A couple of months ago I began catching wind of a new documentary film titled What a Way to Go: Life at the End of Empire. It sounded intriguing so I started reading pretty much everything I could find about it on the Internet. At this point, having informed myself as much as I can…
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 kind of teacher should I be?
For most of this week I’ll be tied up with professional development training at my job. To tide over my high school classes during the interim (and to help prevent a nervous breakdown on the part of the substitute teacher), I came up with an assignment that should take awhile for my students to complete….
School Meets the Matrix
Not much original content to post today. As the school year enters its terminal phase, I’m engulfed in that ominous fourth-quarter weariness that translates into a creeping internal silence. It’s a great time to listen to Current93 and read Ligotti, Cioran, Amiel, Lovecraft, Robert Frost, and other prophets of the void. It’s also a great…
Education vs. student anti-intellectualism
My recent post about Anna Nicole Smith continues to draw lots of traffic. A couple of days ago it finally drew what I had been expecting: a criticism. A commenter to my blog chose to remain anonymous and wrote in place of a user name, “You’re a pitiful teacher.” Then he/she left a very critical…
The Greeks and their daimones
This week I thought I’d share another excerpt from my essay “The Angel and the Demon,” which was published recently in the two-volume reference work Icons of Horror and the Supernatural: An Encyclopedia of Our Worst Fears (Greenwood Press, 2006), edited by S.T. Joshi. Regular readers of The Teeming Brain will recall that I’ve already…
Anna Nicole Smith Is the Fourth Horseman
The only daily newspaper that originates from my part of the world is The News-Leader, which is located in Springfield, Missouri. It blankets southwest Missouri and part of Arkansas. Last Tuesday, February 13th, editorial page editor Tony Messenger posted a brief observation at his blog, “Ozarks Messenger,” titled “A sign of the apocalypse…” It read…
Planet of the Dead, or Is dehumanization so bad?
One of the most nightmarish things about a dark age is the degradation that it entails for life’s overall tone, not least in the dehumanization that occurs when a people’s intellectual, emotional, moral, spiritual, political, social, and cultural life in general is reduced to a ghastly level of brutishness and ignorance. As is now plainly…
So just what the hell is post-modernism?
Background: Last week somebody posts a famous quip from Oscar Wilde at a popular message board: “In the old days books were written by men of letters and read by the public. Nowadays books are written by the public and read by nobody.” This leads to a conversation about what the quote means and whether…
R.I.P. Robert Anton Wilson and Douglas Harding, 1/11/07
I was rather stunned to receive the news today that two of my most cherished philosophical and spiritual influences have just died. Robert Anton Wilson (1932-2007) was an American author, philosopher, wiseguy, and all-around mega-genius who co-wrote, along with Robert Shea, the legendary Illuminatus! trilogy that became an instant counterculture classic when it was published…
The scholar as poet, and vice versa
Here’s wishing a happy 2007 to whoever’s reading this. The holiday break is now over and I’m back in my classroom, typing these words on my lunch hour. In the past I’ve been seriously and dramatically demotivated about the imminent resumption of my teaching duties after a brief break, but none of them compares to…