Despondent correspondent

Hello and welcome to UOPTA on this fine Wednesday. Speaking of Wednesday, Christina Ricci (who played Wednesday Addams in those movies) has managed to do ok for herself despite being a child actress. I guess anyone comes out looking pretty good when compared to the Lohan trajectory. But then again, Lindsay looks good next to Todd Bridges and his path. What a hazardous career it is to be a child actor. I'm so glad I got out of that after my kick-ass lead in "You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown." I was quite the triple threat, if you don't count singing or dancing. But I digress, gentle readers. Wednesday threw me off, and I'm ready to ramble more coherently now.

Conscientiousness. It's a word, a long word, and one that proudly displays four of the five vowels. A is so pissed off right now. But it's more than a word, my friends, it actually means something as well. I try to be conscientious in almost every way I can. I often let people into lanes even when they're assholes and didn't plan ahead, I hold doors for people, and when I ask someone how he or she is doing, I actually want to know. Additionally, I respond to people when they contact me. Even when it's in error and I get an email that wasn't meant for me, I write back to inform the person that the message was not received by the intended target. Sadly, not everyone out there is like me conscientiousnessly. Yeah, conscientiousnessly. Here are two examples of what I'm talking about.

As I've mentioned several times in this space, I'm a huge fan of the Canadian band called Sloan. I have all of their studio albums, a cd single with some rarities on it, and a live double cd. When the internet busted onto the scene, I found a page that some Canadian created listing everything by the guys from Halifax, Nova Scotia. On it, I saw everything I had at that time plus one additional item: Sloan's cover of "A Case of You" on a Joni Mitchell tribute cd called "Back to the Garden." My heart leapt. That's a fantastic song, and I was dying to hear them sing it. I did the best search I could at that time, but I couldn't find anywhere that acknowledged the existence of that album, let alone the song.

Time passed, Google came out, and I tried again. No dice. The Sloan website listed that song on their discography, but there was no link to anywhere that I could buy it. Years passed, and I mentioned it to a friend who has the capacity and flexible morals to do some illegal downloading of songs from off-shore sites. "I'll find it for you," he said confidently. A couple of hours later, he admitted that he came up empty and I probably wasn't going to find it anywhere. A few more months passed, and I decided to give it another shot. Wikipedia has an entry for that album, and it even says that the album's "most successful single was Sloan's rendition of 'A Case of You.'" Bastards.

Then I struck gold. Amidst the many entries on Google, I found a link to a Canadian podcast from a while ago in which they play the song at the end. First, the guy tells a story about how hard it was to find this song. He said he finally found it on Ebay, but lost the auction to someone else. He then wrote to the auction winner, and that person actually sent him a copy. At the end of the hour-long podcast, they played it. I love it. It's a harder, rock version and it kicks major ass. Fortunately, I was able to save the podcast and fast forward to the 55-minute mark anytime I wanted to hear it. However, I figured trying something out was worth a shot. I wrote to the podcast guy and expressed my sheer wonderment at finally finding the song. I asked if there was any way possible for me to get a copy. I not only offered to pay him, but pay in advance so he could then know for sure that I was serious. After all, he'd really wanted it at some point and it took the kindness of a stranger to help him. No fucking reply. A couple of weeks later, I wrote again and gently asked if he could please respond. Nothing. I can still hear the song when I want to, but I can't put it on a cd or on an mp3 player without getting the whole hour-long boring discussion first about whether it's called "babysitting" when it's your own kids. Way to pay it forward, asshole.

The next story doesn't anger me as much, but it's in the same exact category. My senior year of college, I was working for the Office of Student Life doing some pretty basic things. One day, I had to contact someone in another office, so I grabbed the staff and faculty directory. After I found the name and number I was looking for, I did what many of you might do and looked to see how many Kleins there were. I found a professor in there, and I don't remember who else because I saw something that made me say, "Wha- what? Really?" There, right below my initial focal point was a name: Deborah Kleinpeter. Kleinpeter! Now maybe some of you have heard of that last name before, but I certainly hadn't. Try it out with your own name, hear how weird that sounds to you, and imagine my surprise.

So I wrote her an email. It was short and sweet, and was something like this: "Good morning, my name is Peter Klein and I work on campus at the OSL. I saw your name in the directory this morning, and it obviously caught my eye. I wasn't aware of that surname, and I'm curious as to how popular it is, any origin you're aware of, etc. Thank you, and maybe we'll cross paths on campus one of these days." I know I didn't specifically ask any questions there, but I was expecting something - anything - in response. Even if it was just, "Hi, I don't know the origin, but what a coincidence." Nope; I got no reply whatsoever from Ms. Kleinpeter, and that disappointed me.

Now I have "No Reply" by the Beatles in my head, so I guess that's one positive thing that came from those experiences. I knew that common sense wasn't always so common, but I'd always hoped that common courtesy was. Nope, I set my conscientiousness expectations too high, and I have no one to blame but myself. Have a good day, friends, and watch out for non-replying bastards.