As people can see, I have returned. However, it will be for a limited time. I will be online this week until this Saturday. Once I am competely settled back into college for yet another semester, I will be fully back full-time....until I have to start to finally pay back all my debt in terms of insurance, school loans, payments on cable and internet, et al that others dear to me have helped keep me afloat with by aiding me whenever possible. Hopefully, that pay back day doesn't come too quick, but since it is an aspect of life, I will be facing it probably sooner rather than later, and so, once that day does come, I'll say adeu to all of those who've sort of become sort of another internet family to me and would miss these people dearly (and those people know who they are, too), because I'll be way too busy--unfortunately--with payments on numerous things to be able to be online as much as I used to be.

To get to the point, I will be offline from Christmas Eve until sometime in January, so Feliz Navidad, Merry Christmas, Happy Hannukah, Kool Kwanza, and all that for all of you! I SHALL RETURN!

As obviously denoted by the above title, does anybody have any specific song or music style that brings forth such raw emotion or recalls such fond memories that just hearing one note, one cord, or one beat brings one to a state of inner peace? Personally, most of the songs that've left such a imprint on my life come from my past, with a good percent of them being from beloved childhood memories:

JIM HENSON

SS: I Don't Want To Live On The Moon

TMS/MB: Just One Person

FR: Pass It On, Raise Your Voices High, We Are The Children of Tomorrow, We're Part Of Each Other, Time To Say Goodbye, etc.

Kermit: It's Not That Easy Being Green

Muppets overall: The Rainbow Connection

WALT DISNEY

Movie and/or Casting: A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes

Mickey: The Mickey Mouse Club March

Disney overall: When You Wish Upon A Star

COUNTRY MUSIC

George Strait: Love Without End Amen and Heartland

Garth Brooks: The Dance and Unanswered Prayers

Tim McGraw: Back When

There would be more, but I don't want to list them all. So, how about you guys? Do certain songs or specific styles of music truly capture you? Please post any and all comments below. I'd like to say a quick thanks to those who comment, and may God bless each and every one of you (even those who may not believe)!

Apparently, my rants about how entertainment's gone down the tubes (with children's institutions using either the Blue's Clues/Dora the Explorer or [adult swim] formula, primetime programs-including cartoons and sitcoms-exploiting all people involved, game shows showcasing how desperate people are to get an extremely lame prize, bachelor-type stuff parading around the notion that only the beautifully rich people succeed in the world, cartoon stations airing things that are live-action, etc.) aren't enough anymore, especially now that WWE-the once cool leader of being badass-is promoting itself as a family-and-kid-friendly product again with the advent of it not only dropping in ratings (going from the controversial TV14 to the politically-correct PGv rating that implies that the company now doesn't do anything without appeasing its causal audience demographic that's been swallowed up by the rising popularity of John Cena), but also of it creating a kids-specific line of products under a new banner called WWEKids.

Things as they stand now sadden me to the point that I just want to stand up and shout to the corporate execs, "You suck...just like Kurt Angle's theme of old"!

Granted, I understand that it's all about the money to be made, but this just in...money isn't everything if it butchers any opportunities for companies to better themselves by getting rid of valuable competition or any source of imagination.

And as a DC Comic's Teen Titans fan, here I thought the betrayals of Beast Boy and Raven by Tara Markov and either Eric Forrester or Malchior were bad. XD

Seriously, all kidding aside, entertainment now has done nothing for me, save make me pay over $100+ for DVDs of my lost past that's been taken apart by Hollywood thinking it could get some quick cash by making a remake-or rather, more like rip-off-of classic cherished memories.

As most of my friends here know, I am in college and as such, college life comes with both perks and drawbacks. Now, I am here to rant about one cheif problem with living the college life...college pranks.

Now, before I went to college, I've always heard of said pranks, but now that I am experiencing them, it's even worse! To get to the meat and potatoes of the matter, some idiot found it amusing to set off the annoyingly loud fire alarm system THREE SEPERATE TIMES in a span that's LESS than 24 hours!

Now, I could deal with it were I in class already or were it daytime, but do it at night when most people are either sleeping, studying for exams, or quietly being insomniacs in their rooms...is TOO much. What worsens the matter--besides the fact that it's at night when it's dark and cold--is the times at which the dumbbell found it prudent to set the alarm off.

To start things, they set it off at 7:50 PM. I was relatively calm with this first occurance, because everyone was still pretty much awake, despite getting ready for bed. Then, they set it off at 1:30 AM. This time, I was a tad irritated, because I was just finally drifting off to sleep and I hate to be woken when I've just gotten to sleep. The final time they did it, it was 4:30 AM and by now, I was "pulling a Rock" in that I was in full enraged bull mode, ripping and snorting and secretly yelling things not meant for impressionable ears, because not only had this occured for now the third time in less than a day (but at night when it's cold to boot), but it also occured at a time when most would definately be asleep, no matter how deep of an insomniac one may be, because lack of sleep is bad for one's physical, mental, and emotional faculties.

Suffice it to say that I am running on fumes here and am typing this out of both sheer frustration and leftover adrenaline from dealing with the issue. Following this, should it happen again, I am complaining to the school's board of regents and other higher-ups to have this shumuck put on probation or whatever is a good punishment to keep them from bothering people during the week before finals at all hours of the night.

With two specials gone by (Studio DC: Live), a holiday one coming up (Letters for Santa), the issuing of character-written books by Pepe the King Prawn ("It's Hard Out There for a Shrimp") and Miss Piggy ("The Diva Code: 100+ Things Men...erm, Frogs...Do") in the vein of Kermit's own "Before You Leap", and a possible twosome of theatrical releases looming (the unamed Muppet movie by Stoller and Segal staged for 2010 & the Fraggle Rock movie to come sometime possibly next year)...

THE MUPPETS ARE BACK!!

Having said that, it's a great time to be a Muppet fan. Who else agrees?

Here is a blog where you can hereby be as random as you wish. Feel free to act as weird or zany as you want (within reason, because we need to abide by site rules).

Now how many of this generation would know what came next following that utterance? Not many. But many kids of the 80's and 90's would, given the status of a certain computer game and the shows that came after its emergence.

I mean, before the Warner Brothers (and Warner Sister) began belting out geographically-based lyrics, many fans uttered the saying, "Do it Rockapella"! Following that, the acapella group--Rockapella--would sing the theme song that asks the vexying question as to just Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

With Rockapella proving the musical score, funnyman Greg Lee acting as a trainer to new recruits, and Lynne Thigpen as The Cheif, The A.C.M.E Detective Agency sought out new opporatives to aid it in its cause to catch the crafty crime queen with a fiendish fashion taste in latina-bred ex-A.C.M.E officer, Carmen Isabella Sandiego (along with her horde of heniously horrendous heathens).

As the gameshow based upon a game started, Greg would ask the new recruits questions as to where the crook-of-the-day took their stolen loot (that was often some historical artifact).

Finally, the two contestants with the best scores moved on to the next round, which required only one of them to find out (in order) where the loot, a warrant for the crook's arrest, and the crook themselves were located.

Upon doing this and bagging the crook-of-the-day, the winning contestant had a chance to catch Carmen.

Were they victorious in busting Miss Sandiego (which to do so, they would've had to locate six to eight geographical locations on a map within a limited number of seconds), the contestant would be flown to somewhere around the world (with the later seasons--probably due to PBS funding, as the show was broadcast on public television--restricting the trip to only the lower 48 states within the United States), but should Carmen elude them, they wouldn't go empty handed, for not only would they be upgraded from Gumshoe to Slueth by way of a cool Sleuth jacket, they would get everything the earlier contestants who've lost received (a Carmen shirt, a Carmen CD, a Carmen voice recorder, a portable globe, and issues of National Geographic World magazine...given that each bankrolled case was to be verified by National Geographic World for reasons of historical and geographical accuracy).

The point of this whole thing is that nowadays, the show itself could require a revival (or rather, that it is sorely needed), considering how most people now cannot even locate world places that are discussed heavily through news reports on your average map, but I digress, considering that Carmen and her V.I.L.E legion of lackeys are in hiding once again, Greg Lee is all but retired, The Cheif has now passed on to that preverbial big front office in the sky, and Rockapella's members have since changed since the days of the show.

Still, because of the show's fan following, who is with me in saying it needs a comeback, given how people have suddenly become geographically inept?