Since this is our last blog I first would like to say that I have enjoyed doing these blogs and each blog that we did was very interesting. I am always up for the challenge and my writing also got better by doing theses blogs. This was a good exercise for me with my writing and I learned a lot about music and culture. The book "Music and Culture" had a lot of information regarding music and the music industry, which I found very interesting. One of my favorite readings was, "It's Easy, but Wrong, to Blame the Music" by Hilary Rosen. It was a very powerful article and this article touched home to me. We as parents need to keep an eye on our children more closely regarding the music they listen to. Music with violence, sex and bad language needs to be controlled. That kind of music need to be censored if played on the radio and I believe very strongly that the music industry needs to help out these parents, as this type of music isn't any good for out children. As we could see I can't stop talking about this topic, as that's how interesting this course was to me and it touched me and my beliefs in a very big way. If I had the choice to do another class with Jennifer I would, because she is a good instructor. She makes her class work interesting and very challenging. She was always there when I needed to talk about an assignment. I also learned how music is a very important part of our lives. In the world we live in today, there is music everywhere. Music effects people lives in many different ways. Each artist brings their own style of music to their fans. There is good music and there is bad music that we don;t want our youths to listen to. This course taught me a lot about music that I didn't even know about. For example, I didn't know about piracy which I feel strongly against, piracy needs to be stopped. If it's possible it could be stopped and the music industry needs to continue to censor, which is the right road to go. We all need to help and reach out to our youths. I also liked the artist these articles talked about, as with David Bowie, Queen Latifah, and Garth Brooks. It made the reading more interesting for me. I also liked reading others people's blogs and replying to them. All the blogs I read I found very interesting and some of them were easy to reply. This class was a challenge for me, especially on my writing. After all these writing assignments, I have to say my writing has gotten a lot better and my spelling had gotten better as well too. This course wasn't all joyful, as I also hit frustration mood. Especially when it came to the research paper, as that was the hardest assignment for me. I had trouble with writing my words, as I hit writers block a lot and I thought that my writers block would never go away. Thanks goes out to my instructor Jennifer for the challenges that she put me through, throughout this whole semester. I knew that I was going to be able to handle the challenge, but I also knew it was not going to be easy.

I found this class to be very helpful with my writing, as it was also great practice for me. I want to consider myself a writer one day, as I love to write. Actually my favorite thing to write is poetry, as poetry seems to help me express myself in many different ways. I use a lot of my imagination in my writing and in this class I have found myself doing a lot of writing which I enjoyed, but at the same time I found it to be a challenge. As class continued during the semester the writing became more of a challenge, but I found the subjects we had to write about very interesting. The readings were interesting also, as with the book called "Music and Culture" it really caught my attention. The writing I found the hardest to do was answering a question with ten sentences. I found that assignment very hard for me to do. I don't know why I had so much trouble with that assignment, but that one was so very challenging and it was difficult at times. It even got to the point where it frustrated me. Not only did I found very hard to write ten sentences, but some of the questions were very hard to answer. The sentences seem hard because I couldn't figure out how I was going to answer the question with ten sentences. Did I have enough information in my brain to do that? That was the frustrating part, but I know the one thing that helped my writing skills a lot was the blogs the 500 words. I really enjoyed writing the blogs and the blogs expanded my mind. I found the blogs easy to write and they advanced my writing horizons to another level. I love music as much as I like to write, so I found this course to be very interesting. With the writing of the blogs they helped me with writing the essays and it prepared me towards writing the essays, which the blogs were good practice for me. It helped me with making my thesis stronger and it also helped me make my conclusion of my essays better. I feel my writing even got better on catching the reader's attention. Writing an essay isn't easy and it is always a challenge for me. However, by writing the blogs it help me to prepare towards writing the essays and it also helped me prepare for the challenge of the essay. It also helps me write more powerful statements and sentences. All the writing I did in this course helped me with spelling different words, as I learned new words that I didn't know the meaning of. I feel me writing has actually improved and I have become a better writer. After I finish writing each blog and each essay I was very happy with what I wrote and I was very satisfied with my work. Let me tell you something I never wrote so much in my life in one week. I actually was really surprised within myself and getting all that work done. I actually have to say I met the challenge this course gave me. Thanks for guiding me along the way.

Economic hardship is not a valid reason to stop censorship; we really need to keep censorship. Especially as parents we need to support censorship and we need to stop our children from listening to songs with so much violence, sex, drugs and bad language. I also don't think censorship hurts the song, but I actually think it makes it better when the artist has to take its song and change it for the better. We also as parents need to take time and listen to what our kids are listening to and believe me there is a lot of music that isn't good for our children to listen to. Who is to say exactly what this type of music is doing to our children's minds and only our children will show us in time. If these songs don't continue to get censored our children will be affected. We as parents are willing to take the chance and as parents I strongly believe we aren't ready to take that chance. We all need to support censorship and we need to fight together against violent, drugs, sex and bad language music, so we see we need to hold onto censorship. Have we all actually heard how bad some of these songs are? I can't even stand hearing the bad language. I can't believe the music industry approves such music. The music industry itself has to want to help censor these types of music. "George Bernard Shaw views censorship as an inherently conservative action, which is performed by those who desire to preserve tradition. He pointed out that morality is a phenomenon dependent on the majority". (219,4) Till this day controversial lyrics haven't been blamed or actually proven that it causes our society's ills and there have been a lot of attempts towards blaming the actual music and such efforts haven't been successful. People feel that it's okay for our children to listen to such terrible and troublesome music and that it won't harm our children in anyway. Let's ask ourselves do we believe that to be so? I myself believe strongly that this type of music does affect our children one way or another. I'm not saying all children, but I believe there are some. That our influence by this style of bad music and I feel for our children sake. We need to censorship this type of music and who are we to say that this type of music does not influence our children? Are we willing to take that chance with our children's life? To me I'm not willing to take that chance with my child, as I rather be safe than sorry when it comes to my children's lives. The artist who writes this type of music do we really think they care. In my opinion I don't think so. If they did they would do something about it. Censorship doesn't hurt the artist and they still get paid. All er are asking is to help our children by keeping our minors from getting a hold of bad music. i don't think we are asking for too much for our children's future.

My research paper is about a song called Puff the Magic Dragon by Peter Paul and Mary, which was banned. I chose this assignment, because I was wondering how does a children's folk song gets banned. I felt that by doing this some research on it I would get my question answered. I'm finding out while I'm working on my research paper, that there is not a lot of information on this song and what all happened with the song. The only thing I might see this research paper is if I'm going to have enough information to cover six pages. This is the biggest concern that I really have. I just have to use my information wisely and make it stretch. Besides worrying about the six pages I feel my research paper is going to be okay. I'm starting to find out some answers to my research very interesting. In so many words my research is coming together slowly. I'm starting to find out a research paper is a lot of work has it's not as easy as I though it was going to be. Now for me to overcome the obstacle that I have regarding, if I'm going to have enough information or not to cover a six page essay. I would have to find songs that have been banned and compare it to the songs different or the same. See if they were banned for the same reason or for a different reason. If I do this it would give I more to write about and my research paper would be more interesting to read for the reader. Right now I have information for my research paper, but I need to put in more sources and more about my opinion on what I think about the banning of "Puff the Magic Dragon". I also need to put information about the artist and creators of the song. What they are all about and what inspired them to write the song. Then what their reactions were when they found out that their song was going to be banned, because they said the song had something to do with drugs. The strangest thing about this is nowhere in the song does it talk about drugs, but to this person the song was talking about drugs and then had other people believing it. I feel what this person was so wrong and I still can't believe how some people actually believed this person. Didn't they pay attention to Perter, Paul and Mary's lyrics? The song was so innocent, plus it was a folk song for children. This folk song was about a dragon that lived by the sea and the song also became a very popular song. I feel that the person that talked wrong about the song was just jealous that tit was so popular. I'm finding out that this research paper is turning out to be very interesting.

Internet piracy is illegally when they sale stuff on the Internet. I believe the music industry will be able to stop piracy with the help of the Recording Industry Association of America, as on their side they have a real chance of stopping piracy on the Internet. Member companies of the Recording Industry Association of America have filed thousands of civil law suits on people who illegally distributed copy righted music on peer-to-peer networks. With these law suits issued by Recording Industry Associated of America, they wanted to send a strong message that the illegal distribution of copy righted has consequences. President of Recording Industry Association of America said "Nobody likes playing the heavy and having to resort to litigation." said RIAA president Carry Sherman. "But when your product is being regularly stolen, there comes a time when you have to take appropriate action. We simply cannot allow online piracy to continue destroying the livelihoods of artist, musicians, song writers, retailers, and everyone in the music industry" (Tomasino, 188). Recording Industry Association of America has been advising the public that file sharing copy righted music is illegal, and when you are doing it you're not anonymous and by doing it you can have real consequences. Cary Sherman says "And the message id beginning to be heard. More and more PsP users are realizing that there are dozens of legal ways to get music online, and they are beginning to migrate to legitimate services. We hope to encourage even the worst offenders to change their behavior, and acquire the music they want through legal means" (Tomasino, 189). Recording Industry Associated of America and the other University community have came together to combat piracy. Colleges all over the country are issuing severe warnings to try to stop the swapping of pirated music over the campus internet. Some individuals decided to over look the warning and continue doing what they were doing. The Recording Industry Association of America wants these kinds of people to know that we are serious about protecting our rights. In so many words they are going to pay a high price for breaking the law, as they have been warned over and over about the law. They need to take these warnings serious, because Recording Industry Association of America is serious when they say they will take over action and did them ever. The Recording Industry Association of America member companies files copy right infringement claims against 261 individual file sharers. Then the Recording Industry Association of America would also be gathering evidence, so they could bring law suits against computer users who illegally distribute copy righted music through such peer to peer file distribution networks. The lawsuits that the Recording Industry Association of America planned to have a number of illegal shares highly concerned about what they did and now want to know what they could do so they won't be sued. So the Recording Industry Association of America has decided not to pursue users who step forward before being targeted for the past illegal sharing of copy righted works. We can see that we truly need to believe the music industry will stop privacy.

The show I chose to write about in this blog is "Dancing with the Stars". I chose this show, because I enjoy watching it. I find it interesting and exciting, as I like watching the stars trying their best on the dance floor, struggling or being successful. I also like listening to the judge's opinions and comments, which I sometimes find so entertaining. It is so surprising to see a football player doing the cha-cha or the mongo. These entertainers actually actually give it it their all out on the dance floor I have seen some entertainers hurting themselves during their rehearsal time, because they push themselves so hard. The trained dancers that are teamed up with their star have a lot of hard work ahead of them. They need to choose the right routines to catch the judge's interest, as the judges are really hard core and they want to see perfection. The judges want to see the dancers and entertainer connect to life on the dance floor. With connecting in every aspect of their dance and making a strong connection and also their technique has to be right on the money. As the weeks go by and some of the dancers get eliminated and the competition gets harder, the judges also get harder and they look for the littlest mistakes. The one thing I hate about the judging is that they let the television viewers vote. I feel that isn't fair, because I feel the viewer's vote as with whom they like as a star not the way they dance and that sometimes hurts the real good dancers and we end up seeing the good dancers get cut. Where I feel it should be judged by how well they danced not by how popular they are. I think that is only fair, as I've seen a lot of couples get eliminated that were real good dancers. I feel it's not a fair competition when they let the fans vote, as it should only be left up to the judges. Another part of "Dancing with the Stars" is when they do their free style dancers. i have seen some real good free-styles. They come out with some kind of dancers and they get the audience going, as they go all out. The free style could either help them or break them. The dancers get to choose the right dance that is going to make them look good in front of those judges and believe me that's hard to do in front of these judges. Theses judges are very hard core, they look for any little mistake that the dancers make, but also when they dance real well, the judges gives them the points they really deserve. When I started watching this show I really got into it and after two routine of dances, I would pick me winner the couple I thought would win it all. Sense the show has aired I've had picked two winners. I believe "Dancing with the Stars" is going to be with us for quite some time, as a lot of people seem to find it entertaining.

Teenagers gave Eminem credit for keeping it real, because they see him both as a rebel raising up against a brutal parent and as the devoted father they never had. It is important to me that lyrics are reality based when an artist sings about the truth it gives the songs more meaning. The music touches the person in a big way that listens to this type of music. These types of music touches their heart and soul and it can make them cry or make them very happy. Sometimes this type of music relates what they might be going through at the time or something they went through in the past. Music throughout my life made a big difference in my life, as sometimes when I needed an answer for the mood I would go through the oldies to help me through it. When I was in love or was broken hearted, Karen Carpenter helped me get through it; music had the answer for me. When I found no one to understand me, I found music to understand me. i have music to thank a lot for getting me through a lot in my life. The oldies, blues, country, and pop made a big difference in my life, as music helped me through rough times and great times. For example, when I was a teenager and I wanted to tell somebody something important and I couldn't find the right words to say, I would turn to the lyrics of a song to help me out and it always helped me. I turned to the lyrics of music because the artist lyrics were realistic and it relates with what I was going through at the time and when I hear those same songs now it takes me back in time. Who says we need pictures to remember our past, music does wonders for us. There are realistic songs that bring back our greatest memories, happy or sad. Realistic songs have touched my life in many ways. I'm so grateful for realistic music and I tend to believe that country music has more realistic music than any other kind of music. Country music artists express their lives and feelings so well. When we listen to their music we could tell it comes way deep down in soul. When we hear their songs, we can't help to put feelings into what they were going through. The country greats I'm referring to are, Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, Loretta Lyn, Kenny Rogers, Barbra Mandrel, and Johnny Cash, all of these country greats sing realistic songs, as their very powerful songs. The greatest realistic songs are the love songs or the songs that tell a story. Telling a true story through music makes us think of other people and what they've gone through their lives. It sometimes make us feel that our problems aren't that serious compared to theirs and that is their hope for us. Country music is very powerful realistic music, as it actually makes us fell what they went through by just listening to their lyrics. Realistic music in so many ways touches our heart and soul in so many different ways.