Author: Gregg Murray

‘Tis the season to swing one’s partner round and round. And yet everywhere we see dance floors occupied by citizens who can hardly stand up straight. Gone are the days of Fezziwig, Ebenezer Scrooge’s erstwhile boss. Gone the happy days of Christmas Past. Consider the American wedding reception, a ritual in which people drink themselves into malware and stumble onto the hardwood floors of middle school gymnasiums—or the lobbies of swank hotels, as money variously allows. That said, for richer or poorer, square dancing has given way to six or eight easily imitable moves that one can execute under...

Nothing but no-names and repeats.

The thing with Cheez-Its, you can eat too many, call your Uncle Ralph on the big white telephone, and still pick up another box at Kroger on the way home.

Domesticated animals eat feed. Day after day, the farmer fills the trough with the same oats, the same feed. As we lie in sleep, our sidecars charge, our prostheses: computers, tablets, smartphones. Receptacles for the news feeds, charging to accommodate relentless scrolling throughout the day. Everywhere, silently revving for the coming feeding. What are we eating? Perhaps Henry David Thoreau was correct to write in Walden: “And I am sure that I never read any memorable news in a newspaper. If we read of one man robbed, or murdered, or killed by accident, or one house burned, or one...