I just showed up at Stan’s place about ten minutes ago and saw a couple pizza boxes on the floor. It didn’t look like there were any actual slices left, but there were some little olives and mushroom bits strewn across the greasy ridged paper at the bottom of the box, just enough to sate my morning munchies. So after about five minutes of talking about real things, like design mockups and the new beta signup on the home page — go sign up! — I ask Stan with a subtlety borne of wisdom that far exceeds my twenty years: “Hey, do you have any food?”

He replies, “I don’t know if there are places open. Hold on, let me ask Josh.”

Clearly, he isn’t getting the point here, so I think about a new tack while he learns from Josh that no, nothing around here is open right now. Simple and direct, I decide with a pound of my fist, is the way to go.

“What’s up with that pizza on the floor?”

“Oh. I think that’s from last night.”

Bingo. Breakfast is served.

I used to be a healthy, happy, well-nourished young boy.

Now, as I sit here feverishly coding, my face has sunk into a waxy pallor, and my left hand trembles ever so slightly as it reaches to my tray to pick up the slice of watermelon I am eating in the hopes of gaining some measure of revitalization. I also picked up some broccoli, but it tasted so bad that I just couldn’t bring myself to finish.

But it will all be worth it in the end. In just a few short months, the average Joe and Josie will be able to easily find a movie they both want to watch, saving them from a fight at the rental store, a subsequent evening of sitting on opposite sides of the couch with furrowed brows and crossed arms, a grumpy morning afterwards with dark looks at each from across the mirror as they gnash their toothbrushs against their teeth in a furious show of just how angry they are, and a series of escalating arguments that result in a bitter marriage that negatively affects young Joe Jr., who later grows up to sit alone in his room listening to Nine Inch Nails and brooding about how much he hates life, and how the only solution to all his problems is finding a movie that captures the angst he feels inside.

This start-up will save them from all of that.

This is the hope that keeps my spirit alive as I sit here, nursing a belly full of kidney beans and peas as I stare at my screen in a mixture of melancholy and despair. “Why won’t this Javascript work?” I ask myself repeatedly, banging my head against my desk. “Why oh why?” And I realize: These are the forces of evil working against me. Satan himself does not want you to watch a good movie. Satan wants you to rent the utter crap foisted upon us by elaborate marketing campaigns and rental store displays. Satan wants you to cry after watching movies — you know, in the bad way, the way that says “The utter lack of art and entertainment in this film makes me a little more dead inside” and not “My soul has been moved to new heights of human emotion.”

This is a holy battle, my friends, and I will wage it with a vim and vigour unlike any before witnessed in Silicon Valley. With a keyboard in one hand and a stalk of utterly disgusting cafeteria broccoli in the other, I shall fight on for the freedom of movie-lovers everywhere. Nourishment is no object, and health is no obstacle. I have a dream, ladies and gentlemen, and maybe that dream isn’t as grand as the ones you typically hear about in dramatic speeches about racial equality, but it’s still a good dream and we will fight for it, from the shores of Blockbuster to the beaches of Century Cinema, from the jungles of stale popcorn to the valleys of Netflix.

Unless, of course, this broccoli kills me. Damn you, broccoli. Damn you.