Thoughts On A Sunday

It wasn't the sound of an alarm clock that woke me this morning. Nor was it the sound of the wind rustling the leaves or the cries of impatient cats waiting to be fed.

It was the distant rumbling thunder of motorcycles.

Despite a rather slow start to Laconia's Motorcycle Week yesterday, they are out in force today. Of course, it helps that the weather is better today – no rain so far – and that it's expected to be drier, warmer, and sunnier of the next couple of days.

We might make it over to the center of activity sometime later today, Weirs Beach, coming in by sea rather than land. I will also be taking a few days off from work starting Wednesday to enjoy the festivities. As always, the Official Weekend Pundit Digital Camera will be with me, allowing me to share a few of the more alluring...uh...attractions at the rally.

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As much as I enjoy being out on Lake Winnipesaukee, it's idiots like this that make me cringe when I hear about or witness their exploits.

What a putz.

We managed to head out onto the lake today and swung by where the incident linked above took place and I have a question: How are they gonna move that thing?

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The Law of Unintended Consequences may come back to haunt Senator Ted Kennedy (D- Chivas).

In his efforts to kill the Cape Wind wind farm project off of Cape Cod, he may have derailed a number of other vital wind turbine projects elsewhere in the US.

So much for being a proponent of alternative energy projects.

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I heard about this controversial film clip by movie maker Tim Alexander on NPR this morning. Titled “Diary of a Tired Black Man”, it raises the issue of why many black women are having problems maintaining relationships or marriages with black men. Tim Alexander explains:

First-time filmmaker Tim Alexander, who enjoys being provocative, says there's a disease out there that he calls the "angry black woman syndrome." He says it must be identified, diagnosed and treated.

Alexander believes African-American women who grew up in fatherless homes, hearing their aunts and grandmothers saying black men are no good -- and hearing that opinion reinforced in the media -- are now angry adult women.

"They grow up, deal with the wrong men, finally meet the right guy and don't know how to turn it off," Alexander says. "They are so used to fighting; it's the only way they know to have a relationship. So when a man is a good man, they think he's a punk."

Alexander has poked a sore spot within the black community, with many agreeing wholeheartedly with his take on the subject, and just as many vehemently disagreeing with it.

Is he on target with his film, or is he overstating the problem?

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George Will writes that Al Gore is self-contradictory when it comes to two things: the consensus about human-caused global warming and whether he will be a candidate for President in 2008.

So what else is new?

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The Democrats were courting bloggers at the YearlyKos blog convention in Las Vegas. Whether this will help them in the upcoming elections in November is anybody's guess. They should also be aware that bloggers aren't as easy to manipulate as the MSM. Any attempt to do so, by either party, is likely to backfire on them.

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I made contact with an old friend I hadn't talked to in a few years. I was reading through posts on the Winnipesaukee.com forums and noticed that one particular participant on one of the forums dealing with cell service in the Lakes Region seemed familiar somehow. Reading her posts, she made references to a number of things that rang a bell, so I sent her a message and, lo-and-behold, I found out it was indeed my friend.

We plan to get together very soon and catch up on a number of things. It helps that she and her husband live right on the lake, meaning we can go by land or sea to get to their house.

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It's dangerous for Deb and me when we watch HGTV. We get too damn many ideas of what we'd like to do here at The Manse. Things like a new bathroom, a new island for the kitchen, new counter tops, and so on. If we were both working three jobs we might be able to afford all of the things we'd like to do.

Like that's going to happen.

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And that's the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where Motorcycle Week is in full swing, the weather has cleared up, and where Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is still dead.