a short play

The setting is February 19th, 2009. PIP is at work with some free time and types the following:

PIP: Today I was reading about Velikovsky, Carl Sagan's (factually) flawed counterarguments against him at a 1970s era conference, Phyletic Gradualism vs. Punctuated Equilibrium, and Heuretics as a way of "generatively reading texts".
NEGA-PIP: That's very interesting. Do you feel you are learning a lot?
PIP: In ways yes, though I get nervous as to whether this knowledge is rife with errors, gained as it is mainly through Wikipedia. But I enjoy learning.
NEGA-PIP: Have you not heard that the autodidact has a fool for a teacher?
PIP: Yes, but I have also heard Basho's precept "not to follow in the footsteps of the masters, but to seek what they sought".
READER (off-stage voice): You are displaying a perhaps unhealthy and certainly aesthetically undesirable amount of self-awareness and reflexivity which plagues postmodern thought and literature. You must be careful not to let this paralyze you, creatively, personally or spiritually.
PIP: Wow, that's true.

NEGA-PIP of course represents the acutely aware and critical, oftentimes destructive, "voice of critique" within my own head.