A diet based solely on sushi should have sent up a red flag. Or his gutless obsession with Radiohead, Rufus Wainwright and Rachmaninoff that he eagerly slips into conversation, not unlike how his finger occasionally slips off the recessed filter of his Parliament cigarette. On religion, he often refers to himself as "a slowly shrinking agnostic in the eyes of the existential void." When it comes to food, he refuses to eat anything that so much as sat on the same dish as red meat and thinks my previous column that stated my distaste of vegetarians was "offensive and uneducated." I'm sure he saw me walking around Rabb last week and told his friends that there's obviously something terribly wrong, deeply rooted in my emotions, my subconscious, my - gasp - superego.Sometimes, late at night, he goes outside his dorm to have a cigarette and to look at the stars. He can't tell you which star is which, because that would obviously "ruin the inherent purity of their distance from us." He sits on a bench, sucking on his Parliament Light, one of the worst cigarettes known to man, writing intently in a Five Star notebook. He prefers to write in his leather poetry book, but thinks it might get dirty outside, so uses the back of his Modern Poetry notebook. One day, he thinks, students will be learning about his poetry in a Postmodern Poetry class. He takes great pleasure in this thought and makes sure to note the irony in one of his poems.

The first poem he writes is called "Catch of the Day." It is about a lost, disoriented soul that gets "hooked" onto a religion that draws him out of the waters of knowledge, truth and enlightenment. The next day, he will read it out loud in his creative writing class. Half of the students in the seminar will think it is genius and wish to the English Department gods that some day, some how, they will write like him. The other half of the class shifts uncomfortably when he reads an over-the-top sex scene toward the end of "Catch of the Day." "Is this really necessary?" their eyebrows say to one another, wincing at phrases such as "Incompatibilities astounded her / I plunge my heart deep into her loins / And the fucking world collapses in a fit of epiphanic rage." He uses at least four F-words in each of his pieces. He thinks that it makes him sound "edgy" and "passionate."

There is a large, black Japanese symbol freshly tattooed on his calf. He tells his friends that it means "power" but it really means "fellatio." On the small of his back he had Smashing Pumpkins album art tattooed by a transvestite he often speaks about to his gay friends. Although he only traveled to Europe once (for a week....with his parents...), he had a Union Jack tattooed to his left shoulder blade reminiscent of his senior year in high school when he adopted a faux British accent and read volumes of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. That was all before his misinterpretation of a common selection of Sartre and Camus, but well after his "On the Road" slash "Catcher in the Rye" phase. His piercings scream post-adolescent identity crisis. His clothes shout thrift store - or maybe the garbage. He likes to tell people the retail value of his thrift-store finds like one might describe an African safari. No one tells him to stop. No one cares.

He likes to use the word "inherent" a lot, too, especially when he raises his hand in class or strikes up conversation on the train. Sometimes, he'll discuss the problems he has with organized religion in a particularly loud voice so that all the passengers within a seven yard radius can hear what he has to say. He thinks people will assume he is brilliant like his parents did when he was a particularly philosophical young sprout. He is surrounded by people who think he is a deluded, pathetic product of the late 20th century. Nobody tells him this, because really, he is harmless, isn't he?

Isn't he? Maybe. Just don't bring him to an art exhibit or a concert, unless you want to hear his personal reflection on such forms of human expression in the form of a 3,000 word monologue in which he repeatedly describes elements of (surprise!) himself that really just seem to be an empty projection of pop culture. In this case, you will not be allowed to have an opinion. If an original thought does make it on the floor, your speaking privileges will be revoked through his cunning use of self-promoting interruptions through incessant drags off of his, ugh, Parliament Lights.

What can be done about him? How do we dispose - he's beyond recycling - of the pseudo-intellectual scum of the collegiate world? As much as I would love to approach him up at Rabb, smack him on the back and say, "Hey man, enough with the bullshit already," I'm sure it would have little or no effect. He lives in a world of denial, a world so thick with sophistry I doubt his Converses even touch the ground when he walks.

Sometimes, the only thing you can do is roll your eyes and change the subject.

"So, how 'bout them Yankees?