Single blog in search of a name

So, after yet another unintended hiatus, I've decided to tweak my blog, hoping that it might spur a burst of creativity. Part of this blog renovation is a change in name. Unfortunately, it's taking me a while to thing of something I like (the front-runner was part of a quote from Les Misérables, but I just wasn't satisfied with it), so for the time being this will be The Blog With No Name.

If any of you have any suggestions, please, by all means, let me know.

Plans for the summer

So, my semester is over and I have almost four months before things pick up again in late August. I've been thinking about what I want to do in that period of time. Obviously, I'm going to be doing a lot of reading about Yemen, which is the topic of my thesis. I expect, however, that I'll still have a lot of additional time to spend when I'm not researching. So, here are some of my plans for the summer:

-Read for fun. One of the things that I love about breaks is the free time I have for reading. Within the last 24 hours, for example, I read almost 150 pages of Sarah Vowell's Unfamiliar Fishes, which I consequently finished.
-Write (which includes contributing to this blog). I really want to try to write more for fun. I'm planning some blog posts, including one on Unfamiliar Fishes. I also want to work on some more substantial stuff, such as a paper giving a psycho-dynamic analysis of the reaction to Osama bin Laden's death. And, of course, I'd like to write some creative stuff too.
-Work on foreign language skills. I'm going to try to improve my Arabic and French skills over the summer. Also, I might take a GLN course depending on what they're offering this summer.
-Lose weight. Two summers ago, I lost about thirty pounds without really trying. I'm hoping that if I actually made an effort, I might lose ten or maybe twenty more. Probably not, but I'm going to try.

The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day

So, Saturday night I finally forced myself to watch The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day on Netflix. It appears that there's a reason why it sat in my queue for months.

Simply put, it was awful. I'll be honest and admit that the first Boondock Saints isn't a particularly good film, but it's a lot of fun to watch. Considering that there was some ten years between the films, the second one should have been much better.

I'll put a spoiler warning in case any of you want to watch this festering turd of a movie.

So, the film starts out with the MacManus boys and their dad in Ireland, and judging by their hirsute visages, 1) they've been there for a while, and 2) there aren't any razors on the Emerald Isle.

The boys find out that they've been framed for the murder of a priest, and come back to America to bring the vengeance of the Lord upon anyone connected with the crime.

The actual killer, a hired gun who is 5' 5", is obsessed with his lack of height. Pretty much half of his screen time is him silently gauging how short he is. It's pointless and annoying.

There are also a myriad of flashbacks and dream sequences. The primary purpose of which apparently is to provide an excuse to have the deceased Rocco make an appearance. Also pointless and annoying.

There are gun fights, and (generally lame) wisecracks, and a disturbing amount visible of an overweight man. Judd Nelson plays the son of Papa Joe Yakavetta, which is kinda weird since he's two years older than Carlos Rota.

An insufferably long story short, it turns out that Noah, the MacManus' father, who was simply known as "Il Duce" in the first movie, is being lured back to America by an old friend of his played by Peter Fonda. This friend helped Noah become the badass assassin he was in the first movie, and then arranged for his incarceration. The background for this showdown was provided throughout the film by additional flashbacks that appeared to be a tacky imitation of The Godfather Part II. In my opinion, the back-story, which casts Noah as a vigilante killer of Mafiosos, doesn't seem to mesh with the first film, which implies that he's a Mafia hit-man with a moral code.

Anyway, a violent shootout precedes the film's ending, which suggests that there may be another sequel in the works. Saints preserve us from that day.