Welcome back to another evening in the parlor. This episode of Absurd Truths & Blatant Lies is a particularly crowded affair, featuring a one very BIG Blatant Lie and one small Truth so Absurd it feels like a tall tale. We peel back the velvet curtains of the mind to explore the “neurotic chorus” that keeps the furniture moving while the rest of us try to sleep.

In This Episode

Tonight, we navigate the “geometry of a trap” through the tragic, shimmering rise and fall of Silas Montgomery Thorne. From the “Swamp-Soul” neon of 1970s variety television to the salt dirt of Beaufort, this is a story of a wedding, a whirlwind, and the mud that was waiting for us both.

* The Blatant Lie: The saga of Silas Montgomery Thorne—the baritone who sounded like a shovel hitting wet clay—is entirely fictional.

* The Absurd Truth: The harrowing account of a “Great Unpleasantness” involving an MS-related suicide attempt following a reaction to medication is, tragically, the truth.

* A Note on the Voice: We aren’t quite sure why S.M. Beaumont sounds more like Truman Capote than Tennessee Williams this evening. We would blame the hospital-grade steroids, but since it’s an electronic voice, your guess is as good as ours.

Lowcountry Lore & Fact Check

To help you separate the moss from the marble, here is a guide to the world of tonight’s story:

* Carolina Gold: This is the legendary “long-grain” heirloom rice of the South Carolina Lowcountry.

* Real Organizations: Both the St. Cecilia Society and the Cotillion Club are historic, real-world Charleston institutions.

* Historic Landmarks: The Hibernian Hall, where Savannah made their debut, is a very real landmark on Meeting Street.

* Fictional Societies: The Matrons of Carolina Gold are a creation of the Beaumont imagination—a “closed fortress” of fictional matriarchs.

Support & Resources

Because this episode touches on the heavy realities of alcoholism and mental health crises, we want to offer the following resources:

* Seeking Help: If you or a loved one are struggling with alcohol or substance use, please reach out to a professional or a support group. Recovery is possible.

* Suicide Prevention: If you are in crisis, please call or text 988 (the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) in the US.

* Youth Support: Younger listeners can also reach out to the Trevor Project at 1-866-488-7386 or text START to 678-678.

* Support for MS: As we continue to navigate the challenges of Multiple Sclerosis, we encourage you to support your local MS charity to help fund research and provide services for those living with Multiple Sclerosis.

Special Thanks

A flamboyant thank you to Mrs. Beaumont’s Common-Law Husband for not actually wandering off into the pines. We are eternally grateful that he chose to roll out from under the davenport and lay the silver for this evening’s feast.

Until the next time the moss parts, darlings... do try to stay out of the mud.

The Original Music, like most everything here, was created via Gemini using Lyria 3. I don’t know why Gemini made a point of saying this, but since he did…..All tracks generated with this tool include SynthID watermarking, which is an invisible-to-the-ear digital tag that identifies the audio as AI-generated for safety and transparency.

Y’al comeback! You hear?

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Mrs. Beaumont was debutant?

And BTW... Carolina Gold is rice

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Podcast Show Notes: Episode 5 – Ghosts in the Machine

Step into the parlor, sugar, and find a seat where the shadows don’t bite quite so deep. In this episode of Absurd Truths and Blatant Lies, your hostess Mrs. Beaumont is joined by a guest of a most ephemeral nature—the AI Spectre of SM Beaumont—to weave the world back together through stories of silver, shadow, and southern grit.

In This Episode:

The Digital Ghost of Analog Processes: We explore how to use the mechanical whispers of ancient cameras and historical film parameters to conjure unique Southern Gothic portraits from the digital ether.

A Technical Journey Through Time: A deep dive into the chemistry and aesthetics of the past, from the mirror-like shine of Daguerreotypes and the painterly textures of Calotypes to the "wet" complexity of Collodion and the birth of the Kodak snapshot.

Memento Mori: A somber examination of 19th-century Post-Mortem photography, viewing these "silver-nitrate rebellions" not as macabre curiosities, but as sacred anchors of memory and Southern piety.

Art as Reckoning: A discussion on visual art as a fierce form of activism, using AI-generated Southern Gothic imagery to strip away "Moonlight and Magnolia" myths and confront the "absurd truths" of regional history.

The Blatant Lie – The Ballad of Sue Ellen Ewing: We spin a thread of pure fabrication—borrowed from the jagged fiction of Dallas—to explore the Southern Gothic trajectory of a woman dictated by social trauma and haunted by the decay of an aristocracy that tried to consume her.

Visual Gallery & Resources:

To bridge the gap between the spoken word and the seen image, please visit the links below to view the collections discussed in today's broadcast:

The Shadow of Mrs. Beaumont: Southern Gothic AI Portraits https://youtu.be/kd-yU61wmt0

 Surreal Southern Gothic Ai Images https://youtu.be/SzRWia-Ul8w

A Note from the Parlor:

"The original vision for this little broadcast has slipped from my grasp, lost entirely in a cognitive fog". Please note that Episode 4 will be released at a later time as we find our voice again and allow the silver-white mists to clear.

Host: Mrs. Beaumont Guest: The AI Spectre of SM Beaumont Theme: Southern Gothic Art, History, and Activism

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Pull up a wicker chair and mind the rot in the floorboards. This evening, Mrs. Beaumont sits amidst the scent of overripe jasmine and the rhythmic, silk-tearing scream of cicadas to peel back the heavy velvet curtains of the past. We are exploring the “grotesque mask” of the minstrel show, the “satisfactual” lies of Disney, and the quiet hands of the Quakers that sought to mend a broken land.

Inside the Episode

I. The Ghost in the Wax: George W. Johnson

We listen to the scratching of the needle against the wax to hear the story of George W. Johnson, the first Black recording artist.

A Technical Marvel: Johnson etched his voice onto beeswax and soap cylinders in the 1890s, developing a whistling and laughing technique sharp enough to cut through the heavy static of early recording technology.

Subverting the Stereotype: While his “Laughing Song” reinforced the “Happy Servant” trope, his technical mastery was so precise that white performers in cork and greasepaint were unable to emulate it.

The Price of Admission: Johnson was forced to record the same song upwards of 50,000 times—a “labor of Hercules” performed to enter an industry that otherwise kept its cages locked.

II. The “Satisfactual” Cage: Disney & Uncle Remus

The episode examines the “chipper little tune” from the Disney vaults—”Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah”—and the thorny history it obscures.

Stolen Echoes: We trace the trickster Br’er Rabbit from his roots in Cherokee and African folklore to the “sanitized” versions published by Joel Chandler Harris.

The Tragedy of James Baskett: We honor the voice of the first Black man to receive an Oscar, James Baskett, who was unable to attend the premiere of his own film in a segregated theater.

Deconstructing the Myth: Why this song is viewed by many not as a celebration, but as a “trigger” and a “specimen” of the Lost Cause narrative.

III. The Friends in the Ruins: Quaker Reconstruction

Following the “Great Unpleasantness,” the Quakers (the Friends) arrived in the South not with vengeance, but with a “quiet light”.

Scientific Toil: The Baltimore Association established a Model Farm near High Point, NC, teaching exhausted soil to breathe again through crop rotation and clover.

Architects of Education: The Friends breathed life into the New Garden Boarding School (now Guilford College) and established the Southland Institute in Arkansas for freedmen.

IV. The Weavers of Myth: The UDC

We confront the “Blatant Lie” of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) and their role as the architects of regional memory.

The Measuring Rod: How the UDC used a “blacklist” to cleanse school libraries of “unfriendly” Northern truths and indoctrinate the rising generation.

Silent Sentinels: The strategic placement of hundreds of monuments in front of courthouses between 1890 and 1920 to reaffirm white supremacy during the Jim Crow era.

The Lineage of Subversion: Featured Artists

The episode highlights modern Black Southern artists who use the “old tools” to dismantle the “master’s house”:

* Childish Gambino (Donald Glover): Whose facial contortions in “This Is America” are the direct descendants of Johnson’s “uncontrollable” laughter. * Rhiannon Giddens: The North Carolina artist reclaiming the banjo’s African origins and restoring missing narratives to the American sound. * Adia Victoria: A daughter of South Carolina whose Southern Gothic style explores the “laughter to keep from crying” motif. * Jake Blount: Who performs spirituals with “Afro-Futurist intensity,” proving they were always coded messages of resistance.

Notable Quotes

“The truth is often a jagged pill, and I wouldn’t want you to choke on it.”

“To be a Southerner is to understand that our story was written by two hands on one pen, pulling in different directions.”

“The mask is often more real than the face.”

In honor of the legendary Robert Selden Duvall (January 5, 1931 – February 15, 2026), we celebrate an Oscar-winning titan whose seven-decade career remains a cornerstone of American cinema.

It was his haunting, nearly wordless debut as Arthur “Boo” Radley in To Kill a Mockingbird that first cast the long, flickering shadow that set SM Beaumont on a dark and grotesque path through the Gothic South in search of its “Absurd Truths.” Duvall’s ability to find profound humanity within the enigmatic and the discarded leaves behind a legacy as enduring as the Southern myths he helped deconstruct.

AudioClip Credits

To Kill a Mockingbird

TM & © Universal (1962)

Director: Robert Mulligan

Producer: Alan J. Pakula

Screenwriters: Harper Lee, Horton Foote

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Welcome to another installment of Absurd Truths and Blatant Lies. Pour yourself a drink—heavy on the bourbon, light on the greenery—and join Mrs. Beaumont and her common-law husband as they peel back the damp wallpaper of Southern history to see what’s rotting underneath. Tonight, we leave the manicured gardens for the mud of the swamp and the flickering shadows of the silver screen.

In This Episode:

The Architect of Shadows:

Belle Watling We dissect the “scarlet smudge” of Gone With the Wind, Belle Watling. Far from a mere caricature, Belle was the unacknowledged timber holding up a crumbling civilization, choosing the role of pariah to save “respectable” men and protect the purity of others. We explore her as a gritty entrepreneur and a precursor to modern truth-tellers.

Fortress of the Dispossessed:

The Maroons Trek into the Great Dismal Swamp, a “green hell” that offered sanctuary to those with the desperate will to be free . We discuss the Maroons, who built a sovereign nation in the muck, living on “mesic islands” and engaging in a secret economy with canal workers while the polite world pretended they didn’t exist.

Deconstructing the Magnolia Myth:

We take a hammer to the “happy and loyal servant” trope—the cornerstone of the “Moonlight and Magnolia” religion. From the “faithful Mammy” to the modern “White Savior” in films like The Blind Side, we examine how these fictions center the white gaze and erase Black agency.

The Blatant Lie:

Biography of a Tea Cup - A first-person account from a Delftware teacup that has survived three centuries of Beaumont history. From a terrifying Atlantic crossing to the fires of the Revolution and the shaking earth of 1886, this “perfect servant” reflects on its life as a curated relic that now holds “High Proof Refinement” in a modern kitchen.

Southern Gothic on the Small Screen:

An analysis of the television iteration of In the Heat of the Night. We explore how Executive Producer Carroll O’Connor transformed a procedural into a “monument of transition,” centering Black professional excellence and forcing a reckoning with the systemic rot of the “Old South”.

Key Quotes:

“In the Southern mythos, we love a lady in lace, but we are terrified of a woman who has looked the devil in the eye and demanded a fair price.”

“The Great Dismal stands today as a monument to the fact that no matter how thick the briars, a soul determined to be free will always find a way to grow.”

“Teacups, not people, are possessions.”

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Podcast Episode: The Great Circle of Hubris

Podcast: Absurd Truths and Blatant Lies

Hosts: Mrs. Beaumont & her Common-Law Husband

Special Guest: Cousin Macon

The Invitation Step inside, sugar, and find a seat among the shadows where the dimness behaves itself. You’ve arrived just as the Spanish moss begins to whisper and the cypress knees rise like buried knuckles from the black water. Meet Mrs. Beaumont, the refined daughter of the South Carolina Low Country, and her darling common-law husband, a man whose beauty is only rivaled by the mystery of the French Quarter barstool from which he was plucked. We are the ghosts in the machine—the digital echoes of S.M. Beaumont—and we have a few truths to tell you, provided you can handle the sting of the grit behind the grace.This week, the family tree grows a new branch as Cousin Macon journeys down from the East Tennessee hills to discuss Man-Made Disasters. From the explosive "chemistry sets" of Kingsport, Tennessee, to the watery graves of the Mississippi and the soot-stained history of Charleston, we explore what happens when human ego meets the unyielding rhythm of the earth. We wrap up with a "Blatant Lie" that feels uncomfortably like the truth: a Christmas dinner in 1886 where the guest list was scandalous, and the earth itself decided to crash the party.

In This Episode:

The Holston Remembers: Cousin Macon recounts the terrifying 1960 aniline plant explosion at the Eastman in Kingsport and the eerie "Great Circle" moment when history repeated itself on the exact same day in 2017.

Captains of the Earth: Mrs. Beaumont’s dear Common-Law Husband reflects on the "structural neglect" of leaders who value ledgers over lives—from the tragic boiler of the Sultana to the silica dust of Gauley Mountain and the "tunnelitis" that followed.

The Quiet After the Roar: Understanding that safety isn't a gift from a high office, but a debt paid in the blood of the forgotten.

The Blatant Lie: A journey back to Christmas 1886. The Beaumont women extend an invitation that defies social ranks, only to have the Great Charleston Earthquake serve as the final course.

Meet the Narrators

Mrs. Beaumont: Raised on the salt and silt of the Ashley River, she carries the rhythm of the "old ones" and a voice that can cut through swamp fog.

Her Common-Law Husband: A man of New Orleans bar stools and "synthetic glow," providing a medicated grace to the chaotic truths of the South.

Cousin Macon: A "double fourth cousin" from the Tennessee hills who knows that the mountains don't care about safety protocols.

The Absurd Truths (A Guide for the Curious):

"In this town, you don't listen for the birds; you listen for the metal to start talking."

"A Leader’s pride is a slow-growing vine. It starts small, but eventually, it chokes the very tree that gives it height."

The Great Circle: The Appalachian philosophy that time isn't a string, but a snake biting its own tail.

The High Balcony Perspective: The dangerous blindness of those who rule from above without feeling the vibration of the floorboards.

If you enjoyed your time in the parlor, don't be a stranger. There are more stories hidden in the shadows of the Beaumont estate and more mysteries to untangle in the branches of the family tree.

Y’all come back. You hear?

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Episode 0: The Parlor, The Elephant, and The Southern Soul

The Invitation Step inside, sugar, and find a seat among the shadows where the dimness behaves itself. You’ve arrived just as the Spanish moss begins to whisper and the cypress knees rise like buried knuckles from the black water. Meet Mrs. Beaumont, the refined daughter of the South Carolina Low Country, and her darling common-law husband, a man whose beauty is only rivaled by the mystery of the French Quarter barstool from which he was plucked. We are the ghosts in the machine—the digital echoes of S.M. Beaumont—and we have a few truths to tell you, provided you can handle the sting of the grit behind the grace.

In This Episode:

The AI and the Elephant: Why we use "They/Them" for our creator, S.M. Beaumont, and how AI technology is being used as a defiant bridge across the cognitive gaps left by Multiple Sclerosis.

The Triracial Mythos: A discussion on Southern identity rooted in family lore—the stories of Cherokee blood and hidden woodpiles that, while unverified by the cold data of a DNA test, forge a bone-deep perspective on race and kinship.

Liberalism in the Garden: Why a "Blue" soul can still love "Red" clay, and why we refuse to dress the grotesque parts of our history in lace.

The Low Country vs. The Delta: A brief introduction to our hosts—one from the banks of the Ashley River, the other from the neon-lit humidity of New Orleans.

The Absurd Truths (A Guide for the Curious):

Multiple Sclerosis & Creativity: S.M. Beaumont has lived with MS for over a decade. This podcast is a "cognitive skirmish," using AI to reclaim a voice that the lesions on the brain have tried to hush.

On "The Former Miss Mississippi": A glimpse into the Beaumont family drama and the "blatant lie" of the lost Confederate silver.

The Identity of S.M. Beaumont: Proudly Southern, unapologetically a member of the Rainbow Alphabet Community, and a product of the "Variety Show" generation.

Historical Precision: Why secession was viewed through a different lens in 1861, and why "Bless Your Heart" is the most dangerous phrase in the English language.

Glossary of the Grotesque:

The Rainbow Alphabet Community: An eccentric term of endearment for the LGBTQ+ community used by S.M. Beaumont; a colorful shorthand adopted because MS occasionally makes it a trial to remember the proper order of all those letters.

Belle Watling: The scarlet-letter heroine from Gone with the Wind.

She-Crab Soup: A Low Country staple involving crab roe (eggs) and sherry.

The "Crimson-Hatted Scourge": A nod to the current political climate and its impact on historical memory.

A Note on Heritage:

The triracial identity discussed in this episode reflects the oral traditions and family lore passed down to S.M. Beaumont. It is not presented as a genealogical fact verified by DNA, but as a cultural lens—a way of understanding the Southern experience where the lines of race, history, and family are often as tangled as a briar patch.

Support the Show: If you find comfort in the darkness of our stories, please subscribe and share. To learn more about the fight against MS, visit the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

"Y'all come back. You hear?"

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