From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XXIII

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 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.

[Picture generated by Copilot]

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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From the Archives - Albert Finds Employment

Introduction

Long before there were blogs, I wrote miscellaneous stuff & photocopied it for friends and family. Here’s an old “press release,” announcing that, five months after moving away from home, I’d finally stopped hemorrhaging my life savings.

Albert finds employment – January 28, 1988

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Albert Finds Employment

SAN LUIS OBISPO—Former Boulderite Dana Albert got quite a surprising phone call last Tuesday.

Albert, frequently described as “a perpetually unemployed wastoid who’ll probably end up on welfare,” was offered a part-time position at a radio station in town. The station, Class-FM, sought a fast typist to bail out the secretaries and answer the phone. “Well, you know, really what this place needs,” explained Rose, the office manager, “besides of course some extra space (we’re expanding farther into the mall), is … wait, where was I? Oh, yeah, we need someone who can really type, and knows the alphabet. Not that, uh, what’s-her-name doesn’t know the alphabet, ha ha, but we need a real pro, who’s also cool under pressure. Being a radio station receptionist might not sound hard, but did you ever think about those contests? When all the lines light up and you have to take the ninth caller, and then not drop the call when you transfer it to the deejay? Serious stuff.”

Pressed for further comment, Rose went on, “We just need more people, period. We’re strapped. People are going to be taking some time off, including me! I’m going camping for a while. Me and my family, we do a lot of camping. Have you ever been to Big Sur? Beautiful. Yeah, we love camping.”

Albert was thrilled to get the job, which will pay six dollars per hour, but was also vaguely disappointed that it’s only part-time. “Like, you know, dude, I really wanted to pull some major hours, like, you know, up around forty a week, you know, so I could bring down some real big dollars, know what I mean?” Albert said, with his mouth full. That’s why even after getting the offer, he continued looking for work.

He was successful in his search.

Isn’t it annoying how sometimes journalists try to have a major impact by making a single, short sentence be an entire paragraph? Like that little trick hasn’t been done again and again? Like it could still blow away the reader, with the force of one big idea fired off in a single tight little one-sentence paragraph, with all that empty space around it? Like, oh wow, how dramatic! I did it with the very first paragraph of this press release, and then I just did it again. Why do it, if I hate it?

Because if I don’t, my editor will.

On Thursday, Albert’s week-long efforts to secure a second job paid off as he secured more part-time work at a local bike shop, Broad Street Bikes. The owner of the shop, whose last name was unavailable at press time, shares Albert’s first name, Dana. This coincidence had little or nothing to do with Albert’s being hired, stated shop personnel, who disclosed, “We also just hired a guy named Moonie. I kid you not: Moonie.” Broad Street Bikes, like the radio station, will supply Albert with twenty hours per week. “Basically, what we’re looking at is part time, to start,” stated the shop owner. “As the season progresses, we’re gonna need the little fella more and more though, I’ll give ya that.” In the meantime, Albert is confident that between the two jobs he can finally afford to support himself and his family, which consists of three bicycles.

Former Boulderite Geoff Albert was thrilled to learn of Dana’s employment, being both the lad’s brother and his roommate. “Man, you should have been there when I heard the news,” Geoff said. “I laughed, I cried, I ran the gamut of human emotions. There’ll be a lot less whining from the little bastard, and I won’t have to bail him out on the rent anymore.” Geoff, who works part-time at a rival San Luis Obispo bike shop, Spirit Cycle Works, is dismissive of, and yet envious of, his brother’s new bike gig. “You wanna know what Broad Street Bikes was called until just last month? ‘The Moped Emporium.’ No kidding! They serviced mopeds! Bikes were just a side deal! What a joke! On the other hand, Spirit bounces like half of my paychecks, whereas Broad assured Dana that would never happen. Where does he get off, having a reliable employer?!”

Albert’s main reaction to his sudden workplace success was relief. “I was starting to get worried,” he admitted. “That temp gig canning underwear was too weird to last, and then I interviewed as a dishwasher at Sizzler but didn’t get the job! And you know what the manager said to me? ‘Check back next week because this guy we hired, I don’t think he’s gonna work out.’ Imagine! I lost to that guy! I was getting desperate.

“For a while I thought I might have to succumb to financial pressure and join the [McDonald’s] Team. I guess I can think of worse jobs than Entry Level Fry Guy, but not many. Let’s just say I’m glad I can afford to feed myself now.”

Quite a statement, considering that an average Albert eats over half his body weight in pasta or related foods daily.

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From the Archives - Unemployment Poetry

NOTE:  This post is rated R for pervasive mild strong language and disturbing themes.

Introduction

Since I started this blog seven years ago, I’ve posted 346 times (generally four posts per month).  It’s not easy to write that often, so I sometimes don’t.  That’s what these “from the archives” posts are for.

Lately I’ve been doing a hybrid version of this:  I post an old poem, then provide all-new footnotes and commentary on it.  (Pretend you found this in your Norton Anthology of American Teen Poetry.)  Today I go back to a poem written under extreme duress:  I’d just turned 18, moved away from home, and then hit the doldrums after entering my third month of unemployment.

Unemployment poetry – August, 1987

           I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU

I sit here letting time roll slowly by

My [word redacted] has become a bore.                        2

I cannot find a job, although I try;

And while I sit here, I’m becoming poor.

I buy the paper each and every day

And scan the ads for work I’d like to do.                       6

But each employer seems to always say

My years of working are, fuck you, too few.

Unless somebody takes a chance on me,

And signs me up with hope that I will learn,              10

A dumbshit’s all I’ll ever get to be;

Experience I’ll never get to earn.

     This vicious circle simply has to end

     fuck hopes and dreams                                                14

Footnotes & commentary

Title:  I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU

The title should not be construed as anything aimed at the reader.  I assumed when writing this poem that nobody would ever read it.  I knew back then (though I’ve evidently since forgotten) that nobody wants to read amateur poetry.  I’d read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and surely took note of the Vogon captain’s threat that he’ll not only fling the heroes into space to die, but that “if you’re very lucky, I might read you some of my poetry first.”

Frankly, I’m posting this poem here largely for archival purposes:  until now, it has existed only in the original hardcopy, on paper that’s gradually disintegrating.  If you’re reading this on April 15, 2006, or in the days (or perhaps even weeks) following that date, you’re in a race against my mom and might very well be the first living human to lay eyes on this poem.  (Dead humans, down in hell, may see it constantly; it may be posted in every corridor down there.)  If you think you may be the lucky first reader, feel free to e-mail me and see!

So why “I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU”?  Well, it was a dark time, and I was an angry youth, and had soured on soft rock around then.  I distinctly remember turning against Simon and Garfunkel (more on this later), and railing at the Peter Gabriel song “Don’t Give Up,” mainly due to guest singer Kate Bush’s contribution to the song, which (in my angry youth mode) I might have described as “menstrual.”  So I turned to punk rock, notably Fear, which I had on cassette.  This album had a very memorable song titled “I don’t care about you.”  (Sample lines:  “I seen an old man have a heart attack in Manhattan/ Well he died while we sat there lookin’ at him/ Ain’t he cute?”)  When I finished this poem (as you can see it was only very lightly edited) I realized it needed a title, and “I DON’T CARE ABOUT YOU” seemed as good as any.

(A final note:  my favorite song on the Fear album in those days, due to my depression and frustration, was called “Getting the Brush,” which I’ve explored at length in an exegesis in these pages … click here.)

Line 1:  letting time roll slowly by

This may well be an unconscious tribute to the Simon and Garfunkel song “The Boxer,” which was probably on my mind, as it includes the lyrics “When I left my home and my family….”  My line “letting time roll slowly by” possibly alludes to “Now the years are rolling by me/ They are rockin’ evenly” (which you’ll find in the concert version of this song).

Line 2:  [word redacted]

The first version of this line read, “Relaxing has become a total bore.”  This line wasn’t exactly honest.  I mean, relaxing was a bore, but I later revised this bit to be more specific, and edgier, and more to the point.  That was all well and good for a poem that just moldered away in a 3-ring binder, but not for the Internet.  It’s a happy coincidence that “word redacted” fits nicely into a line of iambic pentameter.

Line 4:  I’m becoming poor

This is probably my least favorite phrase of the whole poem (and/or any poem ever written by anybody).  It seems somehow incorrect to say a person “becomes” poor.  I’m not at all sure poverty works like that.  Many people are born into poverty; some transcend it; some lose everything; but “becoming poor” … it just sounds wrong.  Besides, a middle class kid who knows he’ll one day go to college may be penniless, but doesn’t actually have to face the prospect of real poverty.  This is a sad example of the amateur poet picking words because they meet the rhythm and rhyme requirements of the sonnet.  Pretty lazy on my part.

Line 6:  scan the ads

Over time, fewer and fewer people will remember that, before the Internet, when you were looking for work you actually had to buy a newspaper and look through the classified ads.  These printed ads were billed per word per day, so they tended to be very brief and thus often cryptic; e.g., “Admin asst type 70 wpm WordStar filing phones $1200/mo neg/ xlnt benefits 3 yrs exp req’d.”  The name of the prospective employer was often not given.  You’d just dial a phone number, tell whoever answered “I’m, um, calling about the help wanted ad?” and hope for the best.  I wonder how many times I was rebuffed by some receptionist who didn’t even know her company was hiring.  (Probably never:  I’m just rewriting history to let myself off the hook for interviewing poorly.)

Line 8:  years of working are, fuck you, too few

I was living in San Luis Obispo, a college town, and there were probably plenty of people trying to get the lucrative office jobs I sought.  Likely there were even college graduates going after those jobs.  I just didn’t know how the world worked.  I also kept holding out hope that Spirit Cycle Works, the bike shop where my brother worked, at would eventually hire me, but I was deluding myself.  It was plain to see that Spirit was slowly dying.

In revising this poem, I was totally right to replace the word “alas.”  That might have conveyed how a prospective employer might have tried to let me down easy, except that almost nobody uses the word “alas.” I sure didn’t hear it from the manager at Sizzler Steakhouse where, in desperation, I applied as a dishwasher—and was denied!  The guy said, “You didn’t get the job.  But check back with me on Thursday because, this guy I hired?  I don’t think he’s going to work out.”  I think “fuck you” is a very accurate, concise summary of that message.  And the internal rhyme of “fuck you, too few” is probably the strongest thing about this poem.

Line 10:  signs me up

This revision makes no sense.  The phrase “hires me” is better all around.  Why did I change it?  Who knows.  I think I just wasn’t trying very hard—at this poem, or at getting a job.  At the time I was scared shitless about my future and a kind of paralysis had set in.  To be honest, I wasn’t rejected that many times … I just wasn’t applying to enough places.

Line 11:  dumbshit

Changing “bum” to “dumbshit” was a fine edit.  After all, nobody uses “bum” to mean “chronically unemployed person” anymore (nor back in 1987).  A bum was somebody who spent too much time on the couch or borrowed money without paying it back.  And of course “dumbshit” perfectly matched the overall mood of the poem.

That said, the idea presented here—that getting a job will keep you from becoming a dumbshit—is problematic.  As it turned out, the first job I ended up getting—working in a factory canning underwear—would not have prevented me from declining into dumbshit-hood.

Canning underwear?  It’s true.  I worked at a factory that made Hot Chillys thermal underwear, which was packaged in cans.  I still have one of them:

Full disclosure:  I only worked the canning machine for about a day.  The company made better use of me in the shipping department, which took more brains because the underwear wasn’t being made nearly fast enough to keep up with orders, so we had to ship partially-filled orders to every customer and keep track of how much product each customer was owed.  That was a pretty good job.  In fact, when Spirit Cycleworks let my brother go, I got him a job at the factory working right alongside me.

Line 13:  vicious circle simply has to end

This line makes no sense.  My situation was a bit like a Catch-22, in that I had to have work experience to get a job but couldn’t get that experience without a job—but that’s in no way a vicious circle.  There was absolutely nothing cyclical going on, nor anything vicious.  I certainly wasn’t going to get a job as a poet with clunky lines like that.

Line 14:  fuck hopes and dreams

This was a bold, decisive way to get out of the corner that line 13 had painted me into.  You can tell “fuck hopes and dreams” was added later, as it’s in the same blue ink as the revisions.  I must have gotten to the end of line 13 and just given up on the poem, and then came back to it later and hastily finished it off without worrying about meter, rhyme, or even conveying anything meaningful. 

This line, “fuck hopes and dreams,” is actually a cinematic reference, but to a movie whose title I cannot remember.  It was a really awful movie.  My brother and I rented a lot of movies in those days, most of them awful.  This line came toward the end of the movie when the main character, totally stymied by everything in his life, melodramatically picked up a gun, put it to his head, and uttered this line.  I can’t even remember if he pulled the trigger because at this point in the movie my brother and I started laughing so hard we couldn’t see straight.  My god that was a stupid movie.

When researching this commentary I looked up “fuck hopes and dreams” on the Internet Movie Database but couldn’t find anything.  Probably it was such a forgettable movie that nobody bothered to mine it for memorable quotes.  My search did turn up a movie called “Young People F---ing,” which earned a Critics’ Metascore of 39 out of 100, which is remarkably low (but not the worst I’ve seen).

So, it’s been a long time since I wrote my unemployment poem, but I’m pretty sure the last line was a way to tell myself, “You’re being silly and melodramatic, lugubrious even, like that awful movie, and it’s time to stop writing indulgent, woe-is-me poetry and go get a damn job.”  Which I did.  After the underwear cannery gig ended, I held down two jobs concurrently—one at a bike shop and one at a radio station, as an evening receptionist—which not only paid the bills, but helped me save up some money for college.  Looking back, I’m glad I had that unemployment experience, and the depression that went with it, just to get it out of my system—hopefully once and for all.

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