• Nonfiction

    Spot: Man’s Best Friend or Emotionally Exploiting Parasite?

    by Noah Zimmer Throughout the years one of the most beloved animals has been living symbiotically with its human counterpart. Dogs receive food and housing while humans gain love and affection. This bond between man and dog may have originated thousands of years ago, but why? Recent scientific studies propose that man’s best friend abuses the very hardwiring of our brain to survive. The human brain is a fascinating organ. Chemicals it produces do many things, like making us run from a lion or compelling us to nurture a newborn child. These innate actions have helped us survive, but other species have learned to tap into our emotionally frail minds…

  • Nonfiction

    My Forte

    by Crystal Dalison I write the words to stories, and I throw them away. I do this all day. I write them in my head while I walk to work. I write them in the notebook I keep stashed under the till. I write them on the backs of my comped drink receipts, one sentence at a time, and staple them together for the accountant to find the next day, hoping that my short stories will distract him from the number of drinks I gave away the night before. I write because I don’t have a choice. I write because I am always in danger of getting lost in my…

  • Nonfiction

    Rated M for Mature

    by Johanna Kumpula Violence in video games has been a controversial subject for years and many are claiming that this uncensored exposure to violence is causing kids to act out and become aggressive. Games like Grand Theft Auto V are supposedly encouraging kids to take to the streets with weapons and commit theft and assault. Now, as an avid lover of games that are normally considered violent, I find this claim suspiciously lacks a substantial amount of evidence. Blaming an object or fictional portrayal for an act of brutality is misguided, especially when there are always other factors to consider. Take the Sandy Hook shooting. Twenty students and six teachers…

  • Nonfiction

    Not So Saintly Nick

    by Elin Johnson Every year on the star filled evening of December 24th, our global community is united in our violation. We are assaulted in the most conniving of ways as our homes lose their sanctity and our very morals are shaken. Good Ol’ Saint Nicholas enters our dwellings and corrupts the minds of our children. His very occupation is appalling. He contravenes the work ethic we try so hard to drill into the minds of our youth and disrespects the beliefs we have established in our society. Our very relationship with the legendary man in red is perplexing. Every day of the year we shield ourselves from the outside…

  • Nonfiction

    Exchanged

    by Elin Johnson One thought that resonates with me is,“life begins at the edge of your comfort zone.” This is often quoted by English teachers coercing groaning freshman into public speaking, or precedes the enigmatic string of numbers stowed away inside of stale fortune cookies. For me it has always been a mantra. One to convince myself that whatever half-baked idea I was pursuing in order to impress a cousin was worthwhile, and would, in the best-case-scenario, result in the loss of dignity instead of limbs. Growing up, I was described by most of my early elementary school teachers as “free spirited” and a “joy to have in class.” That…

  • Nonfiction

    Beware the Ramen

    by Sarah Edwards I was the innocent age of seven, and my life was still a simple one, but I was headed towards a traumatizing night that would leave its mark on me forever. It started with dinner. I had a T.V. stand right in front of the couch, waiting for food to be set upon it. I was fixated on the screen displaying colorful shows before my sisters and me when the soup came – it was ramen. I was fond of it then, and somehow I still am today. My mother held it out to me, warning me that it was hot, but I was a foolish child.…

  • Fiction

    In Dreams They Walked

    by L. J. P. T. Krallek Tsura blinked in the searing light, and looked about. For a moment, the light was too bright and the whole world seemed white and burning. She felt neither heat nor cold, and slowly, she opened her eyes again. As the light subsided, she begin to make out the shape of the land around her. She swayed a moment, her knees giving slightly, as she realized she was standing in the midst of an ancient forest, her thin skirts brushing against small drifts of snow. Fir trees towered far above her head, glistening in frost and bearing great armfuls of snow on their needled boughs.…

  • Fiction

    Missing in Action – Part 1

    by Sarah Cooley It was six in the morning and Adrian was getting up for the day. She didn’t want to get up, but there were credits to make and they never had enough of those in the first place, so up she got. The sky outside her small window was overcast and dark. In an hour or so it would start tinging purple as the sun came up. The weather had been worse than usual for weeks now, mirroring the insidious gloom hanging over her and her friends, as of late. She pulled the shutters down. While quickly going through the motions of getting dressed—pants, shirt, comb through the…