Have you ever looked up to the sky in the middle of nowhere… and seen  the beautiful shining stars? A lot of people have, and go into the middle of  nowhere (like a desert) to camp at night and go star gazing because where  they live they are not able to see stars. This is not usually because of dense  clouds and smog, or lots of air traffic. But those are other issues. A big  reason for having to leave cities to see stars is light pollution.

 Light pollution is a result of artificial lighting. Street lamps, lighted signs, and decorative lighting all shine up and outward into the night blending and blocking the view of the stars. But not just being able to see stars isn’t the only problem, birds have trouble migrating because of the light pollution. The birds get confused with the bright lights and fly into buildings.

Another issue is the leatherback sea turtle going to the wrong area to lay her eggs. Normally the turtles swim towards the sun, seeing the glow near the water but now they often mistake popular beach resorts lights for the sun. But, they will still lay their eggs on that beach, resulting in stray hatchlings getting eaten by predators or run over by cars. Even worse, leatherbacks are endangered!

Light pollution is easily exterminated and many places have cut off unnecessary lights or even controlled the light focus downward with new types of lamps. For example, in Florida, many street lamps are shaped like upside down bowls. They use light bulbs that give off a yellowish light, instead of bright white. These bulbs are made out of high pressure sodium. In St. Louis, the arch lights are shut off when there is heavy fog to multiply the light or when there are birds migrating.

There are many things that you can do to fight light pollution. You can make sure that your porch light is tucked into the ceiling, rather than sticking out and giving off light in ever direction. You can also turn off unnecessary lights outside. Porch lights don’t need to be on all night. You can also work with your local government to turn streetlights off time from 11 pm – 3 am in residential areas.

One of the best songs on this months paste C.D. is Id Engager by Of Montreal. This song is off Of Montreals 9th C.D. titled Skeletal Lamping. I’ve heard a few of Of Montreals songs in the past, But surprisingly all the songs have been sung in different ways. This isn’t because they have a different lead singer… But because Of Montreals lead singer gets bored of his life, and spices it up by making up new personas. For example this song is sung as his persona Georgie Fruit, which is a eccentric transvestite looking and acting person… when in reality he has a wife and a kid!

This song is very jumping and discoish because of the electronic sounds in it. I chose to review this song out of all the other songs on the paste C.D. because it stood out with the electronicness. This song also has very cool bell sounds which I think is really cool and different! 

Of Montreal has been around since 1997 and includes the following band members… Kevin Barnes, Bryan Poole, Dottie Alexander, Jamey Huggins, Davey Pierce, and Ahmed Gallab, and the lead singer, Kevin Barnes has had at least two different personas!

Visit their website here.

This year for the presidential elections I decided to follow them and make a map to help me track how many electoral votes each person had. I listened to the radio and CNN to get the information that I would need for Tuesday night. Whenever each state had finished counting, or was almost done counting their electoral votes, and they had announced who got the electoral votes for that state I would color in that state on the map. Red for McCain, and blue for Obama. 

There were a few surprises that occurred when I was tracking the states… the first was that Nevada, Colorado, New Mexico, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, Virginia, and Florida all voted republican (Bush) last year, and this year they all their electoral votes went to the democrat (Obama)!

The other surprise is that Missouri and North carolina are still currently counting their votes, but even if both of their electoral voted went to McCain, Obama still would’ve won!

Congrats Barack Obama!

Have you ever wondered what different celebrations there are during halloween? And what kids do there? Well I have so I decided to do a little research on it!

Austria - In Austria families leave bread and water on a table with a lamp next to it. This is supposed to help greet and beckon dead souls back to Earth on such a spiritual night.

Spain - In Spain children go trick or treating and eat a pastry called Bones of the Holy. It is covered in an orange glaze and has anise seed in it. Afterwards families go to cemeteries to visit dead family members and they stay there throughout the night. The next day families clean the deceased burial plots. 

Japan - In Japan water and food is put in front of a photo of a deceased friend or family member, then lanterns are lit and set floating in water or next to a body of water to light the ghosts to Earth and to show them where their family & friends are. It is called the Obon Festival.

Germany - In Germany households put away knives and other harmful objects on Halloween night, so that the ghosts coming back to Earth will not accidentally hurt themselves during celebrations. Cemeteries are cleaned and wreaths and lanterns are placed at family grave sites.

I’m sure most of you who are reading my blog have heard of the popular video game Guitar Hero, and you’ve seen… or used the controllers.

For those of you who haven’t seen or heard of the game, it is a game where you play a song and it tells you which one of the five buttons to press at a certain time. Easy level has three colored keys, Medium has four colored keys, hard with four colored keys also, and Expert with all five. And with each higher level the keys become more often & you have to press them faster.

There is a band called the Guitar Zeros that enjoyed playing guitar hero so much that they decided to find a program that lets you plug your guitar hero controller into your computer and your computer converts the keys you press on your guitar hero controller into music.

They have two guys who play the bass and and the guitar controls. and a singer and a drummer. Their names/nicknames are Ryan, Junior, Xtian, and Owen and they are described as grime/rock/electro and a fan describes them as MC5 meets Devo.

My favorite song of theirs is At the Beach, listen to it… and learn about them here.

Halloween started more than two thousand years ago with a festival called the Celtic Festival of Samhain (pronounced sow-in). The Celts celebrated their new year on November 1st. They celebrated their new year on November 1st because this marked the end of the warmth and sun of summer and the coming of the cold and the dark of winter… which was a time usually associated with death. 

Celts had celebrations during the night before November 1st and built bonfires and threw crops and animals into them to be burned as sacrifices. And while doing this they often wore animals pelts and heads on them selves during these celebrations so that is most likely where the custom of wearing costumes on Halloween came from.

Around A.D. 43 Romans had taken most of the Celtic land and people so eventually the their celebrations were joined together.

The Romans originally had two special days in October… the first was Feralia which was a holiday of the Romans in late October that commemorated the passing of the dead. The second day was a day to honor the goddess of fruit and trees Pomona. The symbol of Pomona is an apple so that is prbably where the activity bobbing fro apples came from.

Then around the 800s christianity had spread into the Celtic regions and Pope Boniface IV said November 1st would be called All Saints Day. Many people thought then… and still think now that the Pope was trying to get rid of the Celtic holidays. The celebration was also called All Hallowmas or All Hallows, and the night before it was eventually called Halloween.

This weeks Paste C.D. song review is on a song by O’Death called Lowtide. This song is like light country and rock combined and it makes a really awesome sound when mixed together! This song has really good vocals and a violin and it isn’t necessarily a song that gets stuck in your head… but it is really good at tapping your foot type of song!

The artists who created this song are called O’Death and consist of six members :

Greg Jamie - vocals, guitar.

Gabe Darling - backing vocals, ukulele, guitar, banjo, piano.

Davd RB - drums, whoop.

Bob Pycior - fiddle, guitar, piano.

Othar the Tooth Collector - bass.

Dan Sager - trombone, euphonium, keys.

This band is describes themselves as gothic/country/punk and I really like this band, this is probably my favorite song of theirs and I look forward to listening to more of them on their new C.D…. Broken Hymns, Limbs, and Skin!

Since I like to talk about things that are interesting and that I know a lot about I have chosen Neopets as this weeks blog post topic. Neopets is a virtual pet website with many different things to entertain you, like games, worlds to explore, message boards, taking care of your pets, and even something sort of like youtube called neovision!

Games - There are a lot of games to play on neopets, in fact they just recently released their thousandth game! Most of the games are easy to play and very fun to play also. But they do vary from math type games to action games! And a plus with these games you get neopoints (virtual money on neopets) for playing!

Worlds To Explore - There are currently eighteen worlds to explore on neopets full of fun things to do, like go on trips, coloring sheets, themed games, and even a concert hall in a prehistoric looking place called Tyrannia! There is also an underwater world called Maraqua. A piratey world called Krawk Island. A greek world called Altador. An Asian world called Shenkuu, and even two medieval worlds called Meridell and Brightvale!

The Pets - There are fifty-four pets that you can choose from on neopets, and you can even choose what color they are they are by saving up your neopoints and buying a paintbrush. You can also play with your pets, feed them, and even groom them. Best of all…you can have four!

In addition to those things there are also neoboards where you can talk to people, neovision which is like youtube, except all the videos are neopets related and all are made by users. Or my personal favorite, you can practice your HTML/CSS on petpages and userlookups.

This week I am going to write my paste C.D. song review on a song called Alphabutt by Kimya Dawson. You might have heard of Kimya Dawson before on the Juno soundtrack which her songs Tree Hugger, So Nice So Smart, Sleep, Loose Lips, Tire Swing, and My Rollercoaster were all featured. if you have heard at least one of these songs, or one of her other songs you will know that she is wacky, random, and fun in her songs. This song is no different, but you may have already realized that when you heard the song was called Alphabutt!

This song is an A,B,C’s type of song singing what the letters could stand for for example : A is for apple, B is for butt. And she even mentions her daughter in it! When she says P is for Panda pooping in her potty, and yes she is so eccentric she named her  daughter Panda! This song makes me feel like singing it and it also makes me feel like laughing, the one thing I don’t like about this song is that is should be longer!

This week i am going to review an article in a magazine called Plushie Pals. I started getting Plushie Pals about six months ago when Neopets: the official magazine stopped it’s printing. Plushie Pals is a magazine that has articles on lots of different types of virtual pet websites, lit Neopets, Club Penguin, Webkinz, and Beanie Babies 2.0. I mostly read the Neopets articles in the magazine because that is the only site I play and the Neopets portion almost always has a game guide thats interesting! 

I’m going to write my review on one of those game guides! The game guide I’m going to talk about is a Snowmuncher game guide written by Rebecca Bundy. 

This article is written very well and doesn’t just use little words… which is something I didn’t expect in a kids magazine! She states and explains all the things you should know about the game before playing it and some tips on practicing the game very clearly. I also like that she decided to put down the points breakdown in her article, and gives a great description of when certain things show up and what they look like and which ones you should aim for getting first.

And last but not least she explained an easy way how to score 5000 points to get the Snowmuncher avatar, that was my favorite part!!

Play the game here