The original is a bit more racist too.

Huh?

I took out the egregious references to French ennui and German weltschmerz from the precis. There's nothing quite like inserting trendy foreign language terms all over the place to make a piece seem faux-academic - pretentious and artsy in the case of French, serious and technical in the case of German, pretentious, artsy, serious and technical all at once in the case of Latin or Greek. It's a very cheap way of seeming like you're much more cultured and widely read than in fact you are.

Cartomancer, do you have your own website/blog?

I have considered it, but that would not be a good idea at all. I suffer a lot from angst, anxiety and depression which I vent by writing very, very self-indulgent misery rants at excessive length. It's not pretty, and given a personal forum to express myself on I know full well that I'd feel compelled to use it for that purpose more often than not.