Archive for December 2025
The criminal inside me … and you, too
by David Benjamin “That’s the difference between crime and business. For business you gotta have capital. Sometimes I think it’s the only difference.” ― Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye MADISON, Wis.—It was 1968, the bloodiest year in what came to be loosely termed the counterculture. I had hitchhiked to Chicago on a lovelorn mission that…
Read MoreMr. Dedrick and the idiot intern
by David Benjamin “College is about exposing students to many things and creating an aphrodisiac atmosphere so that they might fall in lifelong love with a few.” ― David Brooks MADISON, Wis.—The word that comes to mind when I remember Philip Dedrick is “unassuming.” He was a tweedy man with a gray thatch of unruly…
Read MoreThe constipated password
by David Benjamin MADISON, Wis.—Every Christmas season, I suffer an onset of password constipation. To shop for the holidays, I visit websites that I use infrequently, once a year at most. Usually, I’ve been there before. Typically, on my first visit there, I laboriously provided my personal data. Obeying orders, I made up a password…
Read MoreThe ICEmen cometh
by David Benjamin SOMEWHERE in Vermont—Santa Claus’s aide de camp, Olaf the elf, turned to Santa and said, “What’s that noise? Santa had finished his rounds in Canada and was guiding his sleigh toward the farmhouse of the Shaftoe family, in the northernmost reaches of snowy New England. From the pitch darkness came throbbing rumble,…
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