The Humming of Bees

by Cath Barton

I ain’t never been in a gambling place before, honest. I’ve walked past that place down the High Street so many times and never even thought about it, I don’t even know its name, but then today I’m hanging out with my friend Shirl and she ups and says we should go there. 

“Okay”, I says, “you go but I ain’t going, ‘cos what’s the point of wasting your money like that”, and she says I’m chicken, and I’m not having none of that from her, so I goes in after her.

And she walks up to this one-armed bandit and starts pushing in the money and heaving on the handle and I just stands there with my mouth open and I was never going to do it, honest, but all of a sudden the money just starts flooding out of the thing and I’m like “What!” and I know I have to do it too.

Untitled Poem

by Thomas Gumbel

1: A Great Upheaval

Three

Small

Words.

It ends tonight.

Repeated over and over,

In fight

Or flight.

When the top of the world

Falls on them…

What will I do?

A brief moment

Of sympathy.

Why cry

When grampa deserves to die?

Stakes in our hearts keeping us asleep,

Following black suit after black suit

To lay him down!

As a sad statue looks on

And I wonder, in the end,

Does a still angel cry on all of us,

Or only those despised enough to be remembered?

Angel. Don’t turn your back on me.

I won’t be ignored.

Bury me…

Carry me… to the end?
…Famous last words.

WhydoIpartakeinprayerbecauseI DON’T…

Want to go to Hell.

But upon further consideration

Of this monster we call “sanctuary”…

I hate everything about it.

In our time of dying, must we give over

To a man in a giant hat

And his sexless patients…?

Or is he the one the Authority should blame?

Newt Gingrich Wants To Put A Colony on the Moon

by Christian Chiakulas


And if your natural response was to laugh at that notion, congratulations, you're still sane.  In a speech given in Florida, Newt spent a lot of time outlining his plans for space colonization.  He said that by 2020, the end of his second term (because, as we all know, Newt is going to win the election and a second term), "...we will have the first permanent base on the moon. And it will be American."  Newt also said that if we can manage to have 13,000 Americans permanently living in said moon colony, then it can apply for statehood, making it the 51st state in our Union.


Let's look at some numbers here.  The least populated state, Wyoming, has about 568,000 people in it.  That's the population of Moontopia (if we have a state on the moon, I will not rest until it's named 'Moontopia') times 43.  I live in the town of River Forest, Illinois, and we have almost 12,000 people.  An entire state barely bigger than my quaint little River Forest, is baffling.  Some other obvious pitfalls of having a state on the moon can be read here.  I don't want to repeat them, so check it out.

Changes

Anyone who's been on here recently might notice we've had a severe lack of updates.  I won't bore anybody with the details of the laziness and interpersonal conflict that have resulted in this dry spot, but I will say that starting Monday, January 30th, it is over.

That's right.  We're back, baby.

There are gonna be a few changes.  First, we'll only be updating 5 days a week instead of the 6 that it was previously.  This is because updating 6 days a week is a lot of work and nobody seems to want to submit anything non-fiction.  That's fine, we expected this, but it means that for now, 5 days a week is where we're at.  If you're interested in becoming a regular contributor of NONfiction, send an email to chriscc@ameritech.net, because we need you.

The new schedule will be as follows:

Monday - Music
Tuesday - Politics/Current Events
Wednesday - Randomness (Could literally be anything we decide to publish)
Thursday - Entertainment
Friday - Fiction

We regret to say that the architecture section has been scrapped as a weekly column.  Producing material weekly on architecture-related topics is difficult, but that does not mean that we'll never post anything about it again.  That's what Wednesdays are for.

In the coming weeks/months, you may also start to see ads pop up on here.  Fuck you, we don't do this for our healths.  No guarantees about anything and nothing has been decided yet, but if we do start hosting ads, it's because maintaining this blog is a lot of work and we wanna make a buck or two for our troubles.

Thanks a lot, and we hope you enjoy our articles.  Go with God.

8 Underrated Bands

by Christian Chiakulas

Every online list of underrated bands is chalk full of random indie-rockers you've never heard of.  Some are good and deserve more recognition, some are awful and a reflection of the writer's poor taste, and some are Pavement.

This list isn't like that.

Actually, just about every band/artist on this list has been commercially successful to some degree.  Some have even been critically lauded, to a point.  Some, however, fell out of our popular consciousness before putting out their best work, others are derided unfairily, and others have fantastic bodies of work hidden behind silly radio singles.  Basically, here are 8 artists that don't get enough credit.  Some are my personal favorites, but I am approaching the writing of this article from an objective point of view.  I'm going to be talking about why these artists are artistically talented, not why I love them.  Maybe, after reading this, you'll consider giving them another look?

The Bloch Addition to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art

by Kevin Sloan

The following essay was written for an intro to architecture class, where students were required to visit the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, and write an essay describing their personal reaction to the structure and the juxtaposition of old and new architecture between the 1933 Nelson Atkins by Wright and Wright, and the 2007 Bloch addition by Steven Holl. 

As you walk north on the south lawn of the Nelson-Atkins museum campus, the Nelson-Atkins building sits in the distance, poised majestically and with great presence and stability over lawn. To the west, just alongside of the 1933, warm buff limestone Nelson-Atkins building is the Bloch addition, which resemble glass boxes covered almost entirely by a frosted glass facade, that run smoothly down the shallowly sloping hill sides of the east campus. The glass of each glass box glisten and twinkle as the sunlight is reflected off the frosted glass facade. These glass boxes in the shallow hill resemble hills themselves. The different roof lines of the buildings resemble the hill crests, and it is as if you are looking out over glass flint hills, as they gently roll into the distance. Though the Bloch addition to the Nelson-Atkins may be made primarily of steel and glass, its form and relation to the setting makes it just as much a part of the natural setting as the shallow hills in which it is built into. As the architect Frank Lloyd Wright once said, “No house should ever be on a hill or on anything. It should be of the hill, belonging to it. Hill and house should live together each the happier for the other.” While the Bloch addition may not be a house, it serves this idea of being true to the environment in which it exists, and does so through its form, rather than materiality.

The Deist's Creed

by Ben Nardolilli

We believe (a royal we believe)
in one God,
the almighty, maker of heaven and earth,
and of all things visible and invisible.
And in
God, before all ages.
(God of God) light of light,
true God of true God, I suppose,
Begotten not made,
by whom all things were made.
Who for us men
never came down from heaven.
In a Jesus, who
was always a man;
was crucified also under Pontius Pilate,
suffered and was buried;
allegedly in the Scriptures.
In the Lord and Giver of life,
who proceeds
together with each father and the son
and wife and daughter too,
away from adoration and glory,
not speaking
to anyone,
We confess, one life,
No remission of sins,
We look forward to the resurrection of secrets,
And our lives in the world, coming,
Amen.