Meta, or just abstraction?

I just watched the one where SpongeBob is on vacation. He doesn't really know that vacation means you don't go to work until Krabs won't let him in the Krusty Krab. So he goes home and plays with his Krusty Krab Playset, where action-figure Krabs kicks action-figure SpongeBob out again so action-figure SpongeBob gets out his own Krusty Krab Playset and plays Krusty Krab. It's SpongeBob holding action-figure SpongeBob holding another, smaller SpongeBob.

I often wish that I loved my job as much as SpongeBob loves his. He's always so excited to be there, and in this episode he is horrified when he has to come up with other stuff to do all day.
Though I'm glad that I'm not that obsessed with work, I do wish I didn't love lazing around so much. My motivation reservoir is easily depleted and not so readily filled. Good thing SpongeBob is almost always on!

My other favorite meta-episode is the one where the artist is in the boat (the artist at sea, he's clearly French with his beret) and drops his pencil into the water. It falls into Bikini Bottom and SpongeBob and Patrick start drawing with it and whatever they draw comes to life. SpongeBob makes a crude drawing of himself and calls it DoddleBob. It turns evil, gets a hold of the pencil and wreaks a lot of havoc by drawing and erasing things. They get rid of him by erasing him, and then I think SpongeBob and Patrick fight and erase each parts of other.

I have also often wished that I could be a cartoon, and that it would be a self-aware cartoon like in the Simpsons where they talk about Fox or they say they have five things and count on their fingers, of which they only have four. Family Guy does it all the time too. And then I would have a bunch of random cartoon buddies, and we would go on adventures and find ourselves in many pickles that we would have to draw our way out of. The possibilities are endless!

I love when cartoons, or even real-people shows, make references to their writers or animators. It's a complicated philosophical situation that mirrors the human condition! But in this case, it's simplified as we the viewer clearly know who The Creator is. Another great example is the book Sophie's World. I don't want to ruin it but basically the characters are in the process of studying the history of philosophy and they begin interacting with the creator of their story, and then they try to take control of the plot of their story but they have to be sneaky so that the author doesn't know they are doing it and still thinks he is doing it. So good!