The Teeming Brain

Weeping angel

It’s been a long road punctuated by sometimes dramatic life events. I feel a soft rush of nostalgia when I recall my initial excitement at the prospect of co-editing this anthology. I experience a kind of numinous awe when I contemplate the fact of time’s passage and the way this project has intersected and defined a major portion of the last two years (well, 22 months) of my life. I suffer a pang of guilt when I recall how thoroughly I devoted my precious few moments of “free time” to burying myself in the story submissions over a period of months, effectively removing myself for a time from the life of my family. And I’m saddened when I once again look over the truly awesome table of contents in awareness that the book will remain forever unrealized in concrete reality, like a Platonic Form or a perpetually unincarnate spirit (although we must always hold out the possibility that reality will prove different from what we expect; perhaps the door remains slightly ajar; read on.)

But, as they say, them’s the breaks. Holy Horrors is dead. Long live Holy Horrors. My co-editor, the inestimable T.M. Wright, made the announcement yesterday at the Shocklines Message Boards, as was only fitting since the project was born there in 2006 from a wonderful suggestion proffered by Randy Chandler. Below is T.M.’s announcement, followed by my own contribution/coda.

Although T.M.’s and my comments below contain an apology to all of the antho’s authors, I’ll reinforce it ahead of time by making it impossible to miss: GREAT APOLOGIES and MASSIVE THANKS to all of you who submitted stories to this project, with an especially massive dose being aimed at those who received our acceptance notices and then sat back to wonder and wait for far too long. Terry and I both hope you’ll end up selling those fine stories to high-paying publications where they’ll get the recognition and readership they deserve. Either that, or we hope an act of God will somehow resurrect the project from its present status of dead-but-dreaming.

I’m suddenly and unaccountably reminded of the kung fu Catholic priest in Peter Jackson’s Brain Dead/Dead Alive, with his deliriously wonderful delivery of the line, “Stay back, boy! This calls for divine intervention!” (Followed by the all-time classic, “I kick ass for the Lord!”) Of course, he ended up being defeated by the zombies and becoming a zombie himself.

Let’s hope a finer fate, even if only that of being a fond memory, awaits Holy Horrors.

* * * * *

TO: The Shocklines Message Boards (and all Holy Horrors authors)

FROM: T.M. Wright

DATE: July 8, 2008

SUBJECT: Holy Horrors obituary

I’ve been putting off this announcement for some time, hoping that we’d find a publisher, at last, for the really great anthology, HOLY HORRORS, which Matt Cardin and I spent no small amount of time putting together. But I can’t put off the very regrettable announcement any longer: despite our best efforts, the anthology — at least at this point — looks like it’s not going to see print. A couple of publishers referred, in their rejections, to the state of the economy, while congratulating us on putting together a wonderful anthology. It’s 140,000 words by some of the biggest names and brightest new stars in the horror business, and, again, at the moment, it has no home.

My very large apologies to all the writers who sent stories: for those whose stories I accepted, I’m going to try and secure funding to make that half-upon-acceptance payment that’s so long overdue. And, to all those writers whose stories I accepted, you are, of course, free to submit your stories elsewhere.

All of the blame for this failure falls on my shoulders: I should have had a publisher committed to the anthology BEFORE I solicited stories. Should I try to put together another anthology, I won’t make that mistake again.

Matt Cardin deserves many, many kudos for his efforts on the anthology. He has one very keen editorial eye and he certainly knows the horror business as well as anyone. I will say again, this was MY failure, not Matt’s. To large measure, the anthology itself — published or unpublished — is Matt’s great success!

So this is Holy Horrors’ obituary. Perhaps it will rise from its grave. That would be fitting. I certainly hope that, through more hard work or just plain luck, it happens.

Thanks for listening.

T.M. Wright

* * * * *

FOLLOW-UP FROM MATT CARDIN
Here’s my own heartfelt apology to all the authors we snared and then inadvertently kept waiting for a non-event. Oh, how I really, truly hate that. Especially since HOLY HORRORS turned out to be one hell of an anthology. Only a few short weeks ago at Mo*Con III, I was expressing lingering hope that things would turn out differently. As Terry says above, it is of course possible that the universe will conspire in unforeseen ways to manifest the antho. But at present, all things considered, it’s time to say goodnight.

Don’t let Terry fool you by shouldering all of the blame and heaping such praise on me (regarding which, thank you for the kind words, Terry). I, too, devoted effort to trawling the publishing pool, and I, too, came up empty. So responsibility for this failure to launch is mine as well.

For the record and in case anybody’s wondering, Terry is one swell guy to work with. Smart, sensitive, creative, and warm.

My three semesters of college Latin are vestigial at this point, but I’ll risk it anyway (and probably get it wrong):

Requiescat in Pace, Atrocitates Sancti. September 2006-July 2008.

I have been using the summer break to revise and edit the stories and academic papers that will appear later this year in my next book, the horror-and-religion themed Dark Awakenings. One particularly interesting and oddly gratifying item in this process has been for me to see my short story “Teeth” expand into something that’s much deeper and more fully realized on the prose end.

“Teeth” was originally published in the 2002 Del Rey anthology The Children of Cthulhu, after which it went on to become a semi-finalist for the 2002 Bram Stoker Award in the long fiction category. So it was very well received. I wrote the first version in 1995 and then revised it extensively in 1998. It was that 1998 revision that ended up in The Children of Cthulhu (which, incidentally, marked my first print publication).

In the years since then, my prose style has gained in depth and expression, and whenever I have looked back at that story I have found it somewhat sketchy and lacking in lushness. It’s a highly philosophical and darkly emotional tale, and I have felt that the prose of the published version doesn’t quite live up to the scope and intensity of the concepts and the narrative itself.

But when I sat down a couple of weeks ago to tackle the long-awaited task of remedying this deficiency, I didn’t expect the story to come back to life in my hands the way it has done. Presently it’s like I’m reliving the experience of writing the thing the first time around. The concepts have become exciting to me again. The new prose has been coming out in a satisfying way. Presently I’m only halfway through the revision and the story has already expanded its length by 20 percent.

So I hope my readers who enjoyed the original version will enjoy this new one — “Teeth” on steroids — that will appear in Dark Awakenings.

Apparently, I talk like Lovecraft. That is to say, I use big words and sound like a walking, talking book. This is according to the longtime reports of my family, friends, coworkers, and the several hundred high school students I have taught since 2001. But it’s the comments to this effect arising out of my recent convention appearance as a guest of Mo*Con III that have really driven the point home for me. (BTW, that’s me in Maurice’s garage with fellow Mo*Conners at left above. At right is HPL himself.)

At Mo*Con I moderated and participated in a panel discussion about spirituality and horror fiction. The other panelists were Nick Mamatas, Bob Freeman, Maurice Broaddus, Mark Rainey, Kim Paffenroth, and — as an impromptu but wholly desirable addition — Gary Braunbeck. When it came my turn to describe my personal lifelong spiritual journey and the way it has played into my career as a horror writer and scholar, I described my beginnings in the Christian Church denomination and then subsequent odyssey through a plethora of writers, mentors, and attachments to various religious and spiritual traditions, including Alan Watts and Zen Buddhism, Christian mysticism, Vedantic Hinduism, classical Western-style skepticism and agnosticism, Robert Anton Wilson-inspired reality tunnel switching, and more. Apparently, I used a lot of big words. Just ask Maurice, who hosted the convention at his church, Indianapolis’s The Dwelling Place, and who in his con report and his description of the spirituality panel referred to me as somebody “who uses a lot of big words first thing in the morning.” (Of course, this impression may have been enhanced by the fact that many panelists and attendees were still recovering from the previous night’s late-ranging party party and vigorous Celtic music performance by the band Mother Grove.)

(Incidentally, you can listen to the spirituality panel yourself, if you want, since the first part of it has apparently been made available by P.I.D. Radio as a podcast that I haven’t yet had time to listen to. I don’t know if my portion appears there.)

The impression of my big-wordedness arising from that morning spirituality panel gained in scope and gravity as the day progressed into night. We all went to Maurice’s house for food, drink, and conviviality. I ended up spending most of the evening seated in lawn chairs in Maurice’s front yard with a half-dozen fellow writers and convention goers, engaged in a free-wheeling conversation that progressed from horror and SF movies (especially the classic Japanese monster movies) to horror and SF television to horror and SF fiction to religion and spirituality (especially issues of fundamentalist-literalist Christianity as contrasted with more expansive and tolerant approaches) to personal literary inspirations. During the religion phase of the conversation, I was twice told that I expressed my thoughts, impressions, and positions with especial eloquence.

Then came Sunday, when as we were all saying our goodbyes in preparation for departing for home I was approached by two people who told me in specific reference to the way I spoke on both the spirituality panel and the editor’s panel that I am amazingly smart and super-intellectual.

Then came the debacle of the canceled Sunday flight that left Nick Mamatas and me stranded in Indianapolis and crashing at Maurice’s house for what turned into Mo*Con III.2. In a blog post from two days ago titled, amusingly (or disturbingly), “Mo*Con III.2: God Hates Matt, but Jesus Loves Kelli,” Maurice wrote, “Let me tell you, nothing will make you feel dumber than being between Nick Mamatas and Matt Cardin while they are going at it about the subjectivity of how we experience reality. Those were probably the last words I understood.”

Okay, I give. My wife and son have told me for years, “You like to hear yourself talk,” by which they mean I wax excessively wordy whenever I tell stories or talk about ideas. My high school students have said that I sometimes talk over their heads, even as they have expressed amazement and fascination at the way I sound more intellectual than anybody else they’ve ever heard. Now my fellow writers and surfers of ideas are saying the same thing. The jig is up. I am a hopelessly big-worded, hyper-intellectual geek who uses two dollar terms when 10-cent ones would work just as well.

Or actually, I think I use exactly the words I mean. Without an ounce of pomposity or pretentiousness or egotism, just as a statement of innocent fact, I can say that speaking the way that I do is entirely natural to me. My native idiom in daily conversation is apparently something that sounds hyper-intellectual to a lot of people. As a writer who is innately passionate about philosophies, worldviews, and ideas, I have absorbed this pattern not only of thinking, but of speaking. I crave exact accuracy of verbal expression. Fortunately or not, this means I use words that are big and/or heavy-sounding by conventional conversational standards. I guess I’m somewhat like the 18th century Americans described by Neil Postman in Amusing Ourselves to Death. Postman recounts how European visitors reported that the majority of these Americans, not just the overt intellectuals but the everyday people, were astonishingly bookish and inclined to speak in conversational patterns shaped by this fact. In short, these observers said, Americans at that time didn’t hold conversations, they gave speeches.

Ah, well, I guess I’m in good company. After all, I’m a lifelong devotee of H.P. Lovecraft, and who can forget Lovecraft’s famous intellectual mode of speech? Friends and biographers have said that he spoke like a book. Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea illustrated this quality in their unforgettable and hugely amusing portrayal of Lovecraft in the Illuminatus! trilogy, where HPL appears as a character and speaks like the Encyclopedia Britannica. Ray Bradbury had the protagonist of his classic short story “Pillar of Fire” visit a library in an imagination-deprived, futuristic anti-utopia and ask about, among other things, the literary fate of “fine, big-worded Lovecraft.”

So forthwith, beginning immediately, I shall eschew all unnecessary agonizings over my undeniably verbose mode of discourse and shall freely employ such elephantine terminologies as arise naturally to suit the given conversational contingencies.

Or something like that.

The Rising Risk of a Systemic Financial Meltdown: The Twelve Steps to Financial Disaster

Nouriel Roubini’s Global EconoMonitor, Feb. 5

[Cardin comments: Read this one very carefully, bearing in mind that Roubini's grim outlook on the American economy is now being embraced by many of the very same economists who formerly dismissed him. Case in point: At Davos last year he was an outsider for his views but this year he was vindicated, as explained in, among other places, a Wall Street Journal blog post from a couple of weeks ago:

"Last year, Nouriel Roubini was the lone pessimist on Davos’ five-person opening economics panel. His colleagues predicted the world economy would continue to grow strongly without overheating, a rosy scenario economists dubbed 'Goldilocks.' Mr. Roubini, chairman of Roubini Global Economics and a New York University economics professor, demurred. 'Goldilocks is threatened by three ugly bears,' he said, predicting a subprime meltdown, an end to cheap credit and rising oil prices would bring U.S. consumer spending to a halt. At the time, Mr. Roubini’s 'ugly bears' provoked more laughter than concern. But Goldilocks has already met two of those bears and signs are mounting that the third — in the form of a sharp falloff in U.S. consumer spending — could show up soon."

What follows is just the introduction to Roubini's "twelve steps to financial disaster." The rest is behind a paywall at his site. But if you're a savvy Internet searcher you just might find it available elsewhere. In any case, the introduction alone makes for riveting reading.]

Why did the Fed ease the Fed Funds rate by a whopping 125bps in eight days this past January? It is true that most macro indicators are heading south and suggesting a deep and severe recession that has already started. But the flow of bad macro news in mid-January did not justify, by itself, such a radical inter-meeting emergency Fed action followed by another cut at the formal FOMC meeting.

To understand the Fed actions one has to realize that there is now a rising probability of a “catastrophic” financial and economic outcome, i.e. a vicious circle where a deep recession makes the financial losses more severe and where, in turn, large and growing financial losses and a financial meltdown make the recession even more severe. The Fed is seriously worried about this vicious circle and about the risks of a systemic financial meltdown.

That is the reason the Fed had thrown all caution to the wind — after a year in which it was behind the curve and underplaying the economic and financial risks — and has taken a very aggressive approach to risk management; this is a much more aggressive approach than the Greenspan one in spite of the initial views that the Bernanke Fed would be more cautious than Greenspan in reacting to economic and financial vulnerabilities.

To understand the risks that the financial system is facing today I present the “nightmare” or “catastrophic” scenario that the Fed and financial officials around the world are now worried about. Such a scenario — however extreme — has a rising and significant probability of occurring. Thus, it does not describe a very low probability event but rather an outcome that is quite possible.

Start first with the recession that is now enveloping the US economy. Let us assume as likely that this recession — that already started in December 2007 — will be worse than the mild ones that lasted 8 months that occurred in 1990-91 and 2001. The recession of 2008 will be more severe for several reasons: first, we have the biggest housing bust in US history with home prices likely to eventually fall 20 to 30%; second, because of a credit bubble that went beyond mortgages and because of reckless financial innovation and securitization the ongoing credit bust will lead to a severe credit crunch; third, US households — whose consumption is over 70% of GDP —have spent well beyond their means for years now piling up a massive amount of debt, both mortgage and otherwise; now that home prices are falling and a severe credit crunch is emerging the retrenchment of private consumption will be serious and protracted. So let us suppose that the recession of 2008 will last at least four quarters and, possibly, up to six quarters. What will be the consequences of it?

Here are the twelve steps or stages of a scenario of systemic financial meltdown associated with this severe economic recession. . .

* * * * *

FDIC gearing up for large bank failures

MarketWatch, Feb. 4

[Cardin comments: This article builds on something I talked about in last Sunday's "Headlines from the meltdown" post (2/3/08). In that one I mentioned a recent item posted to the FDIC's Website about an overhaul of their rules for processing depositor benefits in the event of bank failures. I also highlighted my ignorance by stressing that I don't know enough about these things to know if this should be cause for alarm. Now this article from MarketWatch, the most popular mainstream financial news and information site, answers that question. And the answer is yes, prepare for impact, and not just psychologically but practically by double-checking that your bank deposits conform to FDIC insurance limits. It is of course encouraging to know that the FDIC is taking steps in advance of an expected crisis, and that they are actively seeking to improve their ability to handle large-scale problems in a changed banking environment. But that encouragement is tempered by this confirmation that they are, in fact, expecting a crisis.]

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is gearing up for the prospect of a large bank failures. So double-check that all your deposits, including interest, are well within FDIC insurance limits.

….If you have uninsured deposits at a bank, should you worry? Possibly. Depositors without FDIC coverage lost money in at least two recent failures — NetBank, Alpharetta, Ga., and Miami Valley Bank, Lakeview, Ohio.

….Weren’t you reassured about our deposit-insurance system with the bailouts of three colossal banks in the past — Continental Illinois, First Republic and Bank of New England? Each large bank approached an eye-popping $40 billion in assets. Today, however, a bank of that size would not rank in the top 40, FDIC chairman Sheila Bair warned in a speech last year.

FDIC data indicate that as of Sept. 30, there were 65 institutions with assets of $18.5 billion on its list of “problem” institutions. [FDIC spokesman David] Barr would not elaborate on their sizes. Nor will the FDIC name the institutions.

* * * * *

The Fed’s main task now is to prevent financial meltdown by saving the banks

The Christian Science Monitor, Feb. 1

In moving with unusual speed to cut interest rates, officials at the Federal Reserve are aiming to prevent a nationwide recession, but they’re also doing something more targeted: throwing a lifeline directly to the beleaguered banking industry.

…[T]he central bank is moving to stimulate growth. But it is also trying to forestall a possible bank meltdown that would worsen the situation.

“This is more about Wall Street than Main Street,” says Ken Goldstein, an economist at the Conference Board, a business-sponsored research group in New York. “We’ve got the monetary strategy we’ve got because financial markets are nervous.”

* * * * *

Banks shutting down HELOCs to defend against soaring borrower defaults

Fortune, Feb. 4

One of the last sources of ready cash for homeowners looking to get money from their house appears to be shutting down and the results aren’t likely to be pretty for the economy.

….[I]t looks like a lot of ready cash is getting taken away from homeowners, at least in California. Coupled with rising unemployment, this could pose a major headache for already strapped homeowners.

To head off more defaults, Countywide sent out letters to 122,000 homeowners last week informing them that their home equity credit lines were shut down since their estimated home values had dropped below their loan amounts.

Right behind Countrywide was Chase Home Lending, which notified borrowers in Los Angeles, Imperial and Orange Counties that they could tap their credit lines for no more than 70% of the value of their house. Previously, the limit had been 90%.

….If tightening lending standards are put rapidly into place for home equity loans, it is not inconceivable that $50 billion or more of spending power is instantly removed from the economy. In other words, at least one-third of the recently passed $150 billion stimulus package is already canceled out.

* * * * *

Retailers bracing for worst January report on record

MarketWatch, Feb. 4

With consumers worried about their wallets, retailers may be about to report the industry’s worst January sales numbers on record.

U.S. chain-store sales in January are expected to be flat and even decline from a year earlier, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers.

By either measure, that would be the worst reading, unadjusted for inflation, since 1969 when ICSC began to compile the data, according to ICSC’s chief economist, Michael Niemira said.

….”It’s an economic blizzard that seemed to be weakening demand,” Niemira said. “The story of recession seemed to be in every daily newspaper. It just starts to increase the worry level. As the uncertainty got worse, the consumers’ unwillingness to spend seemed to get worse.”

* * * * *

Mortgage insider says new and worse problems are about to explode all over the place

Herb Greenberg’s MarketBlog, MarketWatch, Dec. 6, 2007

[Cardin comments: I urge you to follow the link after reading the excerpt below, so that you can read the piece in its entirety. It was published two months ago. That means we're right now at the point where things are about to get very, very bad. Watch for blatant denial, doublespeak, partisan solutions, and other manglings of the truth from pundits and, especially, politicians of all stripes. The fact that this is all happening during a U.S. presidential election year, when the engines of propaganda always churn most frantically and fatuously, is almost unbelievably...what's the word I'm looking for? Unfortunate? Fascinating? Fortuitous? Synchronicitous? Poetic? Symbolic?All of the above.]

Even before this mortgage mess started, one person who kept emailing me over and over saying that this is going to get real bad. He kept saying this was beyond sub-prime, beyond low FICO scores, beyond Alt-A and beyond the imagination of most pundits, politicians and the press. When I asked him why somebody from inside the industry would be so emphatically sounding the siren, he said, “Someobody’s got to warn people.”

Since then, I’ve kept up an active dialog with Mark Hanson, a 20-year veteran of the mortgage industry, who has spent most of his career in the wholesale and correspondent residential arena — primarily on the West Coast. He lives in the Bay Area. So far he has been pretty much on target as the situation has unfolded. I should point out that, based on his knowledge of the industry, he has been short a number of mortgage-related stocks.

His current thoughts, which I urge you to read:

The Government and the market are trying to boil this down to a ’sub-prime’ thing, especially with all constant talk of ‘resets’. But sub-prime loans were only a small piece of the mortgage mess. And sub-prime loans are not the only ones with resets. What we are experiencing should be called ‘The Mortgage Meltdown’ because many different exotic loan types are imploding currently belonging to what lenders considered ‘qualified’ or ‘prime’ borrowers. This will continue to worsen over the next few of years. When ‘prime’ loans begin to explode to a degree large enough to catch national attention, the ratings agencies will jump on board and we will have ‘Round 2′. It is not that far away.

….The ‘Pay-Option ARM implosion’ will carry on for a couple of years. In my opinion, this implosion will dwarf the ’sub-prime implosion’ because it cuts across all borrower types and all home values.

….So, in a nutshell we have 90% fewer qualified buyers for five-times the number of homes. To get housing moving again in Northern California, either all the exotic programs must come back, everyone must get a 100% raise or home prices have to fall 50%. None, except the last sound remotely possible.

What I am telling you is not speculation. I sold BILLIONs of these very loans over the past five years. I saw the borrowers we considered ‘prime’. I always wondered ‘what WILL happen when these things adjust is [sic; he means "if"] values don’t go up 10% per year’.

* * * * *

Cities fight glut of vacant houses from foreclosures and walkaways

Reuters, Feb. 5

Rust Belt cities, already beaten down by a miserable economy before foreclosures began spiraling nationally, are moving to cut the number of houses left vacant when the mortgage can’t be paid. At stake are valuable tax dollars and the survival of neighborhoods.

County treasurers and mayors are filing lawsuits and developing land banks to buy distressed properties and either demolish them or repair and sell them. Buffalo, N.Y., brings property owners and lenders together in court on monthly “Bank Days” to find solutions for cleaning up vacant homes.

….Vacant houses [in Cleveland], some stripped bare of aluminum siding, dot the streets, casting a gloom on their well-maintained neighbors.”It scares people,” said Joyce Porozynski, a block watch member who has lived in the neighborhood most of her life. “Many people have given up.”

* * * * *

Millions of middle class American families on the verge of economic collapse

PBS: NOW, week of 2/1/08

[Cardin comments: The link above and information below come from the most recent broadcast of the PBS investigative newsmagazine NOW, which airs on Friday nights, at least on my local PBS station. I watched this edition, as I watch most of them, and found that the information it presented fell right in line with and illuminated much of what I've been reading and chronicling here at The Teeming Brain. Not incidentally, if you're not a watcher of NOW, and also of its quasi-companion program on PBS, Bill Moyers Journal (regarding which, see below for a link to a recent program about middle class economic anxiety), then you're missing what is hands-down the best progressive journalism on American broadcast television.

Note that at the NOW Website you can watch or listen to this and all other editions of the show in podcast or streaming video form.]

Are politicians listening to middle-class families on the edge of economic collapse?

Leading up to the Super Tuesday primaries, polls indicate that the economy ranks as the number one issue on the minds of Americans, beating out immigration, global warming, even terrorism. NOW on PBS heads to America’s heartland — Illinois — to investigate rampant anxiety among America’s middle class. How did families on the edge of financial collapse get to this point, and which presidential candidate do they think can restore economic hope and stability?

* * * * *

Middle class economic anxiety heating up

Bill Moyers Journal, Jan. 25

[Bill Moyers interviewed Princeton sociologist Katherine Newman on the January 25th edition of his PBS program. Below are excerpts.]

BILL MOYERS: What do you make of all this bad news [about the economy]?

KATHERINE NEWMAN: Well, it’s a bad news situation out there for millions of Americans who are really going to worry about their futures and their children’s futures. I think the world’s looking like a shakier place, and the country’s looking like it’s not in control of its destiny in ways that people had hoped would be true. And I think they’ll be pleased to hear that Congress and the president have found some way to cooperate with one another. But I think a lot of people will be left out and left in the cold, especially in — in places like the Midwest.

….KATHERINE NEWMAN: There’s some really unusual features to this downturn. One is that poverty remained high. The other is that the long term unemployed are a larger proportion of the people who are unemployed, than they were before.

BILL MOYERS: And aren’t more of them college graduates? That’s a new factor, isn’t it?

KATHERINE NEWMAN: That is something that I find very worrying. So if we think of education as protective of the individual out in the labor market, which it is, of course– if you are college educated, you ‘re better off than someone who isn’t. But the proportion of long term unemployed who college graduates has jumped up. So it’s not as protective as it once was. It’s lasting longer, it’s lasting longer into the business cycle, long term unemployment. And that is a real worry. Because the longer you stay out of work, the harder it is to find another job, the more devastating the consequences for your family. And that, I think, is a real worry for all of us.

…. KATHERINE NEWMAN: The American people have never been fond of the idea that someone else needs to rescue them. They want a chance. They don’t need a guarantee. They want a chance. But if the see the chance start to slip through their hands, if they see that the next generation won’t have the kind of credentials it needs because they can’t go to college, or if they’re heavily burdened by debt when they finish college, their ability to compete will be impeded. And so, what most of us want to see is that we have the tools. Just give us the tool, or give us the opportunity to gain the tools for ourselves, and we will try and take care of the rest. But absent those tools and absent the kind of security that we need to hold on to the assets we have, when we feel like we’re falling in an elevator that’s got no back stop to it, and that, I think, will be very frightening.

* * * * *

The ugly truth: Post-Reagan capitalism has made most Americans poorer and nobody knows what to do about it

The Daily Reckoning, Feb. 4

The biggest stories are always the ones that go unreported. They are missed because they are too hard to understand or too ugly to look in the face.

….[After the global turn toward politics and political solutions in most of the 20th century] the world turned again — towards money . . . . “Government is not the answer,” said Ronald Reagan. What, then? Money. The real solutions to the world’s problems were thought to be financial solutions . . . . Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher led the way, speaking of ‘market solutions’ and of how the free enterprise system could make people rich…and how entrepreneurs could be unleashed to create wealth for everyone.

….Reagan’s capitalism was a failure. Cometh now the nasty facts. We’ve been talking about them here in The Daily Reckoning for the last eight years. Everyone knows them. But they are so disagreeable and so at odds with everything we have come to believe, they are ignored.

[During the uber-capitalistic Reagan and post-Soviet years] Americans should have gotten richer, faster, than at any time in history. They were the world leaders in capitalism, technology, innovation, financial sophistication, education and market efficiency. But in practice, the average man in America got poorer. According to figures sited by Robert Reich, a former U.S. Secretary of Labor who ought to know, the average man today earns 12% less per hour worked than he did in the early ’70s, a fact disguised by longer working hours, more spouses on the job, and debt.

And now word is getting out that the boom of the last five years was a fraud. “Boom was a bust for ordinary people,” says a Washington Post story. The common man didn’t get ahead in the boom; he fell behind.

….How could it be? How is it possible that in the greatest explosion of economic activity in human history, the economic front-runners were left out?

The candidates for America’s highest office don’t know what to say. They promise to “bring back the American dream” but have no idea what happened to it . . . or what made it possible in the first place. The Democrats propose higher taxes on “the rich” and more regulations on Wall Street. The Republicans propose more giveaways . . . higher spending . . . and hint vaguely that, when it comes to money, they know what they are doing.

But no one really knows anything.

Looking back over my previous month’s postings, I find that, well, there aren’t any. Yes, I really did go the entire month of November without uploading any new posts.

I ‘d like to resuscitate The Teeming Brain with a series of posts that will provide updates on a few things. Topics will include writing and publishing news re: me, news about my musical project Daemonyx, news about the Holy Horrors anthology, thoughts and links regarding the economic tsunami that’s set to sweep through America (and probably a few other nations) beginning soon after the holidays, thoughts and links about the rapidly escalating and now undeniable reality of peak oil, and a few religion-and-philosophy related items.

For now, starting at the top of my list, here’s some writing and publishing news. I’ve recently had a couple of nonfiction pieces published. They are:

• My literary-critical essay “The Master’s Eyes Shining with Secrets: H.P. Lovecraft’s Influence on Thomas Ligotti,” in Lovecraft Annual No. 1 (October 2007), edited by S.T. Joshi. This long and detailed piece represents my definitive statement about the relationship between two of the towering authors and persons in my literary-intellectual-emotional-philosophical-spiritual-artistic life. As I recall, I posted an excerpt or two at this blog in the past. I’m proud to see the piece published alongside additional scholarly work by the likes of Darrell Schweitzer and John Langan.
• My review of Richard Gavin’s fine short horror fiction collection Omens in the second issue of the new review journal Dead Reckonings — which, like Lovecraft Annual, is edited by the formidable S.T. Joshi (in association with the also-formidable co-editor Jack Haringa).

As for my forthcoming fiction and nonfiction collection, Dark Awakenings, it’s still on the drawing board. I’m wanting and needing to give the whole thing a once-over and perform some stylistic revisions, but the time and energy elude me. I suspect there will be more to say about it in the relatively near future.

At long last, T.M. Wright and I are able to able to announce the table of contents for the Holy Horrors anthology that we began editing a year ago this month. We received more than 600 submissions. The final TOC contains 40 stories by 40 separate authors. Many of the rejections were agonizing to make. The quality bar was set very high right from the start, simply by the nature of the submissions we received. So here’s a massive thanks to all the authors who sent us a story for what has turned out to be a massive anthology (which may well be issued in two volumes; only time will tell). Life-permitting, T.M. and I will each be contributing an original story as well, although this is not a sure thing on either count given current life situations and conditions of busyness for both of us.

We’re still deciding on a publisher. I’ll give updates as they become available.

Note that the number appearing after most titles indicates approximate word count (this was a record-keeping device for my co-editor and me).

HOLY HORRORS: The Table of Contents

1. “Intentions” by William Freedman. 7800
2. “Saviour” by Gary A. Braunbeck. 6200
3. “The Sect of the Idiot” by Thomas Ligotti. Reprint
4. “The Dead Must Die” by Ramsey Campbell. Reprint
5. “The Editor” by Pamela K. Taylor. 1300
6. “Hate the Sinner, Love the Sin” by Brian Hodge. 10,000
7. “Darshan” by William Eakin. 3900
8. “At the Feet of the Forest Primeval” by Randy Chandler. 6000
9. “Vom-Beist” by Mike Norris. 4100
10. “Porta Nigra” by Darren Speegle. 3600. Reprint
11. “Purifying Vows” by Kim Paffenroth. 5000
12. “Magog” by Craig Holt. 9300
13. “The Hands of God” by Michael McBride. 4500
14. “Sanctuary” by Jim Rockhill. 330
15. “Redemption” by David Niall Wilson. 5500
16. “Thunder of the Captains, and the Shouting” by Tom Piccirilli. 5500. Reprint
17. “The Dreams of Cardinal Vittorini” by Reggie Oliver. 7300. Reprint
18. “The germ of his ideas” by Jose Lacey. 6400
19. “Abandon” by Adam Browne. 7200
20. “Bavel II” by Jens Rushing. 5500
21. “A Prayer for Captain La Hire” by Patrice E. Sarath. 6900. Reprint
22. “Behind the Bathroom Door” by Sarah Berniker. 4900. Reprint
23. “Sicarii” by Andrew Tisbert. 6700
24. “Cold to the Touch” by Simon Strantzas. 6500
25. “Darkness” by Jude Wright. 5000
26. “Ezekiel Remembers” by Kurt Dinan. 2000
27. “Bad Religion” by Douglas M. Chapman. 5000
28. “Anubis Has Left the Building” by Tim Waggoner. 3900. Reprint
29. “The Bishop Receives a Visitor” by Marion Pitman. 6500
30. “The Tattoo Artista” by Eric S. Smith. 4200
31. “In the Name of God” by Stuart Young. 5000
32. “Uncaged” by Paul Finch. 6000
33. “The Monsters We Defy” by Karen Williams. 4800
34. “The Shaft” by Brian Hodges. 6600
35. “Waters Dark as a Raven”s Wing, Flames Bright as a Dove”s Breast” by Dru Pagliassotti. 1900
36. “The Temple” by Quentin S. Crisp. 5200. Reprint
37. “The Wound of Her Making” by Gerard Houarner. 6100. Reprint
38. “And You Shall Be Adored” by Regina Mitchell. 2000
39. “On This Day of Reckoning” by Joseph Nassise. 4500
40. “Rapture” by Robert Morrish and Harry Shannon. 3700

(Note: Lest there be any confusion, I’ll point out that #6, Brian Hodge, and #34, Brian Hodges, are indeed two separate authors with remarkably similar names.)

Here’s the final run:  Beginning tomorrow (Friday, August 17th), everybody who’s still waiting on a reply to a submission to the Holy Horrors anthology should send a query to my co-editor, T.M. Wright, at editortm@yahoo.com.  We’re discovering more and more cases where Yahoo! mail has failed to send out his editorial responses, even though his sent mailbox shows otherwise.  The failure rate may be as high as one in every 10 emails.  So if you’re still waiting, fire off a message tomorrow and one of us will get back to you ASAP.

And thank you all for your continued patience!  You’ve been great.

Hello (hello, hello)?

Is there anybody in there?

Okay, enough with the Pink Floyd. Surely my loyal readers have noticed that it’s been more than two weeks since I last posted anything here at The Teeming Brain. Please accept my apologies for the unplanned hiatus.

It’s all because of an upsurge of busy-ness that overtook me near the end of June and is currently ongoing. During the last five or six weeks of my summer break from teaching I’ve been almost as busy, if not more so, as I am when school’s in session.

Speaking of which, school starts again exactly two weeks from today. At this time of morning on Thursday, August 16th, I won’t be sitting here at home, typing on a computer keyboard, but will instead be wrapping up the first class period of the first day of the first semester of the 2007-2008 school year. So will that mean a resumption of blog activity? Only time will tell.

Time may also tell of a more substantial life change than my regular return to teaching. Something may have recently come up. But it’s uncertain at present. If you never hear me say anything else about it, then you’ll know it was merely a passing mirage.

On that tantalizing note, I’ll move on to two separate concerns:

1) I’ve just posted a brief update for those of you who are awaiting further news about the Holy Horrors anthology.

2) Late last week I was tagged — for a second time — with the Thinking Blogger Award. Being tagged the first time was flattering. Receiving such an accolade yet again tends toward explosive ego inflation. I think some deep breathing and contemplative meditation are in order, just to quell the encroaching self-satisfaction.

The blogger who gave me the award this time goes by the name Red Tory. He’s Canadian. His blog looks quite interesting. I may need to read it. In calling me out, he wrote:

“The Teeming Brain: Horror writer, scholar, musician, composer, teacher, and part-time philosopher Matt Cardin offers a provocative exploration of diverse matters of social, cultural and literary interest. A critical-thinking spiritualist, Cardin thoughtfully reflects on the complacent ‘theme park imperialism’ of post-modern America (amongst other things) with eloquence, esotericism and a sense of ‘adventurous expectancy’ as H.P. Lovecraft would have put it. “

Many thanks to you, friend, for the kind words. (And apologies if I’ve incorrectly identified you as male. Double apologies if I actually know you but don’t currently recognize or realize it.)

I haven’t done much new exploring in the blogosphere since I perpetuated the Thinking Blogger meme the first time I was tagged with it, so please just follow the link I gave to that post a few paragraphs above to read my own list of thinking bloggers.

Well, I’m back after a break. I spent June 1st through 4th attending the annual conference of the Missouri United Methodist Church. Then when I returned I had to spend a couple of days getting the lawn under control and attending to other chores that had piled up in my absence. Hence, my silence here at The Teeming Brain.

Regarding the Methodist convention, a strange twist of fate has led to my assuming the position of “lay member at large” for the Ozarks South Conference wherein my church, the one where I’ve played the piano for the past six years, resides. In other words, I’m a delegate to the convention. More about that later. I have a rather extensive post or two that I’m planning to make over the course of the next week detailing last month’s reading (yes, another entry in my ongoing “Reading List” series), my experience at the Methodist convention, the very real possibility of something resembling a civilizational collapse within your and my lifetime, and other assorted issues.

But for now, I’m campaigning to win my wife a new kitchen.

Longtime readers of this blog will recall that my wife, Teresa, regularly enters a lot of national recipe contests. (See one of my posts from last October, “World Domination via Frozen Pies,” for a reminder of the first time I mentioned this here.) In addition to entering them, she has also won some of them (e.g., Kraft, Mission tortillas, Edwards Pies).

In recent months a new trend has arisen in the recipe contest world: voting. Instead of having recipes judged by chefs and whatnot, a lot of companies are holding contests where the winners are determined partly or entirely by popular vote. And although I can’t really see how this democratic method ensures that the best recipes win, I’m not above shilling for votes.

Currently Mrs. Fields, the company that sells cookies in shopping malls and grocery stores across America, is having a contest to find the recipe for their “30th Anniversary Cookie.” They’re hooked up with NBC. The winner will get a complete kitchen makeover and see his or her recipe marketed nationally. So it’s a high-profile enterprise.

Teresa’s entry is titled “Nutty Almond Butter Cookie.” I’ve eaten a plateful of these things, and trust me, they’re great! You can find the recipe on the list at the following link:

poll.ivillage.com/food/mrsfields/my-own-cookies.htm

Just scroll down and find her recipe alphabetically, then click the radio button next to it and scroll down to the bottom of the page to find the “vote” button. Click it and you’ve helped this noble enterprise advance yet another increment.

For more information about the contest in general, visit its main page.

Thanks in advance to anybody who cares to vote! I now return you to your regularly scheduled Teeming Brain experience.

This message is just a placeholder to let all of my loyal Teeming Brain readers know that I’ll be making a more substantial post later in the week. Today is the last day of the district school year at my place of employment. That means the past two days have been filled to bursting with all of the normal end-of-year, red tape-level crap (taking classroom inventory, calculating grades, planning for new classes next year, etc.), which is why I haven’t had a chance to compose a post. The present one will be the last one made from my classroom computer until August.

Even as I type these words, the bell for the end of the lunch period on this half-day of school is ringing. Now students are rushing past my door in a collective frenzy to vacate the premises. Shrieks of raucous joy resound from the beige institutional floor and ceiling tiles. The outer doors of the school building explode open. Cackles of adolescent glee flap and flutter up to the sky like uncaged eagles.

Oh, wait — those sounds of sprinting, shrieking, and cackling are coming from me, not them!

So anyway, I’ll be back soon to continue my ad hoc explorations of all the topics, ideas, and issues that have come to characterize this blog. As always, thanks for reading.

I must go now. Freedom beckons.