Monday, around 1 a.m. Justin’s head is slumped onto his desk. Papers covered in algebra and calculus lie strewn across the floor. Several empty cans of Rockstar fill the trash bin. The walls are bare white. Darren rolls into the room on the black swivel chair he stole from upstairs. The most recent episode of “Battlestar Galactica” is paused in the upper left hand corner of his MacBook screen. He is wearing sweatpants stained with Tabasco.

Darren: (chipper) Hey guy, what you working on?

Justin: (lifting his head) Problem sets. I’ve got three due tomorrow.

Darren: You mean today tomorrow, or tomorrow tomorrow?

Justin: In nine hours tomorrow.

Darren: Oh. (A snarky grin dapples his face). Say Justin, what’s a problem set?

Justin: Shut it, douchebag. Go write an essay.

Darren: I am. I’m arguing that the films directed by Michael Mann portray the struggle of the modern working man to defend his individuality in a dehumanized modern age. Like “Death of a Salesman” for the information age. It’s pretty fricking sweet. Did you know that “Heat” starts at a train station and ends at an airport, and “Collateral” starts at an airport and ends at a train station? We film studies majors have a word for stuff like that: “Awesome.”

Justin: Film studies. You can say anything about anything, can’t you?

Darren: No. I mean, I guess you could. No. You wouldn’t say “The Empire Strikes Back” is a post-feminist deconstruction of adolescent sexuality. (He thoughtfully rubs his chin) Except that the carbonite thing could be a symbol for castration anxiety. Actually, pretty much everything is a symbol for castration anxiety.

Justin: Everything is everything. I wish math had bullshit equations.

Darren: Well, you know, it’s hard to write essays.

Justin: How long did your last paper take you?

Darren: I was thinking about it nonstop for like two weeks. I wanted to start, but something always came up. Readings, TV, lunchtime, illegal drugs, parties, breakdowns, shower cries. Fuzzy stuff. So then I wrote it the night before it was due. Well, the morning.

Justin: I mix crushed caffeine pills in protein shakes. Straight to the brain. I envy you. NOT. I have a job next year. The future’s bright. Everything’s coming up Justin.

Darren: Yeah, banking. Selling your soul for a quick buck.

Justin: I resent that. It’s an especially slow buck. Next few years, I’m not sleeping, I’m working 30 hours a day. On the weekends, they let us wear jeans. That’s how they weed out the weak. Then I’ll get a huge bonus, buy a yacht and live with my wife in the suburbs and my nubile young Latina mistress in the city. Ten-year plan.

Darren: I could do all that, if I switched all the IMDB brain cells over to calculus. But it’s all about the image, isn’t it? Presenting the false side of yourself. All you guys had to change your Facebook profiles during interview season, de-tag any offending pictures, take all the hip-hop artists out of your favorite music. Putting on a suit every day, making pretend you’re someone you’re not.

Justin: That’s hippie logic. You’re a dirty hippie intelligent type.

Darren: Buy! Sell! Trade!

Justin: You can squat on my yacht, but keep it clean.

Darren: Bet my mistress is younger than your mistress.

Justin: Sophia will be barely legal according to her fake ID. Besides, chicks like that don’t go for fuzzies. You’d just deconstruct them.

Darren: I’m just searching for myself. All great writers search for themselves.

Justin: So do all the crappy writers. I never understood the whole Fuzzy thing. I mean, I get why so many girls are English majors, so they can rebel against their parents before they nab a rich attractive banker husband. But what’s a guy gonna do with a philosophy degree?

Darren: Trophy husband. Academia. Shoe shiner. Law school, worst case.

Justin: That was a lot funnier in freshman year. In my experience, there are two kinds of Fuzzies. There’s the pretentious ones who actually think the world cares about medieval studies or religious studies or any of those other majors so self-important they have the word “studies” in the title. They’re oversold fuckbirds, but at least they’re happy. Then there’s ones who think self-deprecation makes them less pretentious. But really, it just makes me hate them even more. I’ll throw them pennies when they beg me for spare change.

Darren: Then you’ll tip your top hat, fix your monocle and light your Cuban cigar with hundred dollar bills. I prefer Fuzzy self-deprecation to Techie egotism.

Justin: Techies are allowed to be egotistical. They have quantifiable skills to offer humanity, skills that keep the world spinning. Cogs in the great chain of being, some more valuable than others. Anyhow, most techies aren’t egotistical, they’re too busy studying in the 24-hour room while all the kids who actually read “The Confessions of St. Augustine” back in IHUM are partying at EBF on Wednesdays and arguing over Thomas Pynchon.

Darren: You’re not a techie, though. You’re an econ major, or something.

Justin: You’ve known me how long? I’m MS&E. I have to take CS classes. See this? (holds up piece of graph paper) This is math. This is what adults do.

Darren: My god, you are a techie! Your classes have numbers, not names. I don’t even know any of my class numbers. You can’t put a number on Creative Nonfiction, Cinema and Ideology, Cyborgs and Synthetic Humans...

Justin: That’ll look great on the resume. “Wrote a treatise on Christian subtext in ‘Terminator 2.’” What’s the point of it all? Sure it’s great being smart and knowing stuff, but how far’s that take you? It’s just bullshit teachers teaching bullshit students all the bullshit theory their bullshit can bullshit; bullshit. You’ll be great at parties, if you ever get invited to parties.

Darren: You won’t invite me to your parties?

Justin: Only if you take a shower.

Darren: Come on, dude, knowledge is power.

Justin: That’s all hogwash cocksuckery. Fuzzies need to grow up. Studying doesn’t change the world. You belong to the one percent of humanity that controls 99 percent of the wealth on this planet. You enjoy youth, health and the obscene privileges of American citizenship. You’re writing about the American Dream, which is an upper-class propaganda lie, in “Collateral,” a movie starring Tom Cruise with awful hair and a dynamite suit. That’s the sort of self-absorbed and decadent activity that only economic parasites have the time to pursue. A self-reliant man who’s concerned about the world and doesn’t want to keep collecting an allowance from Daddy when he’s 40, wouldn’t have the time or energy for trivialities like that. You’re never going to leave the bubble, and barring the very slight chance that the American public develops a taste for long-winded, adjective-heavy writing, you’re going to end up working behind a counter asking me if I want fries with that.

Darren: That’s kind of pessimistic.

Justin: Reality is pessimistic. Eat, shit, screw, die. That’s history right there, right back to when that Little Fish Thing climbed out of the ocean, ate sand, passed the sand through his still-evolving digestive system, bagged himself a Little Miss Fish Thing, and then died just in time to admire how his child, Little Fish Thing Junior, had slightly more powerful leg-fin-whatevers. Evolution. There is a biological imperative toward power. There is no biological imperative toward intellectual douchebaggery.

Darren: Maybe so. But the world we live is barely real anymore. The other day, when I was trying to get in contact with someone, I called her, AIMed her, emailed her, messaged her on Facebook, messaged her on mySpace, then ran into her at the CoHo. That’s five levels of reality, not counting reality. We spend half of our day consuming images. PowerPoint presentations in boring lectures, TV shows we download semi-legally from BitTorrent, online videogames that make real life pale in comparison. I can’t slay orcs in real life. My phone wouldn’t work for two days, and when I fixed it I had 12 voicemails and four text messages, most of them urgent.

(Spotlight falls on Darren).

Twenty years ago, there weren’t cell phones, there wasn’t SPAM, it was just nerds on the internet playing ZORK. The first ten thousand times I saw a naked breast it was online. The way we live is changing. You say we’re overanalytical parasites, maybe that’s true, but isn’t everybody, now? How often d’you check Wikipedia? Some chick over in Korea died because she played a videogame for three days straight — no sleep, no food. We’re starting to leave actual existence behind. Isn’t it only natural to worry about something more than the physical world, something beyond reality? Deus ex Machina, or Machina ex Deus? Some kid I knew in high school died two years ago. He’s still on Facebook. I friended him after the funeral. Does that make sense? That’s what film studies, what all the Fuzzy classes are about. Trying to find the whole equation of history, culture, art. Like, Humanity, dude.

Justin: That is without a doubt the biggest load of intellectual horse shit I have heard from you today. (thoughtfully) Could be we’re not so different, you and I. Half of banking is making shit into gold, just like writing a book or designing a new iPod or building a building. It’s all creativity. It’s just that my creativity will make me millions, billions, twillions of dollars and your creativity will make you the most popular poet in the homeless shelter. (Checks his watch) You want some Late Nite?

Darren: (spinning excitedly in his chair) Do I!

Justin: Let’s never fight again.

Darren: I’m low on cash. Pay you back this weekend.

Justin: Parasite.

Darren: Sycophant.

Justin: Crotch ninja.

Darren: Hasty-witted wagtail.

Justin: Mine was better.

Darren: Mine was Shakespeare.

(Exeunt)

Any resemblance to actual human beings or dialogue is suspiciously coincidental. Darren would like to thank Andrew Shah for inspiration. He would also like to thank Justin, female English majors and the continent of Africa ahead of time for not litigating. Email him at dfranich@stanford.edu.