Introduction
This is the twenty-third installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I of the series is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume IX is here, Volume X is here, Volume XI is here, Volume XII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume XIV is here, Volume XV is here, Volume XVI is here, Volume XVII is here, Volume XVIII is here, Volume XIX is here, Volume XX is here, Volume XXI is here, and Volume XXII is here. The different volumes are unrelated, except by disposition, in the sense that they are all completed, published, and not debatable, unless you want to comment below (which would be a first). You don’t need to read the previous volumes in order, or frankly at all, for this one to make sense; in fact, it won’t make sense no matter what you do. That’s not really the point.
Which begs the question, what are albertnet Bits & Bobs posts? Well, imagine you’re cooking something tasty, like spaghetti carbonara, in a big hurry, so you’re kind of trashing your kitchen in the process. Now imagine you look down on the floor and see all these tasty tidbits—bits of bacon, a few peas, maybe a few blobs of crème fraîche—and you think hey, this stuff is still good! You’re way past the five-second rule but you don’t care, and as you clean up the floor you pop these tasty morsels in your mouth. You tell yourself this is good for your immune system. Well, these Bits & Bobs posts are just the literary equivalent of that. They’re taken from letters I wrote to family and friends.
The below dispatches all date from 1990. The first three are from my UC Santa Barbara days. The rest are from when I was at Berkeley.
February 1, 1990
Tomorrow will be my second day at the Associated Students Bike Shop, where I now work 4.5 hours per week. Like me, most employees work minimal hours, just enough to enjoy the privilege of buying bike stuff wholesale. We keep track of our hours on sheets in this binder, on standardized UCSB Work Study log sheets that have, for each day, a space for “Project” in which we’re supposed to write what we did. I guess this has its applications for jobs with some variety, but at the shop it’s a joke. My friend A— had written down “Ego Stroking” for Tuesday, and I thought that was pretty funny. I said, “Hey, do we get paid time‑and‑a‑half if our project is stroking the bossman’s ego?” The boss is this really ornery guy. He overheard some of this dialogue. “What’s this I hear about time‑and‑a‑half?” he yelled. “Oh, I was just joking,” I replied. He fired back, “Hey pal, there are some things in this shop we just don’t joke about.” Then another mechanic said, “You know, that actually isn’t true.”
March 16, 1990
I was pretty excited because I finally got something from the Admissions Office at Berkeley, which I’d been expecting for some time now regarding whether or not they accepted me [as a transfer student], so needless to say I was pretty nervous opening it up, especially after the bad omen of opening the other piece of mail, which was a notification from my bank that my rent check had bounced due to my unscrupulous financial records and the fact that my parents have been totally flaking on sending me cash, the upshot of which is that had to apply for yet another Visa card, this time from the Wells Fargo bank so that if I bounce another check in the future, which is really likely to happen to be perfectly honest with you, Wells Fargo will cover the check and put the balance on my card so I can pay it off when I finally get the money, which I’ve generally been able to do eventually, even if the amount is something large like tuition, which I also just wrote a bad check for after being disenrolled from UCSB for not paying on time, so now my attendance at UCSB next quarter is in jeopardy, which of course ties in to the future plans which seemed destined to unfold before my very eyes today as I talked got ready to rip open the envelope, my roommates C— and T— watching in suspense as well, because as any college student knows, a small envelope like the one I was holding in my hand is rarely a good sign when you’re hearing from a college because generally if you get accepted they send a huge packet of registration materials and whatnot, instead of the small envelope which I was preparing to tear open, fearfully, as I described my apprehension which was not exactly calmed by my spectators, who were saying pessimistic things, but for no good reason it turns out because upon finally ripping the envelope open and looking at the first line the first word I saw was “Congratulations!” which seemed an obvious indication that I had been accepted and was enough reason for me to say, “Yeah, I’m in!” while C— yelled, “Yes, he’s out of this dive forever!” which really hit home but eventually turned out to be perhaps a bit premature because after I had finished reading the whole thing I discovered there are all kinds of conditions that I still have to meet and which I’m really dreading because they mean all kinds of bureaucratic hurdles and also some dumb-looking classes which I’ll probably have to take next quarter before Berkeley will formally accept me, and meanwhile the whole letter was written in a very general terms, its tone more hypothetical than actual, which has me really confused, to the point that I’ve been trying to talk to the admissions folks on the phone but in vain because I keep getting this goddam answering machine where you’re supposed to press 1 if you want information on admissions, et cetera, but it’s pissing me off because I press 1 and nothing fucking happens (which is especially annoying since it’s running up a long distance bill which means trouble because I can’t afford this month’s phone bill because T— alone ran up over $100 in long distance which he can’t pay for right now, so we’ll probably have our fucking phone disconnected again which is just typical) so with all these weird requirements and classes it looks like I’ll really be busy next quarter, which sucks because all I really want to do is race my bike. [All this is excerpted from a much longer sentence.]
May 31, 1990
I decided to write you because I am too distracted to study anyway. For one of my English classes I’m reading a book of really weird short stories written in the ‘60s. The book, which I got from the used bookstore, smells like pot. Maybe that’s what I’m missing, because I can’t understand any of these stories. Some of them have no punctuation or anything and some are nothing but dialogue and you can’t figure out who’s doing the talking. One story is about zombies. You’d think that would capture my attention, but it’s just too far out there.
July 27, 1990
The reason I’ve moved up here [to the Bay Area] is that I’ve had this lifelong ambition to have a 415 area code. I don’t really know why; it’s just a personality quirk. It’s not too bad living up here, either; I mean, they have a university that’s actually supposed to be pretty good, and plenty of jobs. I’ve hooked up with a couple of employment agencies and I’m hoping they can get me some work pretty quickly before the fall semester starts. My roommate B—, who graduated last June from UCSB, works for a chemistry lab, and he just got this neat mug (almost as neat as the thrift store “Harris Dracon” and “Lincoln Title Company” mugs you gave me) which says “I passed the SYVA drug test.” I think it would be even cooler to have a mug that says “I failed the SYVA drug test,” because I could go out and sell pencils out of it on the street.
The lingo is a bit different up here. I hear the term “hella” quite a bit, which means “very.” I also hear “shine” a lot, which means to decline to do something. Like, “This hotshot Subaru/Montgomery rider wanted to lengthen the ride but I was going backwards [i.e., riding poorly] so I shined and went home.” But the new vocab word that really threw me was “hosed.” I haven’t heard that term since my Colorado days, when to “get hosed” meant to have sex. But out here, “getting hosed” means the same as getting clocked (i.e., drunk). So my roommate’s friend asked me, “Have you seen B— get hosed yet?” I about had a heart attack, and figured the dude had to be some kind of perv. What a relief when we ironed that out...
July 29, 1990
The Levi’s 501 jeans that I’ve had since high school finally wore out. A lot has changed since the last time I bought jeans: you may now choose among standard, stone‑washed, acid‑washed, shrink‑to‑fit, pre‑shrunk, straight-cut, student‑cut, pre‑faded, colored, and corduroy. My old jeans were standard denim (was there any other kind in 1987?), and were a size 32 waist with a 40 inseam (effectively a 31 waist by 36 inseam, according to the bizarre sizing scheme Levi’s had developed for shrink-to-fit jeans). I guess I’ve stretched those bad boys out because the new jeans I finally settled on are 34 by 36. I might have chosen a larger waist, actually, but the longest length I could find with a 36 waist was 34 inches. This seemed really strange so I asked the sales clerk about it. It’s no mistake: even though they offer eight different styles, they only make jeans for either basically fat or basically thin people—nothing for people who are just all-around big. Anyway, I wore the jeans out of the store and I’m really impressed with them because they don’t feel new. They’re stone‑washed, which means pre-broken‑in. Who ever heard of such a thing? Everyone knows new jeans are like cardboard; that’s kind of part of their charm. But these ones, in addition to being slightly faded, with the tag above the right rear pocket already soft and unreadable, aren’t stiff at all. In fact, I’d almost swear these are used jeans. But I love them because three months always seemed like too long to have to break in a new pair. I guess over the last 140 years the Levi‑Strauss company has actually made some technological advances.
July 30, 1990
Concerning that missing invoice for the 3,000 gizmotrons . . . c’mon, you remember me, your old friend from Colorado? Remember, the really skinny guy who used to eat your family out of house and home? Ah, now you remember. Gosh, it’s been so long since I’ve written you that I almost forgot your address. I should include a disclaimer with my letters: “Please allow four to six years for delivery.” Anyhow, sorry for not keeping in touch. Let me catch you up on what I’ve been up to for the last two years. There was mainly a lot of hanging out and racing bikes and wasting time with friends. Oh, yeah, I also recall there were some college courses. (I guess this girl ruined me, too, but it wasn’t anything serious. She was easily replaced by a couple other girls who also ruined me.) Now I’ve moved to the Bay Area and, facing unemployment (not for the first time), I am trying to get temp work which means basically hanging around hoping the phone rings. For the last hour I’ve been trying to fix a typewriter cassette ribbon that had stopped working. I bought several of them at once, and they’re all defective, so I decided I’d better figure out how to fix them. As soon as I pried open the casing all these springs came flying out like a jack‑in‑the‑box or one of those cans that snakes jump out of. Well. I guess that’s about it. Write me back and let me know what you’re up to. For now, I’m going to sign off by quoting my old roommate: later days and better lays! (Disclaimer: I am quoting him ironically.)
November 1, 1990
I just opened a letter from the phone company stating that my service will be disconnected unless they receive payment by November 2. That does not give me much time to act. I will have to call first thing in the morning and give them Pathetic Excuse #27: “I just stumbled across my payment envelope—my stupid roommate forgot to drop it in the mail. Can I have a one-week extension?” I once got a whole month of extensions, for excuses ranging from “I didn’t get my financial aid” to “I ran out of checks.” Of course, doing business over the phone isn’t always so easy. Once I had to get out of this travel club (which I joined to get the free Walkman), but I failed several times to cancel because for every excuse I’d give (e.g., “I just don’t travel that much”) they have some pat answer I couldn’t recover from. It’s like they always do their homework and I never did. So finally I got a bit smarter about it: I called up and said, “I was just put on probation for a year and can’t leave the state,” to which the woman replied, “Yes, Mr. Albert, but . . . oh, wait … gosh, I’m sorry. I’ll refund your membership fee immediately.”
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