One of the reasons I’m pretty good at waitressing is that I am really good at being fake-nice. I am so good at being fake-nice, in fact, that many people think I am nice for real, and while they are not wrong, they’ve reached that conclusion through a flawed line of reasoning. However, my fake-niceness has its limits. By Sunday evening, when most people are refreshed and rested and in the best spirits they will be all week, I have been working double shifts for days on end and am exhausted and surly. My feet hurt; quite often my ass crack is chafed from walking quickly (and sweatily) for so many hours. If you’ve never had a chafed ass crack, then let me be the first to tell you, it is even worse than you might imagine. My face is tired from smiling so much and opening my eyes too widely. The sound of my own voice talking slowly and cheerfully in that dumbed-down tone one uses for asking people if they’d care for another coffee (similar to the “dealing with the crazy boss” tone of voice, as it turns out) makes me want to take a vow of silence. By Monday afternoon, I am fresh OUT of fake-nice, let alone nice-for-real. And that is why today, I am abandoning my normal nice-girl scruples and writing a mean-spirited blog post.
I figure if you are reading this, then you are either working on a national holiday (life is unfair!) or returning to work after a three-day weekend (life is cruel!). Either way, you can handle some vitriol.

Today’s subject is: Blogs You Hate Yet Can’t Stop Reading.

Continuing to frequent blogs you intrinsically can’t stand is the hate-fucking of the internet. You know you shouldn’t, you know it’s stupid, and it usually makes you feel worse afterwards. You don’t bookmark these blogs or add them to your RSS reader. But for some reason, you can’t stay away. For example: a friend confessed to reading the comments on Ultragrrl whenever she was having a bad day. She said it made her feel better about herself knowing there were so many utter idiots in the world. For similar reasons, I used to read Stephanie Klein. No matter how shitty I felt, it was comforting to realize that there was someone out there so completely self-absorbed, tasteless, and shallow that I looked like a fucking Nobel-prize winning supermodel by comparison. But now she has kids, and even my cold heart can’t summon up too much venom for someone who is taking care of preemies and is frankly really boring. So, for a while I’ve been looking for a blog to fill Greek Tragedy’s place.

I think I may have found it in The Elegant Variation. Sure, the books Mark Sarvas writes about are experimental, ground-breaking, high-quality, dripping with talent. But oh my god, the tone. Is it possible to be more condescending? Could you throw in a few additional obscure-yet-ostentatious markers of extremely good taste? Nothing too mainstream though; that wouldn’t do at all. And leave it to TEV to make a point of putting aside literary fiction in order to sing the praises of — wait for it — a coffee table book published by Princeton Architectural Press about Paris streetscapes. Yeah, real low-brow. Do I even need to mention that the author is working on a novel of his own? Of course, TEV is written in the horribly overused first-person plural. Nothing like tarting up your opinions in the royal “we” to make them seem grounded in something, somewhere. In short, everything I hate about the pretentious world of “literary” publishing is on full display in TEV. But, his reportage is accessible, thorough, and timely, so I keep reading. Sigh.

Which isn’t to say I’m not looking for a replacement. Leave the blogs you love to hate in the comments, and maybe I’ll find something I can feel good about loathing so much.