vignette: dazzling

MAIA:

Ok, then. My turn, right? I have to confess. There is this blog I visit once in a while that makes me smile.

RAM:

There you go. You're a secret stalker, laughing at other people's lives.

MAIA:

No, no. The author isn't trying to be funny, but the sheer mega-ego of the blogger is breathtaking - even putting my own ego to shame, I think, but my loving detractors would probably take umbrage.

RAM:

On behalf of half the blogging community, I take umbrage.

MAIA:

Right. But you know what I mean, right? Don't get me wrong: a certain level of ego is needed to keep writing blogs - it's the equivalent of "character" in terms of discourse, without which a blog is a dull read.

RAM:

Stop, stop with the erudition. You're losing me. Nobody I know talks like you.

MAIA (smiling):

Review-style, then. "In a nutshell, this one delightfully takes the baton, rushes through the course once, twice, thrice, and runs all the way to ends of the earth."

RAM:

To the ends of the earth?

MAIA:

And back. Ten more times.

RAM:

Oh boy.

MAIA:

Dazzling, so dazzling.

RAM (laughing):

So judgmental. I'm shocked.

MAIA:

Really. The blog has such character, such delicious and unabashed narcissism, that I immediately forgive the intellectual arrogance -being an afficionado of such myself-

(RAM laughs.)

RAM:

Wicked, wicked woman!

MAIA:

- and, and simply revel in the me-me-me nature of the author's immense -though lonely-ponderings, sometimes poignantly self-aware, but more often blithely oblivious.

RAM:

You sound like you've thought this through, like you knew I'd ask you something like this.

MAIA:

Do I?

RAM:

You do.

MAIA:

Maybe I have. I love the site.

RAM:

But?

MAIA:

But I've never commented, never engaged. But I return and return.

RAM:

You're horrible.

MAIA:

I know.

RAM:

Wait. It isn't my blog, is it?

(They laugh.)