Going Camping and Sauerkraut

I will be camping this weekend along the Northern California Coast. I hope to bring back some pictures of my adventures and post them here.

Also, my experiment making sauerkraut (aka cultured cabbage) has been declared a success. I had my first half cup of the little critter laden kraut and it tasted quite good. Not only that, about an hour afterward, I could feel my stomach and breath freshening up from the introduction of live enzymes and beneficial bacteria. The taste comprised of a combination of sweet, sour and zing. I plan to do more experimenting as I move along on my quest for the perfect kraut.

Cheers!

Notice to Sploggers

While I do appreciate the entrepreneurial spirit in folks, I am not interested in reading comments from people introducing their wares and services. If you want to comment on my posts, fine. If you want to try to sell me something, your gonna get the same response I gave to the millions of spammers that found my e-mail box - that is nada, zippo, zilch. OK?

For Cindy Sheehan and Company

I wish I could have come up with the words to say this to Cindy Sheehan in her days of grief, but it's better coming from someone who lives in the war zone.

The Letter to Cindy Sheehan from Iraq the Model.

Read all of it.

Hey! Let's Celebrate Che!

Some great stuff about everyone's fave revolutionary:

First the latest Che Icon. No E-Ticket needed to enjoy this ride, but scroll down a little below the ears to get the full effect.

Then the History lesson:

"Che’s lust for power had other ways of expressing itself besides murder. The contradiction between his passion for travel—a protest of sorts against the constraints of the—and his impulse to become himself an enslaving state over others is poignant. In writing about Pedro Valdivia, the conquistador of Chile, Guevara reflected: “He belonged to that special class of men the species produces every so often, in whom a craving for limitless power is so extreme that any suffering to achieve it seems natural.” He might have been describing himself. At every stage of his adult life, his megalomania manifested itself in the predatory urge to take over other people’s lives and property, and to abolish their free will."

From: The Killing Machine: Che Guevara, from Communist Firebrand to Capitalist Brand July 11, 2005Alvaro Vargas LlosaThe New Republic

Read the whole thing.

Much thanks to WitNit for the heads up.

Remember Lefties, TANSTAAFL!

Kudos to Robin, my wife

She made an excellent chicken soup using an old crockpot we picked up at a yard sale really cheap. It was the best tasting soup I've ever had. Ingredients included organic leg chicken, Shitake mushrooms, garlic, parsley, onion, celery, carrots, water and a little rock salt brine and of course lots of love.

The Aim of the Islamist Movement

Interesting article by Michael Totten at Tech Central about what the Islamists are shooting for.

Islamists have killed thousands of Westerners over the past couple of years -- thousands in New York City alone. But they have killed far more of their own fellow Muslims in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Egypt, Sudan, Algeria, and too many other places to list. The Terror War, or whatever we ought to call it, is not about us. It's a war waged by totalitarian Islamists against the rest of the world. We aren't targets because of what we do or even because of who we are. We are targets because we are not them. They hate everybody and we're part of "everybody."

Read it all here.

Imaginos Saga

"I am the one you warned me of."
"I am the one who never, never lied."

From Imaginos, "I Am The One You Warned Me Of" by the Blue Oyster Cult.

On my way home from a meeting this evening I fumbled around the storage compartment that sits between the driver's and front passenger's seats in my car. Near the bottom of the pile of cassettes and wires I found a favorite album of mine. It's titled "Imaginos," the 1988 album produced by the Blue Oyster Cult, my favorite Heavy Metal band. Some would argue that BOC is not metal. Technically speaking they are the original Heavy Metal band. The term "Heavy Metal", as a moniker for a musical genre was coined by Sandy Pearlman, who was manager for the band during its formative years. He used the term "Heavy Metal" in an interview with Creem Magazine to describe Blue Oyster Cult's crashing guitar sound. Sure, the sound was nothing new. Led Zepellin and Black Sabbath had been blasting away a couple of years prior, but the name was first applied in reference to BOC.

Back to the album, Imaginos. During the 80's the band went through some radical changes both in music and personnel. Drummer and founding member Albert Bouchard was kicked out of the band, but prior to that he was commissioned to work on "Imaginos," a mythologized spin on the history of America and the origins of World War I. Bouchard wrote much of the music and probably recorded on some of the songs with such notable musicians like Joe Satriani and Robbie Krieger. Vocals by current BOC members, Donald Roeser (aka Buck Dharma) and Eric Bloom fill the tracks also. What I love about this album is it's musical and lyrical intensity. It tells the story about the central figure, Imaginos, who is also Desdinova, an alien born and raised among humans in New Hampshire. He goes about singing songs "Nobody Knew" and "Stories Left Undone." People note his powers of seeing into the future and he takes some friends with him on a journey to Mexico. Along they way their ship is wrecked in a storm and his friends leave him to drown on "An oyster bed that seems plush as down." He drowns in the tide and his body is collected by the Blue Oyster Cult, a group of aliens. They have the power to restore him and when they do, they offer a deal - die as a human or live and become one of them. He chooses the latter and then discovers that he was always one of them. He realizes his mission and begins it in earnest. I won't say more and there is a lot more to the story . There are other websites that deal with this topic, but the best place to go is to this BOC FAQ site.

You have to go pretty far down the FAQ to get the scoop on Imaginos.

My favorite songs on the Album? Well, that's a toughie.

I love the following songs, all for different reasons:

"I Am The One You Warned Me Of"
"In the Presence of Another World"
"The Siege and Investiture of Baron Von Frankenstein's Castle at Weisseria"
"Del Rio's Song"
"Astronomy"
"Blue Oyster Cult"
"The Magna of Illusion"

"Astronomy" and "Blue Oyter Cult" are re-works of songs from their third album, "Secret Treaties." "Astronomy" retained it's name, but "Blue Oyster Cult" is basically a musical and lyrical overhaul of "The Subhuman."

I understand that you cannot find this album in CD or other form as a new record in any store in the U.S. You might find it elsewhere. I happened to find it as a used cassette from a used record store. I've played it so many times in my car, I now hear scraping noises.

If you love metal and BOC, perhaps you can find this gem on eBay or some other outlet. It's worth spending a couple of bucks.

Hey, I thought Conservatives Were Supposed to Hate Gays!

Looks like John Roberts is not such a conservative fuddy-duddy after all. He worked on behalf of Gay Rights activists to help get an anti-gay amendment in Colorado overturned.

Read about it here.

Night Sits

Stir and churn
The nighttime seconds
ticking away while my mind sweeps
In glorious trays of sweet nothing thought

Across the hall lies comforting sleep
A bed chamber to remember
My heart's longing
for that rejuvenating rest

But the whirl of thought
Urge me to click the keyboard
rhythms, laying bare
The ocean lappings of Soul
immersed.

I Used To Be Liberal, Part I

What happened? Liberals stood for the little guy. Liberals cared about injustice, feeding the poor, protecting the environment and most important of all, our individual freedoms. They haven't completely stopped doing those things, but my road toward a more libertarian and conservative world view began while living in Orange County and working at one of its most liberal institutions, University of California Irvine.

This is what I learned about Liberalism while working there:

1. You are only as valuable to the cause as your ability to articulate the party line.
2. The objective of student services was to ensure that students graduate from the school as Liberal Democrats.
3. You have a right to free speech as long as you speak the correct speech.
4. If you are a straight, white male, apologies are expected.

These actually came first to me from my boss, who was mumbling this stuff, so as not to be heard by too many people. He was looking forward to retirement a few years down the road, but he couldn't help what he was feeling. If the wrong person had heard his ramblings his position would have been jeapordized. There were others in the division who suspected his sentiments and this led to him becoming the butt of much ill-conceived gossip and mockery

I thought he was crazy. Little did I know how much I would come to agree with him.

I also picked up copies of a local Orange County Magazine. I saw these articles by Hugh Hewitt and learned more of what conservatism was about. At first, I couldn't stand Hewitt. I found his razor sharp incisions into liberal thinking to be quite annoying, like nails on a chalkboard. Part of me was fascinated by how far to the other side this guy would go, but you, know, he wasn't trying to shut anyone up. He was just expressing a view.

To me, being an American means being willing to listen to another's viewpoint, even if it doesn't agree with yours. Liberals have a much harder time with that, which I will illustrate in future blogs.

More later....

New Dawn Lighting

The world turns and another blogger peaks his head out over the horizon.

I've finally arrived. Been meaning to leap into the blogosphere, but usually settling into the comfort of laptop play calling. Now I'm ready to play laptop quarterback and through some passes into the wind. Maybe you're the receiver who's been waving his or hands for me to toss the ball to you.

I love to write, read and follow what's going on in the world. It is my desire to share the light of my thoughts on things political, cultural, spiritual and personal and hopefully find a meaningful polylogue of ideas and thoughts. My moniker, the Broadlighter, comes from my business, Broadlight Enterprises, Inc. I named it to be a catch-all for any enterprise I might endeavor. The same is with this blogsite. Anything from my mind and heart goes.

I have opinions and will not hold them back. You will know my loves and hates, where I stand and where I fall. Correct me where I fail to speak the truth, but be truthful. I may not be the one who corrects you. I'm well aware the self-correcting nature of the blogosphere.

Glad to be here in the game. Let's kick this thing off!