MemeMachineGo!

I've been greatly impressed by Christopher Guest's recent movies "Waiting for Guffman" and "Best in Show" even as they've made me squirm. They're framed as documentaries on characters in pursuit of something really important to them. He exaggerates the characters only a little, and then focuses in way too close. They, their senses of self, their ambitions and their thoughts are all shown to be ridiculous... but without losing sympathy for them, and thus without letting the audience off the hook. We can't dismiss them as fundamentally different from us, can't hold ourselves up as superior. He's showing us we're all bozos on this bus.

Recently I found myself suddenly and unexpectedly appearing in a Christopher Guest movie. It turns out I've been participating in this heated, bitter battle I had no perception existed. And great amounts of self-importance and drama and fury are being slung about over stakes that aren't even small — they're imaginary.

Thankfully, the context (which I'm not going to divulge, as you've probably figured out) isn't work, or family, or anything in which I actually have some obligation to deal with the person. I can continue to have fun doing what I've been doing, while the battle rages on... in the confines of someone else's head.