how to be an arrogant snob

You could read this British blog for pointers—it includes tips on how to get good service in France, a picture captioned "the view up to the chateau in the village where we spent a couple of weeks," a post whose entire content reads, "Just been to Venice for Christmas. See the account here (photos to follow)," and an admiringly lengthy quote from some travel writer whose main point seems to be that "if I had some more detective stories instead of Thucydides and some bottles of claret instead of tepid whisky, I might settle here for good." I feel a choking sensation. It's my dreadful past, trying to overtake me, but I will not let it catch up with me. Isn't there some way to end one of these sentences with a preposition?

If you get too sucked into the horror of this blog, you might even end up putting something hideous like this on your own blog*:

Countries I have visited


create your own visited countries map

It's completely silly, since having been in Leningrad once for four days and Montreal once for three days allows me to fill in half the northern hemisphere; a very brief visit to three cities in China gives me most of the rest. Countries are very deceptive entities to anyone trying to think about geography or history (this is actually a serious point that I ponder often, but I fear it's lost in the silliness of this post).

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*Yes, believe it or not, you too may feel compelled to follow the link, take the test, and then, worst of all, put the result somewhere. You too may feel the creeping shame that causes you to reduce the size of the image, belittle it afterward, point out how much *more* arrogant some Brit's blog is, and even mess with the time stamp so the post doesn't appear at the top of the page. You too may realize that none of these transparent little ruses hide the fact that you still had the ostentatious gall put it on your damn blog.

Or, you may already be clicking "post a comment" to remind me that most people would not share any of these little dilemmas, because most people are lucky to go to their family reunion in the next zip code, so shut up already, birdfarm.