"After all, here we've been, so many years, biffing about at opposite ends of the world."

Welcome back, my intermost net; it's been a long month and a half, but the curses of bureaucracy have finally been lifted. And so I bid adieu to the meditative state. Autumn is upon us, and indeed it elapses with not a minute to spare. Who knew third year would be so overwhelming? No time for nothin' but work work work, and the new season of Gossip Girl.* Many things have happened and many things haven't. These are my new kicks; they're surprisingly empowering.


Also, is anyone else in Edinburgh dying of allergies right now or am I just falling ill with plague?

*Seriously, it's gotten so ridiculous that it's actually inching its way closer to the realm of realism; to a progressively more authentic portrayal of the ludicrous tribulations of the stupidly rich. Especially the way everything is so over-commercialized; they're really beginning to capture an accurate sense of shameless superficiality. What would Aristotle say this enables us to further understand? [See also: how reality television is an analogy for Plato's theory on the deception of Reality] The one thing about this show though, is it would be so badass if the characters had any emotional depth whatsoever--if they were actually tried and phased by any of the terrible shitstorms that rain upon the show. But they never are; they pout for a scene or two and are ultimately on to the next thing, never to truly acknowledge the impact of the devastation except for maybe an awkward anecdote for the sake of recap in the following episode, usually something along the lines of "Wow, do you remember when I had that baby? That was pretty weird and outrageous," which I like to think suggests a quaint self-abasement on the part of whomever writes this shit. But imagine if these vapid peoplepictures engaged in sprawling Shakespearian soliloquies, pregnant with woe and regret and scary existential disorientation, every time disaster struck; if they allowed themselves to teeter seriously on the cusp of stability, and not in a romanticised hold-up-in-my-hotel-suite-drinking-Belvedere-and-snorting-blow-out-of-the-navels-of-several-high-class-escorts-for-an-entire-week kind of way. Now that would be a show. Like, people often complain about the Nate character being really dimensionless and insipid, but come on, didn't his dad go to jail for embezzlement back in the day, inflicting homelessness upon young brownstone-bred Nathaniel, who eventually resigned himself to prostitution in order to pay off their townhouse? Didn't his grandfather, like, disown him at a Vanderbilt family reunion? I vaguely remember his mother bearing a creepy, manic Sissy Spacek resemblance. Now his girlfriend is a certified lunatic. Dude should be a basket case, but instead he's as banal as brown rice, albeit with a hinted-at marijuana dependency. Nate's had the shittiest end of the Gossip Girl stick, and as a result, he's seemingly the most unaffected. But in reality, people--especially those who've been warped by last names like Archibald and van der Woodsen --are that absurdly repressed. I guess what I'm saying is, I wish it were more like a Flannery O'Connor novel. I wish they'd let things be just fucking horrible. [See also: is television like this because we are, or are we like this because television is?]

(None of this changes the fact that Serena van der Woodsen is the hottest girl on the planet/actually sort of gets away with wearing shorts that tiny to nice restaurants.)