Writing, Writer, Writest: Jonathan L. Burbridge: Fandumb

Writing, Writer, Writest: Jonathan L Burbridge: Fandumb: "I grew up in a little town in the middle of the desert just outside of Palm Springs, CA called Desert Hot Springs. Its two claims to fame we..."

A Quick Rant While He's Away

I am not exactly proud to say that for most of my working life I have been in the field of Customer Service, and in my time I have dealt with what I'd imagine to be every possible permutation of the upset customer. But no permutation perplexes me more than people who are upset by a continual situation that never changes.

The other night I had a guest ('Guest' is the euphemism for 'Customer' at the movie theater where I work, a place laden with euphemisms aplenty, but that's a rant for a different day.) who was upset with the lines at concessions. He asked to speak to a manager and they sent me, up until recently a Qual Coordinator, but now just a Coordinator, which is really just a euphemism for 'Supervisor'.

He was visibly upset and lashed out at me with something along the lines of, "Every time I come here it's the same damn thing. And now I am late to my movie because of YOU."

After I apologized and explained that we have reduced staff and that the problem wasn't likely to get better any time soon, he wandered off, swearing loudly and dropping popcorn carelessly from his overfilled tub.

Every time he goes to the movies at the Dream Factory, the lines at concessions are so long he always misses the beginning of his movie.

Every time.

If you've found yourself complaining to someone in customer service about something similar, I have to ask you this simple question:

WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU!?!?

If you go somewhere, and every time your experience is unsatisfactory, then why the fuck do you keep going there?

Now I can kinda understand why you would subject yourself to something like that at say, the DMV, a place where we sometimes have to go, and there are no alternatives. And I can kinda understand why you would complain about the conditions at such a place.

But only kinda.

Complaining about long lines at the DMV is a bit akin to the asshole who is always late and says something like, "There was traffic."

Oh, really? There was traffic? In LA? Surely you jest.

See, there are just some times in our lives where we have to anticipate unpleasantness and adjust our actions accordingly. If you have to go to the DMV, make sure you allot yourself enough time to wait in the lines, if you have to be someplace in LA, make sure you plan plenty of extra time to deal with potential (and probable) traffic. And if you go to a movie theater and there are ALWAYS long lines at the concession stand, make sure you plan plenty of time to arrive, get your tickets (if you live in the Stone Age and haven't figured out how to buy your tickets online) and wait in the lines that are ALWAYS there.

Or better yet, find another fucking movie theater to go to!

What kind of mother fucking masochistic asshole would subject themselves to a situation that never, ever (by his own account), changes?

When I managed a small video store, it was awesome when people used to say things like that to me. I would calmly apologize, and then give them directions to the Blockbuster up the street. "If you have a bad experience every time you come here, let me invite you to never make that same mistake again."

Asshole.

Dear Gas Company Customer "Service"

It's fitting that the first new post of my new Blog is about something that pisses me off, as that seemed to be the overriding theme of most of the posts on my previous blog.

And boy howdy, I am pissed off.

First off, a little background.

As many of you may already be aware, I have been without a roommate for some time now, and have had to let some bills go by the wayside in favor of little extravagances like food and rent. The gas bill was the first to go followed shortly by the cable and internet.

I know what you're going to ask, "Gas bills are like $10 bucks a month, how could you not afford that?"

Well, as it turns out, unlike the cable bill and the internet, or the electricity for that matter, the gas company doesn't seem to mind if you don't pay your bill for months and months on end, and so I didn't, until it became too much to pay all at once for someone who was barely making ends meet.

So they shut my gas off. I only really used it for cooking anyway, and didn't really mind because I eat many meals over at my girlfriend's house, and have managed to make some pretty decent food using only my microwave and my toaster oven.

Well recently got a roommate, and so I decided it was time to get the gas back on, so I could use the stove again.

Getting it sorted out was easy, I did it online and set up an appointment to get the gas switched on.

A few things here starting the pissing in the piss Jonathan off festival.

Number one, the first appointment was four days after I set things up, and it was an "all day window" where the dude could show up any time between 7am and 5pm.

10 hours! TEN FUCKING HOURS to wait for the dude to show up and switch the gas on.

Remember how appointments worked in the good old days? I mean, they were appointments for fuck's sake! This isn't an appointment at all, this is, WAIT ALL FUCKING DAY for the dude to show up.

Number two, why do they need me to be here to turn the shit on in the first place? They didn't need me to be here to shut it off. I just came home one day to find a red notice of shame hanging on my doorknob. Now they need to make sure an adult will be home between the hours of whenever to whenever to do what? Turn something on outside?

FUCK!

So I settled for waiting another few days so I could narrow the window down to four hours, between 8am and 12pm. At least it wasn't all goddamned day!

Which leads me to today.

Today was to have been the day.

But alas, it was not.

See, I was in the East Annex of my palatial 30 room mansion in a sound proof vault immersed in my sensory deprivation tank listening to grunge metal at full volume with earplugs in when the gas dude came by to turn the gas back on, and naturally I didn't hear him, and he left.

Wait, wait, actually now that I think about it I was in my bedroom which is - hang on let me count this out - eleven steps from my chair in front of this very computer to the front door of my teeny two bedroom apartment, and I was listening intently for the gas dude's arrival.

I heard something outside and decided it could be him, so I went to the door to check, only to find a "Sorry We Missed You" sign hanging from my doorknob.

FUCKING GODDAMN FUCKING MOTHERFUCKING GODDAMNED FUCKING BULLSHIT!!!

I look at the time, and he had been there less than 10 minutes before, I missed him knocking by less than ten minutes before, and I knew before I even reached for my phone that I was fucked for at least another few days until they could schedule another "appointment."

So I called customer "service" and am immediately treated to the very helpful robot voice that wants to know why I am calling and offers me a number of options, none of which are, "If the fucking service tech knocked like a little weak old lady before leaving, press 2."

And it's the voice "recognition" type of system that I just hate with the burning of a thousand hot suns. I start screaming, "Operator!" over and over until the helpful robot obliges and connects me to a customer "service" representative line, which is answered by another robot that tells me that everyone there is busy.

When finally connected to a human being, I am treated to the minimum of service that basically is the equivalent of someone going, "Sucks to be you dickhead, you're fucked!"

The dude offers to help me by setting another "appointment" for a week from today. Something I could have done on my own with the computer. I ask to speak to the guys supervisor who says the best she can do is register a complaint with the service tech's supervisor and have him call me back. I ask, "Is this going to get my gas turned on any quicker than a week from today?"

"Nope. You missed your appointment, so you have to go to the back of the line again."

The first person I spoke to told me this too, that I missed my appointment.

I MISSED my appointment? What the fuck? No, the truth is, the fucking appointment missed me!

This is my problem with the new way businesses do appointments in general. I was sitting in my room, eleven steps from the door and I didn't hear the guy knock. It's a four hour fucking window! What if I had to take a shit? I am supposed to just hold it? When my next appointment day comes I am going to sit in the doorway with the door open and just wait for him. I will put a bucket there so I don't have to leave for anything!

The service tech's supervisor called me back and said the dude knocked three times, and even called out "GAS COMPANY" several times before leaving. He said that the gardener was here and witnessed the entire thing, like I am going to track down my building's gardener to verify the story.

The worst part of the whole damn situation is the feeling of impotence it causes in me. I can't do anything about it. The customer "service" blamed me for the fuck up and offered no help, let alone "service" whatsoever. The field supervisor believed his tech's story, and also offered nothing even in the way of an apology.

I fucked up because I wasn't sitting next to the open front door with a shit bucket.

Well, I will know better next time.

P.S. Anyone have a shit bucket I can borrow before next Monday?

Complete Jail Blog

(To inaugurate my new blog, I am going to re-post a few of my favorite blogs from my old and now defunct MySpace blog)
As many of you have been able to guess, not surprisingly after I posted my booking sheet, that I was recently arrested.

I was. And following that arrest I embarked on a 50 hour adventure courtesy of first the City of Burbank and then the County of Los Angeles.

I was arrested as a passenger in a friends (name withheld to protect the innocent) car. He was pulled over for expired registration and I looked enough like a KKK White Power freako that the cop felt it necessary to run my identification as well.

Well, lo, and behold, I have a warrant issued for my arrest by some judge in the City of Burbank for a ticket from six years ago. Apparently I was driving without a license (a word I always need two or three tries at spelling) but I don't remember the ticket at all. Hench, the bench warrant.

The cop was pretty cool, he said, "Sorry man, it's from Burbank, if it was an LA County warrant, I'd let you go."

He explained that for this type of thing, usually you spend the night in jail, the nice, clean, practically empty, Burbank jail, and in the morning you see a judge who bangs his gavel saying, "Time served." and they pat you on the back and send you out the door.

I was actually kind of looking forward to that.

That is NOT what happened.

::19:00hrs::

The first indignity is riding in a cop car handcuffed behind your back, maybe it's because I am some sort of land whale, but I just didn't fit back there and needed to keep shifting around to find a "comfortable" position.

We got to the jail and I was let out of the car. I was searched again, and asked if I had any weapons, again. They had to chuck my Zippo because they aren't allowed in jail.

The entrance to the jail is underground, and the entire experience felt very subterranean. It was very cold. And the only light was from artificial sources. There are no windows, so it could have very easily been entirely underground.

Did I say it was very cold?

Fucking shit! As a taxpayer, I wonder just how much money the City of Burbank could save each year if they just nudged the old thermostat from 60 to 65. I shit you not, it was like a freaking meat locker.

So I have to talk to the jailer and tell her that I don't have any diseases, and I am not thinking of killing myself, and yes my middle name is in fact just the letter L. Of all the questions I get asked in the entire process, this one fact is the sole thing that causes the authorities to look sideways at me. "Are you SURE that your middle name is JUST the letter L?" they'd ask, voices thick with incredulity.

And then the waiting begins.

My drawstring is spared on my shorts, thankfully, because I like those shorts and they'd be ruined if I had to cut the drawstring out. And I assured the jailer that again, I didn't feel like killing myself, and she said I could keep the drawstring. I was reminded of "Alice's Restaurant" where Arlo says, "Obie, did you think I was gonna hang myself for littering?"

Besides, this was when I thought that I could spend the night in jail and be done with it.

So they put me in a cell by myself. A very little cell. And there was the faintest whiff of whizz and poo because, of course, there is a toilet, just there in the corner. Now there is a bit of a wall, so the lady jailer doesn't get a peep show when you make number 1, but it still feels weird the first time I go.

And then the waiting continues. I have wandered around my cell, investigating every single nook and cranny, I peed twice, and have considered how scary it would be to be trapped in here with zombies roaming the halls outside. And that ate up all of about 10 minutes.

Now it's Petty not Guthrie I am thinking of, and he was right, the waiting IS the hardest part. Because no one tells you how long you have to wait. At least in the first cell I was in, I could see a clock. In fact in the Burbank cells, I at least could mark the passage of time and it was a comfort.

They took me out of the cell where I went through the processing that resulted in the photo and handprints you saw in the first part of this story. And then I got to make my phone calls.

By now, the time in the cell has made me change my mind about staying overnight, and resolve to bail out of jail. The bail is $1000 and if you go through a bail bondsman, you usually have to come up with 10% of the bail.

I was thinking, "$100, no problem. Let the electric bill slide a few days and I will be home in time to eat the Chinese food we were on are way to eating when I got arrested, before it even gets cold."

Turns out, the bail bondsman didn't even want to talk to me because they don't do that low of an amount. It was explained that they'd need $1000 cash as collateral, and that meant to bail out through them I'd need $1100.

My spirit was crushed a little at that news. But the judge will bang his gavel tomorrow and set me free, one sleepless night and I can go home. That Chinese food will be fine reheated.

The oddity of the jail phone is that it will not call cell phones. I hope they fix this, because more and more people are dropping their home phones and you feel very alone when you're desperately trying to remember any phone number that isn't a cell phone. All in the day and age where people don't remember numbers anymore.

Thankfully they did let me use my phone to look up numbers.

I called my Dad.

This is a call I never wanted to make. And for every bad thought and feeling I have about myself during this entire ordeal, this is the one that stings the worst. I told the robot voice my name and listened as my Dad answered the phone and was told, "You are receiving a collect call from an inmate at the Burbank City Jail..."

"Hey Dad, guess I don't have to tell you where I am."

He was very calm, and very cool about it. As I knew he would be. I explained the situation, and being learned in such things, my Dad agreed that one night in a cell was all I was looking at. I gave him Daniel's number and asked him to call him and give him the update to stop trying to bail me out, and just come get me from court in the morning.

I said I loved him and he said so back, and that was the first time I was reminded of the fat guy from Shawshank, you remember the one.

Then I was given a very scratchy blanket, a towel, and a sheet, and shown into a dorm with eight two level bunks lining one wall, a toilet and shower stall in one corner, and a metal table with 10 seats. There was a phone, and if I looked just right through a series of windows and past computers and whatnot, I could still see the clock.

::21:00hrs::

There were two people sleeping in the room. Apart from each other, so I gathered they were strangers.

They were both quite small, and they peered out at me from under their blankets, I felt they looked small enough that I could "take" either one of them, or at least, I look like I could. Besides, they seemed very sleepy.

Jail makes you sleepy.

Very, very, sleepy.

::21:15hrs::

Shivering, trying to keep completely underneath a blanket that is too short, trying to stay completely on the "bed" that is too narrow, trying to sleep in a room that is too cold.

Every surface feels like ice. Everything is metal, or concrete, or brick, and it all feels refrigerated.

Another man is let into the room, a squat older man with a walrus mustache. He seems to have been hit with a tranquilizer dart because he lays down on his mat and in moments is sawing the biggest fucking logs I have ever heard.

This is Mal, this is also his first time being arrested. Like me, he was arrested on a traffic warrant, his crime: not wearing a seatbelt over two years ago. Unlike me, I come to learn, he is quite possibly narcoleptic and though we are together for almost the entirety of my adventure, he sleeps through most of it and it must have been so much shorter an experience.

At some point, I don't know the time, the two guys who were there when I arrived were called out of the cell and for a short time it is just Mal and me. Until about:

::03:00hrs::

Two dudes are let into the cell and immediately they begin to speak very loudly in another language. Here and there I hear, "...fucking bullshit!..."

Neither one seems to think it is fair that they are incarcerated. I was almost asleep and now I have to listen to these assholes who are obviously drunk and don't understand that they are staying here all night, and it would be best if they just get used to that idea.

All along the process I encountered these types of assholes. People who don't get that they are here for as long as the people in the uniforms decide. It can go one of two ways, and the best part about it is that you get to decide which way it goes. Either you do what you're told, and things are okay, or you don't and they fuck you up.

Eventually the pissing and moaning is reduced to muttering and griping. I think I manage to snatch fifteen minutes of sleep or so before:

BANG BANG BANG!!!

"Breakfast!"

::05:30hrs::

The "breakfast" in question consists of some sort of Cheerio knock off cereal which thankfully was unsweetened, so I could eat it without sacrificing my ongoing sugar embargo. There was bread which smelled funny and tasted even funnier. And there was a tube of jelly, the first ingredient being High Fructose Corn Syrup, so I stayed clear of that too.

I tried to get a back to sleep and maybe just managed to when:

BANG BANG BANG!!!

"Put your trash up here!"

So we did, all of us, getting up to jam our breakfast trash back out through the hole in the door.

::06:30hrs::

Now things started happening.

They pulled us out of the cell, I know at some point I must have slept because one of the disgruntled assholes was gone, whisked away in the night, and was replaced by a very quiet Mexican guy who smiled and nodded but barely spoke to anyone in any language.

Our group was joined by another and the 12 of us were placed back in the cell where I first began my tour. It was small when I was in there by myself, it was fucking teeny tiny when I was in there with 11 other dudes. Some of whom had been there for several days, and none of whom had showers recently. Add sweat to the stench of whizz and poo.

Mal somehow managed to lay out and was clear cutting his way through another forest, another person joining in shortly thereafter performing a sort of dueling sleep apnea number.

There was a younger Mexican dude who was alternately explaining things in Spanish and English as he had been through this process many times before. He was like our Tour Guide. He was cool and pleasant but had just the edge of danger about him. He looked like he could handle himself and probably has handled himself on more than one occasion.

He told us that we were in for it. Get ready to be bored.

We waited and waited, and like dogs we got excited whenever we heard keys rattling.

"Go for a walk?!?"

::08:15hrs::

Hamlet's father is frisking everyone at once...

Wait, what?

No, those are just the Burbank Jailers and they just happen to all be wearing blue rubber gloves. I am a little delirious from lack of sleep, food, and most importantly, the INTERNET!!!

Shackles come out, and they connect me to a man who's name is Franz. Franz is a nice guy who is semi-homeless, in that he sometimes crashes at his brother's and sometimes at the park. Which is where he was arrested several days before for felony possession of controlled substances for having two Vicodin and one Valium without a prescription.

We both ride bikes and he is into movies so we have a lot to talk about, which is fortunate because now were are chained together.

We are finally loaded into a paddy wagon and begin the trip to the courthouse.

::08:30-45??hrs::

It is at this point that we no longer can keep consistent time. At no point from here until I receive my cell phone on the way out of the jail did I have access to any kind of clock. It was like Vegas.

They unchain us and put us in another small holding cell, a bit bigger than the one at the jail, and a bit smellier.

Nothing happens and we wait.

::12:00hrs::

We know it's noon because the guard, LA County Sheriff Deputies at this point, tells us that the court is in recess. Our Tour Guide tells us that we are not going to see the judge until after lunch.

"Lunch" consists of the same strange smelling bread which this time I cannot stomach, accompanied by Grape "Drink" which again, the FIRST ingredient is High Fructose Corn Syrup. Some more of the jelly, and a pouch of "peanut butter" that looks like space food. There are cookies, which I also cannot eat, but thankfully there is an apple. So I don't starve.

The dog like behavior increases. We get steadily more excited each time the keys jingle in our direction. When we hear shackles we get even more excited.

It is a strange sensation to be excited by the sound of shackles...

"Go for a ride!?!"

They call us out one by one, and I get to go first. I go into a cubicle with a pretty lady on the other side of some glass. She is the public defender.

She tells me I am screwed. 10 days in County Jail.

That's it. That's the extent of her public defending.

No wonder the Tour Guide kept referring to them as Public Pretenders.

I ask about the "Time Served" scenario, and she basically tells me, "Fat fucking chance."

At one point she does seem to crack, and become human, I can tell that she doesn't want to sugar coat it and that I could very well actually spend 10 days locked up, but she concedes that I would spend one to three days most in jail.

But this is the first time that I have to face that I am going to go to:

(cue the scary music)

LA COUNTY JAIL!!!

We go back in the holding cell, and at some point, each one of us has visited with the Pretender, and we now wait for the sound of our leash.

We are handcuffed to one another again, and led into the court where one by one, our dreams of going home are crushed by a judge who does not seem to give a shit.

Daniel and Brian are there, and that's one of the best shows of friendship I have ever experienced. I figure that they must have been waiting there all day, and later find that to be exactly the case.

I want to communicate to them that there's nothing they can do, they should just go, but these angry looking red signs inform me that doing just that is actually a crime, and so I must resort to trying the most furtive of glances and furrowing of brows to get the message across.

Either it works, or they figure it out for themselves, because they do go, but not before hearing me sentenced to ten days at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility. Credit two days time served.

I was suddenly evaluating the prospect of spending more than a week in County Jail.

We are led back to the holding cell, each one of us bewildered by our sentences, going over our court papers, looking at our tallies, and sentences.

I call my Dad and let him know what the story is. He assures me that it is crazy that I have to even go to County, and that they will most likely turn me around when I get there. Something to a man, everyone else I ask agrees to.

The waiting begins again and it is:

::17:00-30hrs::

When the shackles come out, and we all begin to wag our tails because it's time to go for a ride.

Why I am suddenly so excited to go to County Jail is because I think all I have to do is check in and then they will let me go. And it turns out that that's pretty much the case...

Little did I know that "Check In" takes fourteen hours and "Let Me Go" takes another thirteen or so.

::18:30(ish)hrs::

After an amazingly short freeway trip, Burbank to Downtown LA during rush hour and we didn't even really slow down, we arrive at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility.

It is a very Totalitarian Future Gone Bad movie looking building. Think 1984, or Clockwork Orange. Futuristic, but dirty and corrupted.

No windows, just slits that make the entire place look like a castle that could be well defended. Again I am forced to think about Zombies, shit, this place would be ideal to hole up against hordes of the undead.

We are herded off the bus and the real fun begins, because they immediately start yelling and swearing. Using their voices to further along the process of turning us into dogs and force us into submission.

We line up in the garage just outside the actual jail. This is last time I will be outside for about thirteen hours and all I can smell is bus exhaust. But in just a few moments, I will be fondly reminiscing about bus exhaust.

The door opens, and we are told to move into the next room and make a line that encircles it. It is a square room with doors in opposite corners and a drain in the middle of the floor. There is trash, and the strong smell of urine. We were told before we got on the bus that we could be waiting hours in this room and that if we can't hold it, the only option is that drain.

It is in this room that we are told to ditch anything and everything that isn't the clothing we are wearing. No belts, no laces for your shoes, no rubber bands in your hair. Nothing but court documents can stay with you.

The room continues to fill with these little particles of cast off items and after a small interval, we are allowed to continue out of the room into another corridor. The entire process from here on in is a series of waiting in holding tanks or lined up in a corridor.

We are frisked again in this hallway. Told to take off our shoes, which are searched. I am wearing my shorts with their contraband drawstring which goes, again, unnoticed and I am able to keep them intact for a little while further. I notice all over the place signs in both English and Spanish telling us:

"If you feel like hurting or killing yourself please tell someone to contact a mental health specialist. There is help!"

They creep me out. As though people might start slashing their wrists or something. Like people just snap so often they needed to put bilingual signs up all over the place.

Back in Burbank they placed a wristband much like one you get in a hospital on my left wrist and now it becomes who I am. They don't want to talk to me, they don't want to hear about my story, all they want is the barcode on my wrist. Having placed my sandals back on (a terrible choice for jail, by the way, I'd recommend a nice comfortable tennis shoe and good thick socks) My wristband was beeped and I followed the line of people into another holding tank opposite a row of windows I kept hoping would hold the key to my release. Any moment I'd hear my name called and they'd send me home.

This didn't happen.

When you finally do get to talk to them they just want to know, again, if you have any diseases, or are you thinking of killing yourself, and which kind of folks you like to have to sex with, and then you go back to the tank to wait.

Then you move to another tank where they hand you a plastic bag and another "meal" consisting of the same peanut butter sandwich combo. I eat another apple, as it is again the only edible thing there. The bags, it becomes immediately clear, are for us to deposit our clothes, which will be whisked away and stored for our releases. Why are we giving up our clothes? You guessed it, that's because it's:

SHOWER TIME!!!

Nothing more in the entire process has equaled the anticipation of the horrible possibilities of being nude with about eighty men who are all quite possibly degenerate rapists. I mean, when you go to jail they don't say, "Hey, be careful not to drop the basketball out on the yard." or "When you're in the chow hall don't drop your spoon." but everyone is keenly aware of things not to be dropped in the shower.

Luckily there was no soap do be dropped. Just soap dispensers on the walls that were empty. So we got just got wet and not really clean, got dressed for the first time in our Jail Blues, and hung around in the musty shower room probably catching all sorts of foot fungi.

By now I hope you're picturing me clearly. And to aid that, factor into my crazy bald head with bushy beard on top of jail clothes that are a bit too small. For the only time in my life, I felt okay to look like some sort of crazy person. I think despite attracting the unwanted attention of both the White Power assholes I looked like and everyone else who assumed I was one of them, my look had a net benefit overall, and somewhere in the back of my head, I feel like this is exactly why I looked this way to begin with. It was meant to be.

Ushered into another corridor, told we MIGHT get shoes (I did), and then into another tank we waited this time for a chest x-ray. I saw some pretty fucked up people in this area, as it was the medical wing of the jail.

There were people who looked like they had been beaten most of the way to death, and others who looked older than God just waiting to die. I sat and talked to another lady who I assured, yet again, that I was disease free, and no, I sill don't want to kill myself. I have to sign a piece of paper to this effect and notice the date is now August 27th which was my Mom's birthday. I confess that this news makes me very sad, but I still don't think that death is a fitting punishment for my traffic ticket.

Another hallway, and then the segregation begins. On this small green ticket each of us has been given is our security level, I am (4) Low. So all the Hispanic and White Lows are placed in a tank, which is not nearly big enough for all of us.

::02:00??::

Slotted in every which way, we are all tired and freezing cold and there are only narrow metal benches in this room which people immediately begin laying out on, taking up valuable real estate.

But who would I be kidding anyway? I can barely sleep in a bed with the lights off with a gentle cool breeze and the soothing sounds of my oscillating white noise generator to ease me into slumber beneath my trusty warm blanket.

How the fuck am I supposed to sleep lying on concrete with no bedding at all, arms pulled inside my shirt for warmth?

We're all out of toilet paper and it's getting pretty tense.

Every so often a deputy, or officer, or some such jail person, would walk by and like animals further, they hop up and down and demand toilet paper. It was very tense. There were a couple of dudes, kinda cool, but kinda edgy.

One of them had sidled up to me earlier and said, "You wood?"

I have no idea what he means, and rather than play it off and later regret not being clear, I say, "Um, I don't know what you mean."

"You down with White?"

"Oh, um...Sure man...I mean, I am peace love and harmony, I am cool with everyone ya know?"

"Oh, sure man, that's cool...That's cool."

And that was it. I know, I know...You are out there shaking your heads, I should have been less gay hippie, more crazy leave me alonie. I learned my lesson a few hours later, trust me, I had to.

These guys are now pent up in a cell with me as their only other White Brother and doing push ups at what must be...

::03:37??WTF?ish::

"GET UP!"

Another fucking freezing cold hallway. This time, us White People are segregated out of the mix and given our own cell. The push up dudes are calming down now and looks like they are all tuckered out at their show of physical prowess as both of them fall into deep snoring sleep. I snatch a few minutes of sleep before.

"GET UP NOW! If you want a bed, you will lose any clothing that isn't a t-shirt, jail blue shirt and pants, boxers, shoes, and socks. Lose everything else, NOW!"

Some people were given thermals along the way, I don't know how they were chosen among the many to be the ones with warm arms, but now they had to relinquish them.

We were lined up in another hallway, our wristbands beeped again, and then it was off down a maze of corridors and hallways and of multicolored lines on the floor splitting off here and there, like in WALL-E. And then...Inexplicably...

Weeeee!

Escalators!

Who would have thought that there'd be escalators in jail?

Weeeeee!

GENERAL POPULATION

I am shown into a large room with many many many bunks.

It is alive with people, like a beehive. I am instantly uncomfortable.

We are all very tired and just drooling over the prospect of sleep.

Finally, there is a clock, and to our dismay, it is almost...

::08:30::

What the fuck? Four hours, at least, just sitting in that last cell, in the cold, on the concrete. I am amazed. What's worse is, they keep handing us these bags of food that just make me want to throw up. I am so tired, and it's breakfast time, and everyone in 9200 is WIDE awake, and sizing up the new fish.

I was in the room a few minutes, just sort of standing around wondering what the hell to do now that I am crammed into a room with a manner of folks, none of whom seemed overly friendly or overly excited about the prospect of even more bodies crammed into the already too tight quarters.

There was an observation office overlooking the dorm and periodically a Godlike Voice would fill the room, "9100, Sanchez 567 roll it up, you have a pass!"

A person would roll up his shit and head out the door never to be seen again. I was really hoping it would by my name and number soon. But before that could happen a very Ben Foster looking dude sidled up to me and again posing the query, "You Wood?"

This time I answer with a sort of noncommittal, "Yeah, you know…"

He says, "The Wood rep is sleeping, that's his bunk over there. If you need shit paper or anything go there," he says, pointing to a corner of the dorm, "But I guess I can show you around and tell you the rules."

"Cool."

So he shows me around. Tells me that the Whites, or Wood, don't trade or deal with the Blacks. They don't shower with them, and generally stay away from them. Oh, and the Asians too. The Mexicans are fine, because they don't like the Blacks so they're sort of on the Wood's team. The most disconcerting thing he tells me is that, "We're pretty outnumbered in here, as you can see. So if anything goes down, just jump in and start swinging."

"Oh, um…Sure thing."

I try to say something kinda cool that I immediately regret, "Hey man, I am just a ghost, I am not even here."

"That's cool man."

He leaves me be to go deal with the racial politics and eventually the Godlike Voice assigns all the new fish their own personal space in the overstuffed aquarium.

Something occurs to me, and it's both a good and a bad something. See, my Dad is a Parole Agent and works in a prison. He can perhaps offer some advice as how to navigate the treacherous waters of racial factions but his name, my name, can also get me into some hot water if someone here happens to have been under his control once upon a time. Someone who maybe had a dirty piss test and got sent back to jail. Someone with beef.

I immediately place him a collect call and ask him about these things.

He advises not to join any gangs, to tell them that I am here on a 10 day turn and I just want to do my time and go home. He also advises me to mention his situation only to a deputy, and only if I can do so out of earshot of the other inmates. He tells me to hang in there, and again I am reminded of the fat guy from Shawshank Redemption.

I lay down, and wait for the Godlike Voice to set me free. To call my name. Lunchtime comes, and it still hasn't happened.

We line up according to race and faction. Blacks in one line, then a line of Mexicans from one gang, then the Woods, and last a line of Mexicans from another gang. It is remarkable to me how organized it is, and it is clear to me that this is not organization that has come from the system, but rather from the inmates themselves. It's very structured and, after lunch, when one person lets a door slam and it is discovered that another has shit on the floor near a bunk, I learn that there is a justice system within the walls of jail that works a hell of a lot faster than outside.

Both incidents were perpetrated by Woods. The door was slammed and the penalty is 25 push ups, but the man who did it is too old and frail to do his pushups himself, so another Wood volunteers and does them for him. As a show of gratitude, the door slammer gives him all of his lunch. The Ben Foster Wood explains to me that if there was no one willing to do the push ups, the man would have to submit to a beating lasting 23 seconds. W being the 23rd letter of the alphabet, and standing of course, for Wood, or White.

The man who shat on the floor is a different story. I fear that something horrible may happen to him, but am surprised that most everyone agrees that the shitter is so old and sick that he shouldn't have been brought here in the first place, therefore holding not the individual responsible, nor his racial compatriots, but rather the cold institution that placed him here in the first place. This was more logic and reason than I was willing to attribute to this group of people who seem to be begging for a reason to lash out.

I didn't have much time to ponder this because that's when the Godlike Voice spoke, "Burbridge 001! Roll it up!"

I was up, on my feel, stuff rolled up, and ready to go before the last P of "roll it up" was even fully articulated.

I was let out into the hallway, but not before saying goodbye to the few people who had made it this far with me from Burbank, Mustachioed Mal among them. He was sleeping, of course, and wished me luck groggily before falling back to his log sawing.

I was not going home yet.

See, sometime after I got off the phone with him, my Dad had contacted the jail and told him of the situation with his job. He requested that they move me from General Population on the grounds of my own safety. They agreed, and when the deputy escorting me dashed my hopes of going home by mentioning this, I was both very happy, and totally disappointed at the same time.

I thought I'd be going to the place they reserve in jail for people even the other prisoners don't want to be around. Jail house snitches, people who quit gangs, and of course child molesters. This area is sometimes called Administrative Segregation, or Protective Custody. Not a favorable place to be in jail, but the people there don't want to placed back in General Population, so the behavior is usually pretty good, and there usually aren't many incidents of violence.

This isn't where they took me.

I was handcuffed for the journey, which was strange because this was the first time since arriving here that the put me in cuffs to move me. From here on in, if I was out of a cell, I was handcuffed behind my back.

We wandered, the deputy and I, all over the jail. Back to where I was originally checked in, right before the showers. I was given a new wristband, and a new classification, from K-1 to K-10. I had moved right past K-9 and was now some sort of super dog.

Then I had to wait for a space in wherever they would put me to be protected from the other inmates and was blessed with the best part of my ordeal. The cell was small, but I was alone, and it was quiet, and much warmer than any of the other holding tanks. I slept for at few hours and was awakened again and lead to my one of my final stops in my journey:

The Snake Pit!!!

It seems the only place a single was open was in an area reserved for the High Power inmates, the ones who don't play well with others, the ones so fucked up in one way or another they couldn't be left alone, OR with other people. A place not too comfortingly referred to as The Snake Pit. This meant I had to take off all my clothes and do the Bend, Spread, and Cough Dance to ensure I had not acquired any contraband along the way (and jammed it up my butt), and was shown into a cell 26, the last cell past about a dozen very mad looking dogs. K-10's indeed.

The only thing notable about this part was that somewhere out of sight was a TV blaring first "Reba" and then "Family Guy" and that everyone was very loud. I tried to sleep, but could not, so I resorted to singing as much of the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack I could VERY quietly to myself, and reciting the Shakespeare monologues I know by heart.

Both of them!

They brought more food, but it all looked and smelled nasty, so I didn't touch any of it.

Then I hear it, "Number 26, roll it up! You got a pass!"

This time, I know I am home free. Another inmate says, "Was that number 23?"

Another says, "Naw man, it was number 14."

"I don't want to go home, all my friends are in here!"

And on and on, as I wait for a deputy to come cuff me and lead me away. It took a while, and once or twice the others try to engage me in conversation. I tell them I was locked up on some bullshit warrant.

I even get in on the yelling, saying, "I changed my mind, number 23 can go home instead, I am having too much fun."

But when the deputy finally comes, I decided I would actually like to go home. As I leave, I am instructed by the other denizens of The Snake Pit to, "Take it easy man! Get some pussy! Don't come back!"

Two of those things I intended to do anyway, and the third, all I could do would promise to try and hope for the best. Which is which, I will let you figure out.

Again I am handcuffed and shown into another holding tank by myself. I am told, for the first time actually, how long I have to wait, and it's, "A couple of hours."

I figure I can kill an hour if I tell myself the story of Star Wars from beginning to end with as much detail as I can. After that I begin to whistle my John Williams Medley, starting with Superman, transitioning into Star Wars Empire March, then to Indiana Jones, finishing up with the theme from the original Star Wars.

I am given back my personal clothes and change into them rapidly. Wanting nothing to hold up my release process.

The rest is fairly boring. I am fingerprinted once more before I go, and am embarrassed to go to the window and withdraw my measly $1.25 from the cashier, but it is all I need.

I get back my property, including my cell phone, see all the missed calls, texts, and voice mails that have been piling up in my absence. I resolve then and there to write this blog, to tell everyone the story at once so I don't have to go over and over it. And here, as I am let through a one last heavy metal door, we come to the end of that blog.

There's nothing but a hallway. No one yelling instructions or directions at me. Dreading that at any moment, I will be shown into yet another holding tank to wait, I follow a hallway or two, down some stairs, and there I am: A free man standing on the street just a few blocks from Union Station where I will spend my $1.25 on a train ride home to the Chinese food that has been chilling in the fridge for the last 50 hours.

::21:00hrs::