Dear Neil,
Most people are very concerned with appearance. Appearance is literally how the situation appears to others, so what is the harm in being concerned that appearances are accurate? Well, for starters, appearances can be deceiving, so you are setting the people you meet up for a fall, if they begin lazily assuming that everyone is just as they appear. However, the real trouble is that most people are trying to create a convincing false appearance.

"We are a happy family."
"I am willing and able to reproduce with you."
"I am a strong willed person with no vulnerable center."

We all put on masks, because we fear the warts on our noses will scare others away. Of course, we want people to love the real us, so we (hopefully) pull the mask away as they get closer. Not everyone reacts in this way. Some people are naked. Other people wear suits of armor. But most of us are in between.

Appearance is very important to the officials here at good old F.U. They want people to say, "F.U.? Oh yeah, they have that pretty campus down in South Carolina. What a fine liberal arts institution! They produce such high caliber students..."

It is my belief that F.U. is secretly a golf course. We have pretty grass and trees and flowers. Kids wear khaki pants and talk to each other while walking to the next class. Public Safety rides around in little carts, like caddies in search of a long lost ball. At GSchool every once in a while, Shige would get a thing about not walking in the grass since it destroys it. He once wrote the beginning of a story that was about that. Well, actually it was about the reader, I think. Anyway, here at F.U. I like to believe that walking in the grass is a revolutionary tactic. By slowly eroding the grass, I am slowly eroding F.U.'s reputation.

When you dye your hair green, people pay more attention to you. Once, a whole car full of people stopped at a sign and someone in the back stepped out to tell me my hair looked stupid. Unprovoked interaction with townies is only one such benefit. Now, like everything else, green hair sends a message, an ambiguous one to be sure, but a message nevertheless. What I wanted to send was, "I am a unique individual, who enjoys going against the crowd and thinks the color green looks cool."

The message my mom got was, "I worship Satan and hate my parents! Go AC/DC!"

My mom knows little about popular culture or modern rock music but more on that some other time. At F.U., I continue to send messages through my appearance.

"I am cool. Talk to me. Praise my fashion sense."

Appearance is an attention getting mechanism is a method for gathering love and everyone wants to be loved in some manner or another. Humans sure are funny lil' monkeys!

Neil, I'm sure you know something about appearances. Everyone thinks that Space Men are all tough and invincible. No one looks past the visor into the eyes of an Astroman, the eyes of a simple man who just longs for a universe free of damn Reds. If you have any advice for how to get past the appearance of others or help others get past your appearance, please let me know.