If Eliza Armstrong were alive today, I know exactly what she’d be doing: running interference on her overlord’s stalker, fighting over table scraps, and contributing keyword-heavy posts on the state of the chimney sweeping industry to some faceless blog network for five bucks a post.

Oh, a blogger’s life is not all Champagne and Caviar, my friends. No, nor Skittles and Beer neither.

Alas, not even Smarties and Orange Crush, most days.

It all starts so innocently. You LiveJournal, perhaps, or you get a bit of a reputation as a Tumblr.

You see a blog job listed on MediaBistro. You think it’ll be fun. A laugh. Something you do in between vigorous rounds of Scrabulous and the performance of whatever lucrative, yet cushy, professional tasks the future holds in store for you. Someday.

As this video exposé from BarelyPolitical (via Valleywag) demonstrates, you could not be more wrong. Long hours in murky darkness, scant rations of Chex mix and RedBull ( or cheap knockoffs, if you work outside Silicon Valley), and a polyester duvet that you have to share with the owner’s poorly-housebroken bulldogs are the lot of a typical blogger.

And your overlords? Raising a toast to themselves at Balthazar.