“Greed is good,” Gordon Gekko told us in 1987 (echoing and perhaps parodying Ayn Rand‘s long-running, uber-egoistic economic cant). For all we know, he may be gearing up to deliver us a repackaged version of the same message later this year when Wall Street 2: Money Never Sleeps hits theaters. But regardless of what Gekko’s…
Author: Matt Cardin
Teeming Brain founder and editor Matt Cardin is the author of DARK AWAKENINGS, DIVINATIONS OF THE DEEP, A COURSE IN DEMONIC CREATIVITY: A WRITER'S GUIDE TO THE INNER GENIUS, and TO ROUSE LEVIATHAN. He is also the editor of BORN TO FEAR: INTERVIEWS WITH THOMAS LIGOTTI and the academic encyclopedias MUMMIES AROUND THE WORLD; GHOSTS, SPIRITS, AND PSYCHICS: THE PARANORMAL FROM ALCHEMY TO ZOMBIES; and HORROR LITERATURE THROUGH HISTORY.
What I read in 2009
In 2009 I accomplished something in my life as a reader that I had never before accomplished: I kept a list — I’m talking about a full list — of everything I read. Not just books, but short fiction, poetry, and — in the most gargantuan category of all — articles, essays, and reviews. I…
Interview: The spirituality of George Romero’s zombie movies
I’ve just been interviewed by TheoFantastique, the excellent website devoted to examining the religious resonances of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. In “Spirituality in Romero’s Living Dead Films” (Dec. 3), TheoFantastique’s proprietor, John Morehead, quizzes me about my academic paper “Loathsome Objects: George Romero’s Living Dead Films as Contemplative Tools,” which appears in my forthcoming…
Thomas Ligotti’s horror aesthetic mirrored by — Rob Zombie?
My readers know it’s no secret that I’m compulsively fascinated by the work of literary horror master Thomas Ligotti. As I’ve explained here in the past, I’m also compulsively fascinated by horrorific musical icon and now horror cinema auteur Rob Zombie, for reasons that are more obscure to me. The two fascinations would seem to…
Collapse goes mainstream: MSM attention to new film COLLAPSE is attention-worthy itself
I started reading Mike Ruppert about five years ago. As is true for many other people, the man played a major part in my personal introduction to peak oil theory and its global implications — “global” both literally and metaphorically, not only in terms of PO’s worldwide and cross-national scope and impact but in terms…
Zombies, Digital Media, and Cultural Preservation in the New Dark Age
“How secure is our civilization’s accumulated knowledge?” That’s the question posed in a recent essay by Richard Heinberg, one of the most consistently brilliant, reasonable, and nuanced writers about the ecological and cultural-civilizational ramifications of peak fossil fuels and economic calamity. In “Our evanescent culture and the awesome duty of librarians,” he offers a detailed…
Lovecraft’s Longing – Part Two (final)
My two-part article “Lovecraft’s Longing,” which I wrote for Art Throb, and whose first part I announced in a previous post, is now finished and published. In Part Two I explain how, in the words of the introduction, Lovecraft was “about” more than just the horrors of bodily corruption and cosmic monstrosity that cling so…
MSNBC explains how Goldman Sachs stole billions from U.S. taxpayers with government help
Unbelievable. Not the news that Goldman Sachs used its no-strings-attached government money from Hank Paulson’s bank industry bailout last fall to earn inconceivable amounts of money in a titanically underhanded manner, but the fact that mainstream media heavyweight MSNBC would feature such a raw exposé as this one: The quick version (quicker than watching the…
Lovecraft’s Longing: Article for Art Throb
A few months ago I wrote a post about the launch of Art Throb, a Web-based arts initiative headed by my Salem-based sister that chronicles the creative life of the Massachusetts North Shore. Now I have become one of the writers for this venture. Dinah, my sister, invited me a couple of months ago to…
9/11, writer’s block, and creative rebirth
In a July column for NPR about the enduring meaningfulness of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 for her life and work, Alice Hoffman revealed the following: After 9/11, I experienced serious writer’s block. Like so many, I had lost faith in the future. If our world was so perilous, if buildings could tumble and planes fall…