Poems and Prose #72 - Interpolate

I render the image
and lean away from the screen,
certain that this
is my ultimate scene,
crowded with nothing
but a dull, dark-gray sheen
and the reflected eyeballs
of some daft, distant fiend.

Poems and Prose #71 - Nerve

Paranoia creeps
into every cranny and nook,
giving chance passersby
very interesting things
at which to look,
and lending darting eyes
ample reason to be brooked,
as they slide along
the sidewalks, stars,
and heavy, word-filled books.

Shadows lingering still,
though noon comes sometime soon,
the pupils of the paranoid
expand like taut balloons,
held gingerly on braided strings
tacked to a skull-caged loon,
preferring always to deflate
and wheeze a long, un-rested tune.

Dialogue #9 - Chuckle

(+) Is this some sort of joke?
(-) Does it look like I'm laughing?
(+) From behind, yes.

Mental Blips #7 - Surety

Are you certain
of my existence?
Or is your faith
just that insistent?

Poems and Prose #70 - Asterisk

Place an asterisk
in this spot,
to mark the making
of a blot.

I guess it's good
the star's not hot;
I like excepting
things a lot.

*

Poems and Prose #69 - Mirror

Questioning the questions
that emerge from indirection,
I deflect some refutations
that I'm bereft of introspection.

Now, if, in my solipsism,
my id meanders by convection,
I welcome the assertions
that I'm less than a recollection.

Tread lightly,
for you tread on my delusions.

Mental Blips #6 - Hovering

Carry on,
carrion.
You won't have
to tarry long.

Poems and Prose #68 - Mortar

Glorifying war;
first a blast
and then some more.
I press my ear down
to the floor,
not for preservation
but just to keep score.

And when I hear
that awful roar,
feel that hoary heat
and taste shrapnel's bore,
I'll know then
the truth of lore,
and into the wind
drifts yet another spore.

Poems and Prose #67 - Slurk

Tacitly, indeed,
I creep,
seeking some
slick sights to peek.

A semi-sweet sucker
in my cheek,
I sneak along,
my eyes antiqued.

And lo, uncertainty
breeds sleep,
while fluffy friends
pollute my sheets.

And with this stick,
I pick my teeth,
the residue rid
spat on my seat.

Poems and Prose #66 - Bulge

Pill-perplexed,
I ask what's next,
and through my neck
the rest reflects.

Poems and Prose #65 - Unity

Amidst the twinkling quiet of night,
a nihilist's requiem absorbs errant light.

Entangled in shadows, the faces flex tight,
while clouds feast together on burnt beasts of flight.

In due time, indeed, these skies will dissolve,
as into night each day's sun will fall.

But in the soft morning, you'll hear the call
of manifold nothings compressed into a ball.

Poems and Prose #64 - Mollified

Atop a hill,
the wind passes through me,
carrying fresh-born air
into me.

A sentry
in this scene of beauty,
to leap right now
would seem my duty.

Poems and Prose #63 - Crawl

Wishes withheld,
   now defunct,
slumber soundly
   in this trunk.

On my knees,
   I raise the lid,
the wood's moan
   a lonely fib.

Inside lie
   the trinket stacks,
sepia pictures,
   and cockroach tracks.

In this room
   consumed by dusk,
I pass each piece
   a labored touch.

Poems and Prose #62 - Aloof

A new moon hangs
   beneath the clouds,
shielding starlight
   from the ground.

I find my pupils
   large and round,
and but for echoes,
   there's no sound.

Traipsing on a
   moss-draped mound,
seeking stuff
   that might astound,

My focus shifts
   from up to down,
that black disc
   my lantern now.

Dialogue #8 - Transparency

(+) Where do you hide?
(-) Where no one can see me.
(+) Then why are you
       always here?
(-) Because I'm well aware
       of man's visual limitations.

Poems and Prose #61 - Scrapple

I draw the curtains shut,
to fill the room with dark,
and let myself be sheathed in dust,
the particles my lasting mark.

Poems and Prose #60 - Half-Past

Timing instruments
mark some space,
the sense of which
is fast erased.

Watch-watchers will
here now find encased,
within this tool,
a blemished face.

Mental Blips #5 - Vibrato

The monestary,
huge and quiet and empty,
is a great place to hum.

Poems and Prose #59 - Brick

Let's carve his name
into this stone
so that his bones
don't forget
where they're from.

Poems and Prose #58 - Vacated

Gone away again,
the room begins
its acrobatic spin.

Grimaces now grins,
I lie down
and fall on in,

embraced now
by some
strangely silent din,

pulling me tightly,
strategically,
till I bend,

my skull now nothing
but a
human-head-shaped fin.

Poems and Prose #57 - Roundabout

The fan blade's swirl
cuts through the air,
deflecting distracted thoughts
that grow so focused
on some bygone gust,
whose lefted dust
stratifies into
an ever-growing wall.

Mental Blips #4 - Fecund

Tall grass blades quiver,
autumn air shimmying past,
the worms sound asleep.

Poems and Prose #56 - Yonder

Convergence smears
the horizon line to a mist,
skyscrapers dissolved
into crumbled obelisks.

The moon frowns down,
its left side gone,
well aware of its nearness
to the approaching dawn.

Today will be hot
and bursting with steam,
and at noon, this moment
will seem like a dream,

Brilliant and vivid
while eyelids are draped,
then a longed-for fantasy
that quickly escapes.

Mental Blips #3 - Gurney

I'm carted into the corridor,
the ballasts on the ceiling buzzing,
my irises motionless.

Mental Blips #2 - Fuzz

Electronic sounds,
humming, buzzing, fizzing clean,
leave a long echo.

Mental Blips #1 - Statuary

Broken branches strewn,
we walk aimlessly, silent,
the moon not moving.

Poems and Prose #55 - Masonry

The hammer clangs
against a wall
of dirty bricks,
displacing
brown-and-red powder
that hits the floor
and grates underneath
my booted feet,
as I move
from side to side,
pounding on
my heavy silhouette
for hours and hours.

Poems and Prose #54 - Fulcrum

Moreover,
I lament,
additionally,
pausing to clear my throat,
I furthermore elocute,
hereon,
flatly and baldly,
that,
for better or,
perhaps,
worse,
I,
neither fortunately
nor in the contrapositive,
have nothing to say.

Poems and Prose #53 - Olympic

The deities giggle,
thunderclaps echoing,
as the tree-dotted plains
sporadically brighten,
then fade to darkness.

Even as they stand
up here,
gleaming,
heavy crowns
atop their heads,
the clouds don't
sag an inch,
and the raindrops fall,
or don't,
regardless of where
their mighty hands wave.

Poems and Prose #52 - Imbroglio

Biting, clawing,
scratching, bawling,
hesitantly guffawing,
screaming obscene names
at the man
with whom I'm brawling,
I circle and hop,
while the dangling dust
keeps re-falling,
prepared to swing,
prepared to flee,
readying myself
for the distant sun's
slow seesawing.

Poems and Prose #51 - Strip

History repeats again,
beginning at the end,
then thinly spinning,
till all that's left is
twists and bends
and long-ago memories
that some disembodied voice
recommends,
every passing traveler stricken
with a crooked, Mobius grin.

Poems and Prose #50 - Perfunctory

Demands dissolve,
and my pupils shrink,
as the knowledge of my
circumstances sinks.

I'm content,
or so I think,
and I'll remain so
until I blink.

Poems and Prose #49 - Bowed

I knelt down,
to pray inside my mind,
as the crowds passed by,
some silent,
some muttering,
some cackling with disdain,
and I knew then
what it was to be a human,
frail and alone.

When I stood up,
I brushed
the insect carcasses
off my knees
and resumed my travels,
the sun's gleam
now seeming more obtrusive.

Poems and Prose #48 - Brushed

Gasps escape,
the suddenly-still crowd
now encircling
a widening,
dark-red pool.

The street signs
jostle minutely
in the crisp
autumn wind,
the words
printed thereon
seeming less and less
descriptive
by the second.

Poems and Prose #47 - Above

Gliding over all,
the sorcerer waves his wand
and manifests a glowing ball,

standing ninety-nine feet tall,
casting a diffuse shadow
over all the things that crawl,

darkening the malls
and the stores and the pubs
and the miles and miles of concrete
that pave the vast, suburban hall,

his breath sternly stalled,
as he strokes his flailing beard
while hard sheets of raindrops fall,

his eyes like a reclining doll's,
seeing everything an eye could see
and a few things in between,
the sole soundtrack a cacophany
of disparate, soft crows' caws.

Poems and Prose #46 - Quiver

There, ahead,
I see the gleaming pool,
the cool,
refreshing dish of water
carved into
the desert moundside.

I lick my blistered lip
and imagine myself
taking a tiny sip,
then a gulp,
then a guzzle,
then drowning
as my lungs fill
with liquid.

Now I turn to walk
the other way,
for I know
no drop of water
could match the
delectability
of those I've just
virtually imbibed,
and I'm in no mood
for disappointment.

Poems and Prose #45 - Antidote

The flask sweats
as it sits, motionless,
on my desk,
the air's moisture
draping its skin
as its contents
grow in warmth.

I reach toward it,
then pause,
the room's silence
serving as a
makeshift,
minimalist soundtrack.

The fleeting silence breaks,
and the mumbling
and the clatter
and the creaky creaks
of the world beyond
the room's walls
increases in volume
once again,
and I extend my arm
further.

The Seedy Side

Seeing as how this is a personal blog, I figured I would actually post something related to a personal experience I had for a change. My life is pretty boring, generally speaking, so this is somewhat unusual.

I'm an occasional drug user. Yeah, I guess that's not really an amazing revelation. Generally speaking, I only really indulge in cannabis, but I've had the chance to ingest a variety of drugs (except for hard stuff like heroin, cocaine, and all the "bad" drugs that DARE warned me not to even glance at lest I become immediately addicted and destroy not only my life but the lives of everyone within a 20-mile radius of my person.)

For the unaware, the seeds of the morning glory plant contain a chemical called lysergic acid amide. If that sounds somewhat familiar, it's because it is similar in chemical makeup to another substance called lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD, a powerful hallucinogen. LSA differs from LSD in a few key ways -- for instance, LSA isn't nearly as powerful as its chemical cousin, and it has more of a sedative effect than LSD, which is a stimulant in addition to a psychedelic.

The Heavenly Blue variety of the morning glory flower

Seeing as how LSA is found in the seeds of the morning glory plant (and said seeds can be procured easily, from any lawn-and-garden store), it's not difficult to imagine that people will use it recreationally. Thus, I imagined myself taking LSA in a recreational fashion. A couple of years ago, I purchased a sizable batch of morning glory Heavenly Blue seeds (I believe it was 2,000 or so), anticipating that I would eventually consume them and experience the effects. Below is a recounting of said experience.

I typed this up as a submission to the fantastic Erowid's "trip report" archive. I'm not sure if it will be accepted and lodged into their archives, but I figured I would post it here as well for curious readers of my blog (whatever that small number is.) This is identical to what I submitted, with a few minor formatting changes. The report is after the break.

Approximately 400 Heavenly Blue seeds

Poems and Prose #44 - Amplitude

I'm buffeted by a whistling gale,
as I hunch forward,
trying vainly to lower my profile.

My skin turns red,
then purple,
then blue,
the epidermis
slowly ceding to the dermis,
and the chapping chill
growing warmer
with each moment.

It's hard to keep my eyes open,
but I can see an object
just up ahead
in my brief glimpses.

I hope it's shelter,
or, if nothing else, a deep ravine.

Poems and Prose #43 - Veer

Here, I careen,
swerving between
tall posts and debris,
certain these things
aren't the afterdreams
of a fiend.

My speed softens,
and I relent,
marvelling at how badly
my back has gone bent,
grumbling that the moonrise
can't as of yet be seen.

Poems and Prose #42 - Adjacency

Masses around me gyrate,
resonating quietly,
compelling me to ponder
   what brought me abreast
   with this ruinous state.

Now I kneel and lie prostrate,
chuckling solemnly,
acknowledging, at long last,
   the true meaning
   of these passing dates.

Poems and Prose #41 - Mounted

Stuck atop a swaying hill,
I unzip my waistpack and pull out a pill,
then stick it in my mouth
and chew until it's swill,
smiling through a grimace
and my moistened, black eyesills,
as the ground beneath me
subtly comes to a dreamy, dull standstill.

Poems and Prose #40 - Linear

Dire straits,
   these,
filled with
   rustic creeds,
toppling through
   the valley
   clenching wads
   of soggy things.

The midpoint passed,
   we recede,
claiming stellar
   deeds,
our eyes fixed
   to the floor
   as our blushing faces,
   inside, bleed.

The final gate
   breathes,
jostled gently
   by the breeze,
sheened with grit,
   gunk, and goop
   that the solo
   travelers bring.

Bare moments
   seized,
I adust
   my speed,
the objects
   whizzing by,
   turned to specks
   that barely sting.

Poems and Prose #39 - Melt

Enemies, we,
   laugh, smile, and sing,
and fling ourselves
   willingly into debauchery.

The frazzled lightbulbs
   flicker dramatically,
amplifying the clarity
   of everything they see.

My partner and I
   proceed now with ease,
toward the sewer's
   fresh effluvia release,

nodding our noggins
   to the songs that we sing,
mere mimics of the lyrics
   of some bygone brand's breed.

Poems and Prose #38 - Bobbing

Unmoored,
   I drift from the shore,
My curse-filled laughter
   of note to both
   the engaged and the bored,
And I widen my eyes
   to see if I can spy
   the first signs that suggest
   there might be something more.

Poems and Prose #37 - Degrade

I'm corrupt,

   so what does that make you?

A conspirator?

   Or just someone stewing

   in a diarrheal stew?

I'd ask again,

   but I've got a hefty clue

that you're too

   caught up in excrement

   to know what the hell to do.

Poems and Prose #36 - Whiff

A gust of wind slaps my face,
as I gaze into the sky-spanning space,
certain that this is a temporary place,
less so that I can't be replaced.

I hold up my hand and the moon's erased,
its lingering halo a spit-inducing taste,
while I stand still in the air's drab embrace,
never one to decide with concern or in haste.

Poems and Prose #35 - Gyration

All around,
   the vortex rotates,
crackling with
   the bits and specks
the darkened core
   now insufflates.

The swirl of
   matter corrugates
each gust of
   grimy, wily wind,
separate from the
   air it isolates.

Poems and Prose #34 - Textual

Conversing in a phony fashion,
I saunter to the ring's periphery,
my mouth muffled by a blooming caption.

The fonted words kerned funnily,
overhearers tilt their stiffened shoulders
and arch their eyebrows cunningly.

Poems and Prose #33 - Granular

Erased to a splotch,
He half-smirks/half-winces
as the light around him
ebbs to black.

Time crawls like
a tired snail,
and numbness
flutters overhead
before it descends,
making him realize
its innate frivolity.

He smugly crumples
into the crust,
watching tons
of earth fall upon him,
knowing finally
that he's succeeded.

WordLeaping

Todd is putting the finishing touches on the upcoming WordLeap game from T³ Software. I've gotten most of the game graphics finished, but he wanted me to cook up some artwork for the soundtrack. Here are a couple of versions that I've been working on.

The protagonist stands atop the mountain...

Similar to the one above, but without the trees

Rockin' the 'phones

Poems and Prose #32 - Saboteur

Gremlins made me
   crash my plane,
and the weather really
   ruined my day.
My damn dog made
   these ugly stains,
and unseen plotters
   just won't go away.
Faultless, here,
   I crumple and wane,
and my voice's echos
   drift and decay.

Poems and Prose #31 - Eaves

Strangers talking,
their words barbed
and gruff
and full of
the wisdoms
they feel
they've accrued.

I lie on the floor
and listen through
the wall,
wondering if
the platitudes I spew
are equally
annoying to
eavesdroppers.

Poems and Prose #30: Stagecraft

The curtain slowly recedes;
the actor stands alone and breathes.

Now he spreads his hates and glees,
his boyish charms, his worn atrophies.


The spotlights cut the dusty breeze,
ensuring his face is the one everyone sees,
while drowning the outlines
   of the hoists and the beams,
the spectators and the backdrop
   and every last thing in between.

Poems and Prose #29: Recession

I shrink myself into a ball,
until I stand six inches small.
Now minimized, I can't recall
what made me want to be so tall,
my eye's shiny, like a doll's,
as I seek ways to further fall.

Dialogue #7: Solipsis

(+) Who goes there?
(-) You.
(+) Hmm.
    Carry on, then...

Dialogue #6: Commiserate

(+) Come on in!
    The water's fine.
(-) It's poison.
(+) Oh...
    Well, hurry up, then!

Dialogue #5: Slipstream

(+) There's no time!
(-) Of course not.
    Because you're wasting it
    with your banal observations!

Dialogue #4: Cursory

(+) Why am I here?
(-) Because two humans
    engaged in sexual intercourse.

Dialogue #3: Elision

(+) I'm not dead yet!
(-) Nor were they,
    at one point.
    Yet look at how
    nonchalantly
    you walk past
    their tombstones.

Poems and Prose #28: Actuary

"I'm a good man," he uttered,
his back to the mirror
and his hands freshly washed.

Dialogue #2: Memorandum

(+) Don't I know you from somewhere?
(-) Yes, I believe we met
    several moments ago.

Dialogue #1: Crooked

(+) You're not a crook, eh?
(-) According to our current legal system,
    that is a factual statement.

Poems and Prose #27: Ambulatory

An unleashed maniac
skulks through the fog,
his gaze trembling and fevered.

"What to do?"
he asks the wind.

"Keep going.
You're nearly there,"
comes the reply.

He licks his bottom lip
and smiles
at the salty cruft.

Another step,
then a dozen,
then a dozen more,
and ten more dozen.

And he hears no more words,
no more hints or clues.

Only the sound of air
against the walls of his nostrils.

Poems and Prose #26: Animated

The cartoons flicker
   on the CRT screen,
Macabre in their mixture
   of slapstick and obscene.
I stifle a chuckle
   and dunk my spoon in my beans,
Pondering exactly
   what Bugs Bunny's smirk means.
Certain he's with me,
   I recline, now serene,
Thoughts now discolored
   with a brightly hued sheen,
Popping and bopping
   to a quartet of strings,
My living room fit
   for both jesters and kings.

Poems and Prose #25: Corrosion

His veins corroded
  by too many sweets,
He finds he's got
  all kinds of time to retreat,
To say he's a sinner,
  at home with the least,
That he was blind to the signs
  till his fate was unsheathed.
Now here on his hospital bed,
  he repeats
The ninety-nine hundred and nine
  ways he was fleeced.

Poems and Prose #24: Woolen

Have you no decency?
No moral compass?
No qualms at all
with sins so suffixed?
I have a hunch
your eyes are buttressed
by your books and essays
and word-filled ruckus,
leaving you much like a
furnace gone ductless,
or, more aptly,
a preacher turned tongueless.

Blowing Up Tara

I recently watched a hot-off-the-presses DVD screener (because I'm poor and cheap; sorry, Weinstein brothers and your financial backers) of Quentin Tarantino's latest revenge-centered movie, Django Unchained, and was struck by a few loosely related thoughts surrounding the movie, the time period it depicts, and various other matters. Hopefully I'll be able to tie these things together and make an interesting writeup that covers just the right amount of ground.

Warning: There be spoilers ahead.

I've always enjoyed Quentin Tarantino's movies, though I wouldn't go so far as to consider myself a fanboy. They've always been well-directed, stylized movies, chock-full of intriguing plots and characters with depth that you don't find in many other blockbuster films. It wasn't until a couple of years ago, when I saw Inglourious Basterds, that I began to consider his movies a little more deeply. The opening scene between Colonel Landa and a farmer in occupied France who is housing Jewish refugees is amazingly tense and has some awesome dialog. A later scene that occurs in a barroom, where Americans clothed as SS officers rendezvous with a German turncoat, is also a great, intense sequence. These two scenes alone made the other two hours of the movie (which were also pretty good) worth watching. The climactic scene near the film's finale fills the screen with the haunting image of a Jewish woman laughing maniacally as a theater full of Nazis burns alive and machine-gun fire rains down upon an unarmed audience, an excellent example of the kind of gut-punch iconic imagery Tarantino's movies can dole out when he's at the top of his game.

Apologies, Herr Goebbels...

Without a clever segue to insert here, I'll now begin discussing Django Unchained, Tarantino's newest movie (as of this writing). There's been a lot of controversy about the movie from various corners of the critical and non-critical world (from big-name directors like Spike Lee, even), mainly centering on the the way the movie seems to be more about making entertainment out of the business of slavery instead of treating it as the cancer on this nation's history that it is. As an aside, it's interesting that the extreme violence depicted in the movie isn't really garnering much negativity as it has in so many of Tarantino's other movies, which I guess is just a sign of the times, where violent entertainment has become mainstream and broadly celebrated. I won't really make any comments on whether the criticism levied by people like Spike Lee is justified, though he raises interesting points, but merely note that it exists and that it's understandable considering the touchy subject matter.

A subtitle at the opening of the movie states that the events depicted occurred two years prior to the Civil War, which dates the story to the time period around 1959. This is important to keep in mind, as it helps you understand the atmosphere of the time and the mindsets of the characters shown on the screen, who are in the midst of an era in history where it was becoming less and less palatable to the civilized world to treat human beings as property and hold them in bondage, though many went to great lengths to make justifications for it. This is one of the things I think the movie does quite well, showing the pseudoscience and hand-waving that those involved in the slave trade used when discussing the business and why it was okay to keep certain human beings in shackles. There's a great scene near the end of the second act where a plantation owner named Calvin Candie, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, attempts to show the guests at his dinner party that the reason black slaves didn't rise up and overtake their owners could be proven by phrenology, for their skulls had a certain sequence of dimples at their base that white mens' skulls lacked, showing that the "submissive" parts of their brains were naturally larger than those of white men. He, of course, has the skull of one of his former slaves in his hand and saws the back of it off, showing the dimples off as undeniable, scientific proof of this theory.

"Let me prove this through the wonders of the science of phrenology..."

Which leads me to the movie's depiction of the antebellum South, its cultures and customs, and the enslaved people that were at its foundation. The plantation owners who lived in the Southern United States during the first half of the 19th century weren't hard-nosed bootstrappers who brought themselves up from nothing and pushed the economic engine of the United States into the future. They were wealthy aristocrats who owned huge swathes of land that were handed down from their fathers and their fathers' fathers, and they used their money and influence to purchase land and expand their agricultural output. Since they were able to buy human beings, to whom they didn't have to pay a living wage, they were able to make excellent profits on their crops. Many lived in lavish mansions, and their every whim was attended to by unpaid servants. I won't go into much further detail about this, since this is the Internet and there are many other sources from which to read up on it. The preceding few sentences were probably a more in-depth overview of the topic than anything I was exposed to as a kid in elementary, middle, and high school, though, which is darkly amusing. (Then again, I attended a high school whose school board ordered that the biology textbooks have the pages discussing evolution glued together, to avoid exposing developing minds to un-Christian scientific notions.)

Southern hospitality dictates a proper table setting.

Interestingly, Django Unchained treats the pre-Civil War plantation in a similar manner to the way in which Gone With the Wind (the movie) does. Unlike the latter, though, Django looks at it with a jaundiced eye. Gone With the Wind focuses on the drama surrounding the white residents of the Tara plantation, with black servants serving as mere background, inconsequential players. In Django Unchained, the servants/slaves are ever-present specters in almost every scene that takes place on the plantation, constantly irking viewers as they listen to the witty banter and witness the high-society dealings of the upper-class Southern gentlefolk in the foreground.

The plantations shown in each of these movies bear a similar appearance, though that's mostly due to the nature of them being constructed in similar eras. Below are some images of each for reference.

Tara, from Gone With the Wind

Candie Land, from Django Unchained

As I stated before, one of Quentin Tarantino's best traits as a director is his ability to craft iconic imagery that cuts to the heart of the matter at hand, and in the final scene of Django Unchained, he does so in a spectacular way. Django returns to Candie Land, the plantation where his wife is being held, and slaughters her armed white enslavers. After placing bundles of dynamite at various places in the mansion, he stands outside and watches the building explode in a massive fireball of wood, marble, and mud (and presumably the blood and gristle of his fallen enemies), before riding off into the moonlit night, a free man, with his newly-freed wife.

When I saw the mansion go up in flames, I immediately thought to myself, "Holy shit! They blew up Tara!" To me, that is part of what makes this movie so compelling. I believe Gone With the Wind is a movie that, though it is dramatic and has a somewhat gripping story, has been used for years as a way to whitewash the past as it relates to the pre-Civil War South. Watching that film, viewers can say, comfortably, "Well, it wasn't so bad back then. Look at how nicely they treat Mammy! She's doing a lot better than a lot of black people did back then, I'm betting. Imagine the hell she'd be going through if she was still living in Africa! And look at how nice those folks are! Such Southern hospitality! Things sure were a lot simpler back then!"

Seeing Candie Land (as a stand-in for Tara) being blown up, thus, is like tearing down this artifice that's been held up for so long by cultural artifacts like Gone With the Wind.

Boom.

Many revisionists on the right side of the political spectrum today like to proclaim that the Civil War wasn't fought over slavery; it was fought to protect the Southern way of life and its storied culture. A cursory examination of the culture of the South at that time proves how disingenuous such a claim truly is, however. The "Southern way of life" pre-Civil War, as shown in Django Unchained, was based almost entirely on unpaid labor, in the form of slaves. The aristocrats who lived south of the Mason-Dixon line built their fortunes and their massive land holdings on the backs of shackled human beings, and the Civil War was fought to protect their interests, not the interests of the common Southern white man. Just as has happened many times throughout human history, the rich convinced those in the lower social strata to go along with their schemes to ensure that their wealth wasn't dented. So, yeah, the Civil War was fought to protect Southern culture from the federal government's meddling hands, but this wasn't a culture worth protecting, unless you were a rich white man who owned hundreds of acres of farmland and dozens of slaves.

I wish I had a nice way of concluding this piece with some clever quip or reference, but I don't, unfortunately. I'll just end this by recommending Django Unchained to anyone (excepting small children, perhaps) who's interested in seeing an entertaining take on the era in question.