Literature, in its broadest sense, is any single body of written works. More restrictively, it is writing considered as an art form, or any single writing deemed to have artistic or intellectual value, often due to deploying language in ways that differ from ordinary usage. Its Latin root literatura/litteratura (derived itself from littera: letter or handwriting) was used to refer to all written accounts, though contemporary definitions extend the term to include texts that are spoken or sung (oral literature). Literature can be classified according to whether it is fiction or non-fiction and whether it is poetry or prose; it can be further distinguished according to major forms such as the novel, short story or drama; and works are often categorized according to historical periods or their adherence to certain aesthetic features or expectations (genre).

The concept has changed meaning over time: nowadays it can broaden to include non-written verbal art forms, and thus it is difficult to agree on its origin, which can be paired with that of language or writing itself. Developments in print technology have allowed an evergrowing distribution and proliferation of written works, culminating in electronic literature.

Definitions of literature have varied over time; it is a “culturally relative definition”. In Western Europe prior to the eighteenth century, literature as a term indicated all books and writing. A more restricted sense of the term emerged during the Romantic period, in which it began to demarcate “imaginative” literature. Contemporary debates over what constitutes literature can be seen as returning to the older, more inclusive notion of what constitutes literature. Cultural studies, for instance, takes as its subject of analysis both popular and minority genres, in addition to canonical works.

Featured Music:

I’m Not a Loser by Descendents

Neat Neat Neat by The Damned

The Boys Are Back In Town by Thin Lizzy

“There was a word for what he was that nice people didn’t say except in the dirtiest jokes. He knew. Always had. There was no need for more of him. His life was a gross testament to cowardice and repugnance.”

CHECK OUT ALL THE HALF HOUR PROPHECY PODCASTS BY CLICKING HERE!

Sam Tallent’s Half Hour Prophecy Ep. 30: Literature Fiend

Sam Tallent is a comedian and writer from Denver, Colorado. He lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with his wife and dog. His interests include Southern Gothic fiction and the “death” of Elvis Presley. He enjoys slow simmered suppers and writing in the third person.

Audio Mixing by Wally Wallace

A Sexpot Comedy Production

Failure is the state or condition of not meeting a desirable or intended objective, and may be viewed as the opposite of success. Product failure ranges from failure to sell the product to fracture of the product, in the worst cases leading to personal injury, the province of forensic engineering.

Wired Magazine editor Kevin Kelly likewise explains that a great deal can be learned from things going unexpectedly, and that part of science’s success comes from keeping blunders “small, manageable, constant, and trackable”. He uses the example of engineers and programmers who push systems to their limits, breaking them to learn about them. Kelly also warns against creating a culture (e.g. school system) that punishes failure harshly, because this inhibits a creative process, and risks teaching people not to communicate important failures with others (e.g. Null results).

A commercial failure is a product that does not reach expectations of success.  Due to the subjective nature of “success” and “meeting expectations,” there can be disagreement about what constitutes a “major flop.”

Sometimes, “commercial failures” can receive a cult following.

Featured Music:

IDEA by POISON

COLD TURKEY by sUICIDEBOYs & POUYA

How I Look by Fat Nick

“There was a word for what he was that nice people didn’t say except in the dirtiest jokes. He knew. Always had. There was no need for more of him. His life was a gross testament to cowardice and repugnance.”

CHECK OUT ALL THE HALF HOUR PROPHECY PODCASTS BY CLICKING HERE!

Sam Tallent’s Half Hour Prophecy Ep. 29: Success?

Sam Tallent is a comedian and writer from Denver, Colorado. He lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with his wife and dog. His interests include Southern Gothic fiction and the “death” of Elvis Presley. He enjoys slow simmered suppers and writing in the third person.

Audio Mixing by Wally Wallace

A Sexpot Comedy Production

In common usage, theft is the taking of another person’s property without that person’s permission or consent with the intent to deprive the rightful owner of it. The word is also used as an informal shorthand term for some crimes against property, such as burglary, embezzlement, larceny, looting, robbery, shoplifting, library theft, and fraud (i.e., obtaining money under false pretenses). In some jurisdictions, theft is considered to be synonymous with larceny; in others, theft has replaced larceny. Someone who carries out an act of or makes a career of theft is known as a thief. The act of theft is also known by other terms such as stealing, thieving, and filching.

The actus reus of theft is usually defined as an unauthorized taking, keeping or using of another’s property which must be accompanied by a mens rea of dishonesty and/or the intent to permanently deprive the owner or the person with rightful possession of that property or its use.

For example, if X goes to a restaurant and, by mistake, takes Y’s scarf instead of her own, she has physically deprived Y of the use of the property (which is the actus reus) but the mistake prevents X from forming the mens rea (i.e., because she believes that she is the owner, she is not dishonest and does not intend to deprive the “owner” of it) so no crime has been committed at this point. But if she realises the mistake when she gets home and could return the scarf to Y, she will steal the scarf if she dishonestly keeps it (see theft by finding). Note that there may be civil liability for the torts of trespass to chattels or conversion in either eventuality.

Featured Music:

Twistin Stank (Hard in The Paint Freestyle) by Curren$y

Lifestyle ft. Young Thug, Rich Homie Quan by Rich Gang

Po’ Folks (Video) w-Anthony Hamilton by Nappy Roots

“There was a word for what he was that nice people didn’t say except in the dirtiest jokes. He knew. Always had. There was no need for more of him. His life was a gross testament to cowardice and repugnance.”

CHECK OUT ALL THE HALF HOUR PROPHECY PODCASTS BY CLICKING HERE!

Sam Tallent’s Half Hour Prophecy Ep. 28: Yama Sushi w/ David Gborie

Sam Tallent is a comedian and writer from Denver, Colorado. He lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with his wife and dog. His interests include Southern Gothic fiction and the “death” of Elvis Presley. He enjoys slow simmered suppers and writing in the third person.

Audio Mixing by Wally Wallace

A Sexpot Comedy Production

Tournament of Kings is Las Vegas’ ultimate dinner and a show experience. Adapted from the tale of King Arthur, this live-action production takes place in a 900-seat theater-in-the-round arena and immerses the audience in a tale of valor and treachery. Valiant knights ride mighty steeds and prove their chivalry amongst special effects and pyrotechnics. While knights fight, guests feast on a hearty three-course meal using the original utensil – their hands. Tournament of Kings is an epic portrayal of centuries past, and it’s all in the name of honor, country, and of course, food.

Excalibur is the No. 1 purchaser of Cornish Game Hens in the United States. Since June 1990, approximately 6,700,000 hens have been served. Tournament of Kings had 48 marriage proposals in 2008. Everyone said, “Yes I will marry you.” There are 30 horses in the Tournament of Kings stable. 10 horses are used in each performance. An average of 1,000 horseshoes are changed over a period of one year. The soil used in the arena is mixed with synthetic fibers to create a better cushion. This is important because many of the show’s stunt falls are done off of the horses. Rehearsals take place six nights a week with the Stunt Coordinator. The core team producing Tournament of Kings including the Producer, Office Manager, Stunt Coordinator and Director have been involved since the opening of the show June 19, 1990. The swords used in the performance are titanium and create sparks during battle sequences. Over the course of a year, approximately 3,900 lances are smashed in the furious jousting competition.

Featured Music:

Challenge by Japanther

Fuk Tha Prince A Pull Iz Dum by Japanther

Can You Seen Straight by The Death Set

“There was a word for what he was that nice people didn’t say except in the dirtiest jokes. He knew. Always had. There was no need for more of him. His life was a gross testament to cowardice and repugnance.”

CHECK OUT ALL THE HALF HOUR PROPHECY PODCASTS BY CLICKING HERE!

Sam Tallent’s Half Hour Prophecy Ep. 27: Tournament of Kings

Sam Tallent is a comedian and writer from Denver, Colorado. He lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with his wife and dog. His interests include Southern Gothic fiction and the “death” of Elvis Presley. He enjoys slow simmered suppers and writing in the third person.

Audio Mixing by Wally Wallace

A Sexpot Comedy Production

The Barbizon school of painters were part of an art movement towards Realism in art, which arose in the context of the dominant Romantic Movement of the time. The Barbizon school was active roughly from 1830 through 1870. It takes its name from the village of Barbizon, France, near the Forest of Fontainebleau, where many of the artists gathered. Some of the most prominent features of this school are its tonal qualities, color, loose brushwork, and softness of form.

In 1824 the Salon de Paris exhibited works of John Constable, an English painter. His rural scenes influenced some of the younger artists of the time, moving them to abandon formalism and to draw inspiration directly from nature. Natural scenes became the subjects of their paintings rather than mere backdrops to dramatic events. During the Revolutions of 1848 artists gathered at Barbizon to follow Constable’s ideas, making nature the subject of their paintings. The French landscape became a major theme of the Barbizon painters.

In the spring of 1829, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot came to Barbizon to paint in the Forest of Fontainebleau, he had first painted in the forest at Chailly in 1822. He returned to Barbizon in the autumn of 1830 and in the summer of 1831, where he made drawings and oil studies, from which he made a painting intended for the Salon of 1830; “View of the Forest of Fontainebleau'” (now in the National Gallery in Washington) and, for the salon of 1831, another “View of the Forest of Fontainebleau”‘.

During the late 1860s, the Barbizon painters attracted the attention of a younger generation of French artists studying in Paris. Several of those artists visited Fontainebleau Forest to paint the landscape, including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and Frédéric Bazille. In the 1870s those artists, among others, developed the art movement called Impressionism and practiced plein air painting.

Featured Music:

Lexicon Devil by The Germs

Cowboy by A Giant Dog

Johhny Hit And Run Pauline by X

“There was a word for what he was that nice people didn’t say except in the dirtiest jokes. He knew. Always had. There was no need for more of him. His life was a gross testament to cowardice and repugnance.”

CHECK OUT ALL THE HALF HOUR PROPHECY PODCASTS BY CLICKING HERE!

Sam Tallent’s Half Hour Prophecy Ep. 26: Barbarian Barbazon

Sam Tallent is a comedian and writer from Denver, Colorado. He lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with his wife and dog. His interests include Southern Gothic fiction and the “death” of Elvis Presley. He enjoys slow simmered suppers and writing in the third person.

Audio Mixing by Wally Wallace

A Sexpot Comedy Production

Last week the Denver comedy community lost a good one.  Rest in power Jordan Wieleba, Daughter, Friend, Comedian

http://www.comedianjordan.com/comedian-jordan-wieleba—albums

Featured Music:

Lean On Me by Bill Withers

Pints of Guinness Make You Strong by Against Me!

Featured Comedy:

Jordan Wieleba performs at Comedy Works (Denver) on 6/15/16

“There was a word for what he was that nice people didn’t say except in the dirtiest jokes. He knew. Always had. There was no need for more of him. His life was a gross testament to cowardice and repugnance.”

CHECK OUT ALL THE HALF HOUR PROPHECY PODCASTS BY CLICKING HERE!

Sam Tallent’s Half Hour Prophecy Ep. 25: Jordan Wieleba Memorial Orgy

Sam Tallent is a comedian and writer from Denver, Colorado. He lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with his wife and dog. His interests include Southern Gothic fiction and the “death” of Elvis Presley. He enjoys slow simmered suppers and writing in the third person.

Audio Mixing by Wally Wallace

A Sexpot Comedy Production

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Sentimentality originally indicated the reliance on feelings as a guide to truth, but current usage defines it as an appeal to shallow, uncomplicated emotions at the expense of reason.

Sentimentalism in philosophy is a view in meta-ethics according to which morality is somehow grounded in moral sentiments or emotions. Sentimentalism in literature is both a device used to induce a tender emotional response disproportionate to the situation at hand,(and thus to substitute heightened and generally uncritical feeling for normal ethical and intellectual judgments), and a heightened reader response willing to invest previously prepared emotions to respond disproportionately to a literary situation.

“A sentimentalist”, Oscar Wilde wrote, “is one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.” In James Joyce’s Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus sends Buck Mulligan a telegraph that reads “The sentimentalist is he who would enjoy without incurring the immense debtorship for a thing done.” James Baldwin considered that ‘Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel…the mask of cruelty’. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald, contrasts sentimentalists and romantics with Amory Blaine telling Rosalind, “I’m not sentimental–I’m as romantic as you are. The idea, you know, is that the sentimental person thinks things will last–the romantic person has a desperate confidence that they won’t.”

In modern times “sentimental” is a pejorative term that has been casually applied to works of art and literature that exceed the viewer or reader’s sense of decorum—the extent of permissible emotion—and standards of taste: “excessiveness” is the criterion; “Meretricious” and “contrived” sham pathos are the hallmark of sentimentality, where the morality that underlies the work is both intrusive and pat.

‘Sentimentality often involves situations which evoke very intense feelings: love affairs, childbirth, death’, but where the feelings are expressed with ‘reduced intensity and duration of emotional experience…diluted to a safe strength by idealisation and simplification’.

Featured Music:

Bodies by the Sex Pistols

One More Time by Joe Jackson

Jealous Guy by Roxy Music

“There was a word for what he was that nice people didn’t say except in the dirtiest jokes. He knew. Always had. There was no need for more of him. His life was a gross testament to cowardice and repugnance.”

CHECK OUT ALL THE HALF HOUR PROPHECY PODCASTS BY CLICKING HERE!

Sam Tallent’s Half Hour Prophecy Ep. 24: Sentimental Mentality

Sam Tallent is a comedian and writer from Denver, Colorado. He lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with his wife and dog. His interests include Southern Gothic fiction and the “death” of Elvis Presley. He enjoys slow simmered suppers and writing in the third person.

Audio Mixing by Wally Wallace

A Sexpot Comedy Production

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A vagrant, drifter or a vagabond is a person, often in poverty, who wanders from place to place without a home or regular employment or income. Other synonyms include “tramp,” “hobo,” and “scamp”. A vagrant could be described as being “a person without a settled home or regular work who wanders from place to place and lives by begging”; vagrancy is the condition of such persons.

Both “vagrant” and “vagabond” ultimately derive from Latin word vagari “wander.” The term “vagabond” is derived from Latin vagabundus. In Middle English, “vagabond” originally denoted a criminal.

In colonial America, anyone who wandered into a town and did not find work was told to leave town or face prosecution.

After the American Civil War, the Southern United States passed Black Codes, laws that tried to control freed slaves. Vagrancy laws were included in these codes. Homeless unemployed Black Americans were arrested and fined as vagrants. Usually, the person could not afford the fine, and so was sent to work in convict leasing camps. In these camps is where they would remain, “paying their debt”, and inevitably be re-enlisted back into slavery by white slave holders.

Since at least as early as the 1930s, a vagrancy law in America typically has rendered “no visible means of support” a misdemeanor, yet it has commonly been used as a pretext to take one into custody for such things as loitering, prostitution, drunkenness, or criminal association.

In the 1960s, laws proven unacceptably broad and vague were found to violate the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.[citation needed] Such laws could no longer be used to obstruct the “freedom of speech” of a political demonstrator or an unpopular group. Ambiguous vagrancy laws became more narrowly and clearly defined.

In Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville, 405 U.S. 156 (1972), the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that a Florida vagrancy law was unconstitutional because it was too vague to be understood.

Nevertheless, new local laws in the U.S. have been passed to criminalize aggressive panhandling.

In the U.S., some local officials encourage vagrants to move away instead of arresting them. The word vagrant is often (falsely) conflated with the term homeless person. Prosecutions for vagrancy are rare, being replaced by prosecutions for specific offenses such as loitering.

Featured Music:

East Coast Blues by The Can Kickers

Your Heart Is A Muscle The Size Of Your Fist by Ramshackle Glory

Acid Song by Johnny Hobo and the Freight Trains

“There was a word for what he was that nice people didn’t say except in the dirtiest jokes. He knew. Always had. There was no need for more of him. His life was a gross testament to cowardice and repugnance.”

CHECK OUT ALL THE HALF HOUR PROPHECY PODCASTS BY CLICKING HERE!

Sam Tallent’s Half Hour Prophecy Ep. 23: Drifters Gonna Drift

Sam Tallent is a comedian and writer from Denver, Colorado. He lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with his wife and dog. His interests include Southern Gothic fiction and the “death” of Elvis Presley. He enjoys slow simmered suppers and writing in the third person.

Audio Mixing by Wally Wallace

A Sexpot Comedy Production

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Moonshiners is an American docudrama television series on the Discovery Channel that dramatizes the life of people who produce (illegal) moonshine in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. The series dramatizes their liquor production efforts, law-evading techniques and life. There have been claims by local officials that the show is not what it portrays to be. Virginia authorities have stated that no illegal liquor is actually being produced by the people depicted in the show. The Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC) said in March 2012 that, “If illegal activity was actually taking place, the Virginia ABC Bureau of Law Enforcement would have taken action.” They also said that they had requested for the producers to add a disclaimer to clarify that the show was only a dramatization, “but the request was overlooked”, and the show’s producers, Magilla Entertainment, have stated their documentary content is real.

Portions of the show that feature Marvin “Popcorn” Sutton were taken from a documentary film by Neal Hutcheson. Hutcheson’s documentary was filmed in 2002 and released the same year with the title This is the Last Dam Run of Likker I’ll Ever Make. In 2008, a version of the documentary that was edited for television was broadcast on PBS and the Documentary Channel  with the title The Last One, and it received a Southeast Emmy Award in 2009. Sutton was arrested in 2007 by ATF agents in Cocke County, Tennessee (led by Jim Cavanaugh of Waco siege fame) for illegally distilling liquor and possession of a handgun by a felon, and was sentenced to eighteen months in jail in 2009. He subsequently committed suicide, apparently to avoid serving the federal prison term, and because he had been diagnosed with cancer.

The show’s first season premiered on December 6, 2011, and its second season premiered on November 7, 2012. Season 3 premiered on November 3, 2013. Season 4 premiered on November 4, 2014. Season 5’s premiere date is November 17, 2015.

Featured Music:

Soul Kitchen by X

Messy Bessy, Get Undressy by Pink & Brown

Smokestack Lightnin’ by Howlin’ Wolf

“There was a word for what he was that nice people didn’t say except in the dirtiest jokes. He knew. Always had. There was no need for more of him. His life was a gross testament to cowardice and repugnance.”

CHECK OUT ALL THE HALF HOUR PROPHECY PODCASTS BY CLICKING HERE!

Sam Tallent’s Half Hour Prophecy Ep. 22: Moonshiners

Sam Tallent is a comedian and writer from Denver, Colorado. He lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with his wife and dog. His interests include Southern Gothic fiction and the “death” of Elvis Presley. He enjoys slow simmered suppers and writing in the third person.

Audio Mixing by Wally Wallace

A Sexpot Comedy Production

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In cooking, a syrup or sirup (from Arabic: شراب‎‎; sharāb, beverage, wine, via Latin: sirupus) is a condiment that is a thick, viscous liquid consisting primarily of a solution of sugar in water, containing a large amount of dissolved sugars but showing little tendency to deposit crystals. When made of blood it’s called bloodsyrup. Its consistency is similar to that of molasses. The viscosity arises from the multiple hydrogen bonds between the dissolved sugar, which has many hydroxyl (OH) groups, and the water.

Syrups can be made by milking pine trees or by reducing naturally sweet juices such as cane juice, sorghum juice, or maple sap. Corn syrup is made from corn starch using an enzymatic process that converts it to sugars.

A variety of beverages call for sweetening to offset the tartness of some juices used in the drink recipes. Granulated sugar does not dissolve easily in cold drinks or ethyl alcohol. Since the following syrups are liquids, they are easily mixed with other liquids in mixed drinks, making them superior alternatives to granulated sugar.

A basic sugar-and-water syrup used by bartenders as a sweetener to make cocktails, simple syrup is made by stirring granulated sugar into hot water in a saucepan until the sugar is dissolved and then cooling the solution. Generally, the ratio of sugar to water can range anywhere from 1:1 to 2:1 by weight, and similarly by volume due to air in the granulated sugar. For pure sucrose the saturation limit is about 5:4 by volume. Syrup can be used as a sweetener. However, since the syrup jells readily when pectin is added, its primary culinary use is as a base for fruit sauces, toppings, and preserves.

Combining Demerara sugar, a type of natural brown sugar, with water produces Demerara syrup. Sugar substitutes such as honey or agave nectar can also be used to make simple syrups.

Featured Music:

The Man in Me by Bob Dylan

These Days by Nico

Attitude by Bad Brains

“There was a word for what he was that nice people didn’t say except in the dirtiest jokes. He knew. Always had. There was no need for more of him. His life was a gross testament to cowardice and repugnance.”

CHECK OUT ALL THE HALF HOUR PROPHECY PODCASTS BY CLICKING HERE!

Sam Tallent’s Half Hour Prophecy Ep. 21: Blood Syrup

Sam Tallent is a comedian and writer from Denver, Colorado. He lives in Las Vegas, Nevada with his wife and dog. His interests include Southern Gothic fiction and the “death” of Elvis Presley. He enjoys slow simmered suppers and writing in the third person.

Audio Mixing by Wally Wallace

A Sexpot Comedy Production

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