Echoes That Fade

Today's Nerve features an excellent little essay written by Chuck Palahniuk. A taste:

Stories are how human beings digest their lives: by making events into something we can repeat and control, telling them until they're exhausted. Until they no longer get a laugh or gasp or teary eye. Until we can absorb, assimilate even those worst events. Our culture, it digests events by making lesser and lesser versions of the original. After a ship sinks or a bomb explodes — the Original Tragedy — then we have the news version, the television movie version, the talk radio versions, the blog versions, the video game, the Franklin Mint Commemorative Plate versions, the McDonalds Happy Meal version, the one-liner reference on The Simpsons. Echoes that fade.