One of the best shows recently was the Tsunami Relief Show. Our Benjamin Gibbard (of Death Cab for Cutie, Postal Service, All-Time Quarterback, etc.) played a solo set. He came out on stage and we couldn't see him behind his enormous facial hair. It had taken over his entire profile. Now, every time I've seen Ben in the past, he's got the clean-shaven, cute little boy look going. It meshes perfectly with his childlike voice. So here comes Ben in a full, dark facial beard, big black rimmed glasses, and a tweed jacket. That's right. Tweed. Our local alternaboy, formerly in ringer-tees and moppy bangs, has turned into an English professor. All he was missing was leather elbow patches. Half-way through the set, I was waiting for him to down his guitar, light a pipe, and begin expounding on Thoreau.

Loved seeing him play. Loved seeing him nervous up there alone without his big noisy band, admitting to shaking in his academic boots. In the middle of the intense "WhyYou'd Want to Live Here" he totally forgot the lyrics and snorted and giggled into the next stanza. An enormous wave of mucous interrupted him further in the set, during which he had to stop playing to reclaim his airway. He laughed about it afterwards. Not to pick on Ben, it's just funny to see these guys who are usually all polished and rockstar now wearing their grandfather's suit and hacking up a lung during a tender song.

But he finished the set with an acoustic version of Michael Jackson's masterpiece, "Thriller". Because he can.

Dave Bazan of Pedro the Lion shuffled his feet about as the opener. He's a gloomy fellow, and although I do love Pedro the Lion, their latest album, Achilles Heel just highlights exactly how stereotypical male our David is. At certain times of the month I can't stand them. But he nervously asked the crowd if they had any questions, and then offered stumbling, tongue-in-cheek answers, which was endearing. He can't help being a putz. He is, after all, only human. And male.

Jamie from the Shins played a set in between and it was JUST OUTSTANDING as my friend Mark says. I've recently come to love the Shins deeply and they pull a bunch on the heart strings. He did the fun thing where he talked about each song before they played it, MTV Storytellers style. Except with the annoying MTV part. I always enjoy hearing musicians talk about their music of their own accord, not caged in by an interviewer's pointed questions.

So that was the Benefit show.

But Oh My God the Features. The Features played at Neumo's Wednesday night and good Lord can they make some serious rock and roll. They are just straight up smart, loud and tight. Amazing. I've already detailed my little crush on their drummer. But good cheekbones aside, that kid is dangerous with a pair of drum sticks. This band just reaches out from the stage and grabs you by the throat and shakes you for three and a half minutes and then when they set you back down on the sticky dirty club floor, you're screaming "More! More! Do it again!" like a little kid getting swung around by the ankles by the irresponsible babysitter. Please go see them. Or pick up Exhibit A. Although it doesn't even compare to their live shows, it's definitely worth the $7.

Oh and also they almost sold out and we didn't know and lucked out that we found good parking or we would have been seriously screwed. I think it was because they were playing with Kings of Leon, who are supposed to be some big thing, but I can't remember hearing them and if I did, I wasn't impressed so we didn't even stay for their set because the Features were all sweet in my mouth and it would have been like chewing bubblegum after a piece of perfect German chocolate cake. It will probably be one of those things I'll look back and regret like not going back to Bono's place after the show, but what can you do. It was a school night.

So tonight is accidentally David Mead! I mean, not actually accidentally, but the Boy wanted to go see Hem, who is playing at the Tractor in Ballard, of all places. So yay and Hem is good sign me up. Then like an hour ago I find out my old flame David Mead is opening. Oh joyous day! I love the David Mead. He was touring with Jump for a while and I must have seen him five or six times. Also with Ivy. He's got the good pop, like Crowded House, the kind of stuff you could probably play with your parents in the next room and not have them squealing, "What is this crap you kids listen to these days?!" David Mead is kid tested and mother approved.

Everyone has new albums out, so other good shows coming up, starting Sunday: Aqualung, Luna, the Mountain Goats, Ted Leo & The Pharmacists, Bright Eyes and Jesse Sykes, Mates of State and Aqueduct, Robyn Hitchcock, The Frames (!!!), the Decemberists (!!!), Low and Pedro The Lion.

Yep.

I've got to start writing up these shows. You know, practice for when Rolling Stone calls me next week.

*cough*

It's weird that there's this whole world I don't know anything about. Like I live on another planet. But I like it here, in real reality. There's books and parks and conversations and beaches. There's radio and rock shows.

Did you see the movie Lord of the Flies? I know there was a book, but the movie scene brings this image home best. These kids, you know, get ship wrecked on an island. They have to survive. The longer they stay on the island, the more their social structure is built and the less clothing they wear. This happens slowly throughout the story, one thing at a time added -- loincloths and face paint which seems perfectly normal given the circumstances. They live in a flurry of savagery and survival-of-the-fittest. The sounds of the jungle beat around them. This is their world, and you accept that. You've been a part of it for two hours; it makes perfect sense.

So in the final scene, they start chasing Piggy toward the beach -- they're going to kill him probably, and you saw it coming. It's a natural progression. Jack the nimble, tanned like a dirty penny and covered in bright paint, bounds through the forest with his wooden staff raised, howling. And he leaps out into the sunlight, onto the sand, onto the spit-polished boots of a meticulously groomed military officer.

Suddenly in contrast, their whole world is exposed for the madness it has become, light cast on the heaving ribcage of our fearless leader Jack, whose savage tribesman face paint is staining the black leather boot of said official. The contrast is chilling.

This is how I felt watching television last night.

I've been going to the UW fitness center, and while that probably deserves its own hysterical entry, let's leave it at that for now. The Stairmaster is the only gym machine I've bonded with thus far. At this gym, you can plug your headphones into your machine of choice and synch up with one of three televisions. MTV, VH1, and CNN. CNN is stationed in the middle, and a row of unused machines is aligned before it. People fight over MTV. VH1 is a palatable consolation prize.

I've been sitting in the middle so I can flip between MTV and VH1, like a moth hovering between two light bulbs, mercilessly drawn to both, unsure of which death would be sweeter.

I've reconciled this with myself. It began when VH1 was doing their "I Love the 80's" series. The music was hysterical. The hairstyles. You know -- you were there. Or you heard stories. Then they were featuring the 100 best worst songs of all time – "they're so bad they're good". Candy entertainment like this is harmless and a good distraction from the discomfort of exertion. Sometimes I found myself staying on the Stairmaster after my 25 minutes was up, just to finish the show. To remember those music videos I grew up on. During commercial breaks I'd flip to MTV to see whether the girls were beating the boys on "Road Rules". I began to enjoy it. I felt like I was finally getting at least a miniscule crumb of pop culture – enough to tie me to this planet, no matter how thin the thread.

I haven't been to the gym in a couple of weeks, due to holidays and illness, but I'm looking forward to starting the routine again. Last night I got on my machine as usual and plugged in. Except on the screen was not the friendly What-is-the-Meaning-of "…all I want to do is zoom zoom and a boom boom…" that I was expecting. No -- it was a woman talking about having one of her toes shortened.

It was a skit from Saturday Night Live or similar, making fun of people obsessed with plastic surgery. She was hysterical. Talking about how her whole life, her slim feet and lengthy second toes had held her back from accomplishing her dreams. When she went to the beach as a young girl, she was so embarrassed of her toes that she would cover them with sand. Later in life, she didn't interview for the jobs she wanted because she feared having to wear open-toed shoes. What would people think of her lengthy digit? They would judge her and shun her. Her mildly-extended toe also prevented her from having a happy marriage or conceiving a child.

Then the voice-over boomed in; it was a VH1 news show. She was dead serious.

No. It couldn't possibly be true. But here was VH1 with their cameras in the operating room of world-renown plastic surgeon Dr. Scissorhands, chopping off her second toes and re-attaching them, minus half an inch. This is a common request now, he tells the newscaster. Women get their toes cut short to fit into the demanding shoe styles this year. (Cue: flashy video clips of asian models in stilettos prancing down the runway.)

Now, I've been complaining about my feet since I was 15. I have big feet. But I'm also six feet tall. It kind of comes with the territory. Were they smaller, my already fragile balance would be thrown to the wind. Women's shoes almost never come in size 12. And if they do, they're usually ugly. It's frustrating, but I've mostly remedied the situation by always getting boys' shoes. Doc Martens, Fleuvogs and Converse. I was pretty angry about my feet until I discovered Zappos.com, where you can search for shoes purely by size, so you don't have to continually scroll through and see all the shoes you can't have. It works out. (Plus they have free shipping.)

Anyway, it seems unbelievably ludicrous to me that I would hack off an inch of my feet just so I could wear size 10's and not be tortured endlessly for my men's UK Supervog Angels. While I'm at it, maybe I should hack an inch off the top of my head so I can be even closer to the average American ideal.

(Small side rant: every model you see is six feet tall. Where do they get their shoes?)

After we see her surgery, and it's really truly gross, we see her smiling in her new suit, with her strappy sandals showing off her new, stubby toes. She got the job! She even got married. She is happier than she has even been in her life. And it's all because of her toes.

Now some people have been saying to me in response, "Hey, if that's what it takes to make someone happy, go for it." I'm not against anyone being happy. It just makes me really frightened to see how our society has gotten so fucked up that someone can't get married because of an extra inch on her toes. But on the show, they interview all these people who nod in agreement with her and clap this surgeon on the back, and doesn't he do good work, and isn't he proud to help neurotic women feel good about themselves? And after that story is done, it's on to botched botox injections and face lifts, deep tanning and hair extensions, women spending thousands of dollars a month to remedy their "flaws". And in between commercials for stuff to fix your dry hair and stuff to fix your fat ass, are ads for sinful chocolate cheesecake and chicks lustily devouring ribs and beers at TGI Friday's.

Like the warped, torrid reality that had become Jack & Piggy's world, this insanity of selling perfection, advertising consumption, and obsession with youth makes sense when you're inside it. When every day you see the commercials of skinny chicks eating barbecue with their hands followed by "give us a week and we'll take off the weight", and programming like "Made", and the alien-white of Jessica Simpson's vinyl teeth, the madness -- becomes normality. Viewed from the outside by someone who is so cut off from that world, it's scary how far this has progressed. In psychology 101 we learned about "foot in the door" syndrome. It was the same mental state that allowed lab students to shock test subjects with higher and higher voltage despite their pleas for mercy. They had started with a painless jolt. It was easy to keep going, especially with the study director urging them on.

Society being screwed up is not a news flash. The topic has been rehashed a million times, but I don't think it really sinks in until you go away for awhile and come back. I went away to the world where, when your toes are long, you buy bigger shoes. When you're fat you put on those bigger shoes and go for a run. The fresh air filling your lungs keeps you young.

And a big, heartfelt smile is the best face lift in the world.

As if last month's trip to the vet and the ensuing neutering wasn't de-masculating enough, now the little orange bunny underwent a thorough no-holds-barred attack by the slim young thing promised as his companion. Her presence was supposed to fill the void where his manhood used to be. (No irony intended.) We were not advised of the grrrl-power wrath of sweet Clementine.

Their love story began in a less violent manner, their initial courting one of curiosity and muffled excitement. It was that December day at the Seattle animal shelter, where Kobie had come to visit, when he first set eyes on her. Their gaze locked from across the room, her white-chocolate spots to his pumpkin rum. Once she was freed from her cage, they gamboled about the playpen, circling one another joyously. They lay nose to nose for a full five minutes. And Clementine even began to groom his silly, tireless seal-point nose. The relationship looked promising.

So what went wrong with our lovely duo? Our partners in crime? Our Bunny and Clyde?

Perhaps something went awry at the veterinarian last week, where Clem spent an afternoon in surgery, nixing the possibility of creating future generations of little orange and white-chocolate spotted bunnies. During their seven minutes together, she and Kobie had discussed the possibility of raising a family. Neither of them was keen on sharing their stash of sunflower seeds and banana chips. Kobie neglected to mention his questionable masculinity; it seemed unnecessary given the circumstances. And so Clementine the white-chocolate spotted, the black-masked, the seasonally sweet, was spayed and delivered to her new home in a cardboard box Monday.

Clem and Kobie communicated in nose twitches through the bars of their respective cages from across the room. They longed to hop together off into the sunset. So last night, her stitches supposedly dissolved and hormones under control, Clementine poked her head out from inside her carrier to reach out and touch Kobie, her one true love.

The violent drama that ensued was obscured by a wild tornado of orange and black & white fur. Kobie barked like a Rottweiler on crack. Clem chased him spastically and relentlessly around the room, throwing her five pounds on top of his three to claim him as her territory. They squealed and tumbled and kicked like two streaks of evil lightning. Through the repeated thumping of hind feet, teeth gnashed and nails met their target.

I intervened with a pot holder and a broom. Our squalling orange protagonist was scooped from eminent danger by his hind legs and deposited safely within the confines of his den. Clementine then raced to the side of his cage, gave one last bite through the bars, and unceremoniously began eating a pile of sunflower seeds that had plummeted from a table during the fray.

Things are not looking good. Round Two is scheduled for next week, when the raging hormones of our sweet Clementine will have abated enough for her to accurately judge the worthiness of her chosen life partner. Maybe it's a good time for him to disarm her with the whole "questionable masculinity" thing.

I don't exactly remember the impetus for this renewed career assessment. The new quarter has just started at UW and maybe it's the flurry of new pencils and shiny, optimistic faces. Or maybe it's remembering the article I saw when I was at Harvard -- this woman who fled from her oppression in South Africa against the beliefs of her entire community and fought tooth and nail to get an education in the United States. She literally almost died in this pursuit, and was disowned by everyone in her family, who felt that a woman had no right to learn how to read and write.

Hi. I have free tuition to one of the top research universities in the country. And I have a community more than happy to see me take advantage of it.

When I was in college, I couldn't wait to graduate and get a job so people would stop making me learn stuff I didn't think I needed to know. So my professors wouldn't tear my poetry to shreds. So my TA wouldn't flunk my solid proposal for an environmental television station (called SPF-15) because Dean Baker insisted that everyone fail their first effort in journalism. So that the portly, self-aggrandizing print journalism professor wouldn't call me a "photographer with a writing problem" in front of a class full of my peers. So I wouldn't spend five hours straight fumbling with strips of negatives in the dark, crying into the pans of Dektol.

I hated school. I hated journalism. Furthermore, I was bad at it. My spot news photographs of a tragic fire were shot in the reflection of a misty stained glass window. I shot political events with irony and processed the film grainy like a police mug shot. And when I was allowed to do "features", they were soft-focused and run twice through a #5 red filter to make them contrasty and dramatic. One by one, my professors nodded up Comm. Ave., telling me I belonged "up on the hill". This was their suggestion that I was not journalist material and in fact belong at the School of Fine Arts. In their eyes, SFA classes were the short-bus of the photography world.

I summarized this experience well in a single line written in purple marker in my junior year journal: "I don't want to cover disasters -- I want to take pictures of pretty things and write pretty stories and be in love with this world."

The problem was that I made the pictures in my head and then photographed them, or wrote about them. I didn't want to tell the story of what was in front of me. Often it was too ugly.

Still there was Newswriting and Reporting I, II, and III -- over which I suffered several nervous breakdowns because I had to talk to people I didn't know about topics I was unfamiliar with. That's pretty much the definition of my worst nightmare. Uninformed dialog and trains. Then we did an uplifting segment on proper composition of obituaries. But I think the worst part was the requirement that we read no less than 3 newspapers every day. And we were tested on them. And I failed every one.

The news depressed me.

It's weird -- these are the things I most remember. Though I also remember my Beaches and Shoreline Processes class, which supposedly was created so that Communication majors could fulfill their science requirement painlessly. Mon Frere and I both laughed yesterday that we could remember three things from that class: terminal moraines, tectonic plates, and lemurs. Lemurs have nothing to do with beaches nor shorelines. In fact, they are fuzzy little mammals that have long, striped tails. It was just a random image the professor snuck into his slide show to see who was actually attending lectures. Lemurs are from Madagascar. That question was on the final exam. I went to his office hours because he had a giant saltwater fish tank and a beagle, and because he wore pastel sweaters and told fascinating stories.

I took an entire class on James Joyce's Ulysses, and it did indeed require an entire semester. I think we also had one day left after completing that book to stare drop-jawed and drooling into our copies of Finnegan's Wake. Oh that Joyce, he's such a kidder.

The stuff I really enjoyed doing -- creative writing and composition, I placed out of during the entrance exams and therefore could not take them.

The class I remember most, out of all four years, was a class I took my freshman year: Sociobiology. I pored over the textbooks, fascinated by the social structure of bees and the familial organization of lions. The symbiotic relationships that exist in so many environments.

Which brings us to my current state. Loving the natural world. Wanting to study creatures and habitats and the earth I live on. The oceans, too. And not just because of fond memories of a gentle-spoken professor with a mint green cardigan draped over his shoulders.

There's all sorts of elements involved here. I don't even know where to begin looking at school. Going for another BS, or taking some undergrad requirements and starting a master's degree.

The problem? Numbers.

At BU, each school was given sarcastic acronyms. The acronym for the College of Communication, COM, was the College of Optional Math.

The school made an effort to create at least one class for us in the natural sciences. But they gave up on math and distributed calculators with our Journalism 101 text books. (We could use them after graduation to figure out how to live on a journalist's $14,000 yearly salary.)

Pretty much anything I would like to study further requires at least basic math. And college-level basic math requires high school math. And, well, I still carry the scars of a losing battle with high school math. It would take not only a class and a dedicated tutor, but several years of therapy.

But I am making small movements toward taking a serious look at this. I requested a copy of my transcript last week. I honestly did not remember my courses or the grades I received in them. The transcript came today, and I left it on my desk unread for an hour or so. I didn't have the courage to look at it, convinced that with all these terrifying memories, I could not have done very well. When I flinchingly opened it and read it sideways as though it would bite me. And then wondered why I had been beating myself up for the past six years since graduation for my performance. I made Dean's list. I rocked the house. A's all over the place. I have renewed faith in my capabilities. I do remember pissed-off parents on more than one occasion. But now I can look at those four years and feel good about my accomplishments, I can stop dragging home the proverbial bone. I am Okay just as I am.

CUE: triumphant, cheesy after-school-special soundtrack.

Anyways, time to go. If you got nothing else out of this blog entry, I hope you at least remember that Lemurs are from Madagascar. That will be on the final exam.