bailbondsmen didn't understand their own profession. Every single one of them told me that in order to get me out I had to have someone come over and give them the bond money. What the fuck?!?!? If I had someone to call with the money I would not be calling your stupid ass! Im convinced that they wouldn't come over because the $104 bond wasn't worth their time. Fucking assholes. With my options exhausted, I resided to my fate and plopped down on the dirty gray hard plastic chairs to watch a home improvement marathon on the giant 12 inch television. With no sound. After about 15 minutes a very schetchy bearded man came and sat next to me. He was obviously homeless, except for tonight. He stared at me for about 20 minutes and repeated over and over again "its gonna be ok man, its all in the past." I really wanted to hurt him, but I ignored him because I didn't want to miss any home improvement. Finally, after a couple of hours my girlfriends brother bailed me. Of course, they told him that it would take about 2 hours to process me, and he had driven to the jail in a cab, so he couldn't wait. This meant that I got to enjoy a brisk 3 mile walk home at 4:30 in the a.m.
I normally harbor positive feelings for the police, and until that night I never had a problem with them. This experience definitely left a bad taste in my mouth.

my brain is dying

I can't take this much longer. I need to work. I still have not found a job, and I am becoming more and more hopeless every day. It is a vicious cycle, this job search I am on. The more I look for a job the more I get rejected, and the more I get rejected the less motivation I have to look for a job. My resulting lack of motivation makes me sit on the couch all day and watch the price is right and oprah instead of looking for a job. What's more is that I am not entirely convinced that I will ever find a job. My only experiences so far have been sending out resumes and getting the occasional rejection letter. I am thinking about making a collage out of my rejection letters. Maybe some wallpaper? I used to think that getting a rejection letter was better than not hearing anything back, but now I am starting to wonder. At least if I hear nothing back I can hold on to that glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, they haven't contacted me because they are still "thinking about it." Right, that is not happening. I think I need a new approach to becoming gainfully employed. Everyone else says that one needs to "network" and that "its not what you know, but who you know." Well, I don't know anyone, damnit. I spent the last three years of my life in this town studying with the expectation that I would leave this state when it was all over. Oh how things change. Then all of the sudden I'm stuck here with no job, contacts, or leads. What's a guy to do? I know--NETWORK!! I still haven't figured out what in the hell that means. It seems to me to be the catch-all, scapegoat, fall-back answer for everyone in the world to spit out whenever they cannot give you a meaningful answer. What the hell does network mean? I know plenty of people, and those people know plenty of people. And the people that I do know are fully aware that I am looking for a job, but it is a big stretch from that to actively asking them to help you find a job. That's networking, isn't it? There aren't too many people in this world that will just come right out and give you a job without asking for one. Especially to people like me who have no real world experience. I hate the word networking. Everyone in the world networks, but not everyone is looking for a job. In addition, not everyone in the world has the personality or mind set to be able to play the game. I have never been good at feigning interest in other peoples lives and interests just so I can get close to them and squeeze out a job. I always feel like I am whoring myself out. Maybe I need to become a whore. Maybe.