Pithy 24 commentary for this week – someone needs to fire CTU’s human resources department.

Wheat’s Per Second Per Second Per Second Every Second has officially been released, but I’ve seen not hide nor hair of it in Canada. I still refuse to believe the album actually exists.

There are rumblings the US Department of Defence is talking about bringing back the draft. I wholeheartedly support discussion by the current government on this subject as it would pretty much guarantee Dubya and his cronies get turfed in next year’s election by a public who aren’t interested in dying in the name of oil and Halliburton.

np – Ryan Adams / Demolition

Thanks to Brad’s laryngitis and the resultant cancelled band practice last night, I had a free evening to watch Pi, which I’d rented last week. After seeing this and having already seen his other feel-good heartwarmer Requiem For A Dream, I really wish director Darren Aranofsky had gone through with making Batman: Year One if just to see how much of his hyperkinetic, fast-cut, nutty close-up style he would have retained. Both of his films have drawn heavily on the same bag of visual tricks, but its been effective. Pi is a vaguely sci-fi film about a brilliant mathemetician who seeks to unlock the mathematical secret of nature while being pursued by cutthroat capitalists wanting to use his work to control the stock market and a sect of Kabbalist Jews seeking to bring forth the Messianic age through mathematics. It’s sorta tough to explain, but it’s a cool film and not as hard to follow as you might expect. And it’s probably the only place you’ll find hardcore number theory juxtaposed with a driving techno soundrack.

Democratic Presidential hopeful General Wesley Clark doesn’t think that Outkast have broken up. He’s got my vote.

The Daily Show is now on regular network television in Canada. Read: it’s on a channel I get. Life is good.

Largehearted Boy has been playing indie rock evangelist the last couple days, offering a wide selection of mp3s to introduce you to some artists worthy of your attention. Yesterday was Ben Gibbard (Death Cab For Cutie/The Postal Service) day, and today The New Pornographers are honoured. If you’ve been curious about either of these bands, head over and see what you’ve been missing. And as a footnote, the all-new New Porographers website has the new video for “All For Swinging You Around” online for your viewing pleasure.

Today sees the release of Ryan Adams’ Rock N Roll and the first of two Love Is Hell EPs. The full-length is getting mixed reviews and a lot of puzzlement, as its about a big a departure from his alt.country roots as we’ve seen yet – it’s his ‘tribute’ to 80s rock, and the snippets I’ve heard certainly seem like a smorgasborg of that oft-reviled decade. I hear the Psychedelic Furs alongside Springsteen… it’s eclectic, at least. I’ll have to wait till I hear the whole thing before offering a firm judgement. The Love Is Hell mini-albums are more traditional Adams fare, harkening back to Heartbreaker. As for why they chose to release it as two long discount-priced EPs (the first one is eight tracks long) instead of one album, I have no idea. Freaks.

I am wearing the same clothes at work today as I did yesterday. Not because I went out last night, got lucky and didn’t make it home, but because we need someone to pretend to be an engineer (read: business casual outfit) for a brochure photoshoot and for some reason I got nominated. We couldn’t take the photo yesterday because of the rain, so I had to wear the same outfit today so we can try again. Yes, after ditching years of engineering school and work, I am being asked to dress up like an engineer. I thought Hallowe’en was over? Irony so thick you could spread it on toast.

np – The Replacements / Let It Be

I’m about halfway through Iain Banks’ Whit, which is the last of his non-science fiction books I have to read. It was a little slow starting, mostly because as an author he vascillates between style and theme so radically from book to book it takes a bit to get in the proper mind-set to absorb it. Like, should I get attached to these characters or will they just befall some horrible grotesque fate in a half-dozen pages? I think Banks has left the shock and horror tactics that made his debut The Wasp Factory so memorable – instead, he’s become a better writer and his work is better for it. I’m only about halfway through Whit, though, so there’s still plenty of time for freakishness to occur.

One of the passages in Whit about the London Underground reminded me of an ad campaign I saw at Eglinton station yesterday. A travel company subway – I don’t recall which, so as advertising it was pretty ineffectual – has put up ads featuring maps of the Tube all over everything. I love maps, and was mesmerized by these giant colour-coded schematics. The London system is massive, and has such evocative station names. Blackfriars. Mile End. King’s Cross. Willesden Junction. Earl’s Court. Someday I will go to London and just ride the subway from one end to the other. Yes, I’m romanticizing mass transit, what of it?

I checked my chromewaves email account for the first time in, oh, EVER, this morning. Spam – my goodness. I didn’t think I’d ever actually provided that address to anyone as I don’t like the web interface provided and am too lazy to set up my Mozilla mail to use it. But there were a few legit messages, so if you ever mailed me there and never heard back, sorry.

Be the coolest kid on your block next Hallowe’en!

np – Superchunk / The Clambake Sessions Vol. 1 – In-Stores East And West

Yesterday was the fifth annual Subway Pub Crawl, my fourth and probably my last. In a nutshell – a posse starts at Spadina Station and takes the Yonge-University subway line all the way around the loop to Bloor station, getting off at each stop, finding the closest bar and having a drink. Sound stupid? Yeah, it pretty much is, but usually pretty fun too.

This year’s edition was considerably smaller than the last few since it was decided to keep certain elements from past years who cause excessive problems out of the mix. A nice idea, but not terribly effective – even without the kiddies, we still managed to not only get tossed out of a bar, but the seediest, most ghetto bar on the schedule. Now that takes some doing. I’d like to point out that I had nothing to do with the turfing, but that’s not really important.

I didn’t have all that much to drink this time around, I started off pretty strong but just lost interest for lack of a better explanation. But on the plus side, I didn’t spend as much money as I’d expected. As I said, I think I’m done with these hijinks – I’ll find some other excuse to catch up with friends I don’t see as often as I like. Like, “hey, I don’t see you guys as often as I like, let’s do something”. That’s just crazy enough to work. I started off taking photos but again, lost interest about halfway in since people drinking beer isn’t a terribly compelling subject matter. So no photos, sorry.

Biking to work season is over for me – I’ve bought my transit pass for November which allows me a greater pointless roaming radius. I gave Vortex at Yonge and Eglinton a visit this afternoon in the rain, and was rewarded with used copies of the new Belle & Sebastian (one listen in and I like it – some of it is very different but some of it is hardly a huge departure from the last few albums), a Billy Bragg official bootleg from the Mermaid Avenue tour and the second Flying Burrito Brothers record, Burrito Deluxe. Good stuff.

All you Bright Eyes fans out there, feast on this archive of mp3s, link from LHB. I don’t know if these are rarities, album tracks, whatever, but if you’re interested, go to it. You may note there’s a track from Melon Galia, whom we did a show with this summer – a couple members of BE played on their album, hence the inclusion here.

Exclaim talks to James Mercer about the Shins’s Chutes Too Narrow and writing jingles for The Gap.

np – Billy Bragg & The Blokes / Mermaid Avenue Tour

I am trying to make an omelete. I’ve never made an omelete before.

And you know what? It’s true – you can’t make an omelete without breaking a few eggs. Who knew.

Post-mortem: Doesn’t look so good but tastes alright. I’ll take it.

Not going to be around today, so I figured I get my daily innane post out of the way early. Happy November to all.

np – Beulah / Yoko