The butler was a ghost the entire time

I'm off to Vancouver for the weekend, so I thought I'd tie up some loose blogs.

Figured I might as well go for the trifecta of 24 posts: a shiny penny to whoever can tell me what this commercial is about.

Love this new White Stripes album cover. Sure, it's not much different than the last one, but now Jack's traded sequins for Bob Dylan's facial hair and Meg White looks even more like my former roommate. (Deny all you want C___, it's there.) Get Behind Me Satan is released on the same day as this juggernaut, which contains a decidedly crappier album cover.

With my recent purchase of Johnathan Safran-Foer's Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (the hype is real, five pages in and you know you're listening to a classic narrator) I now have three books on the go. This is definitely unwise, but the books naturally found their own demarcation: Safran-Foer in the mornings while I wait for my carpool, Malcolm Gladwell's Tipping Point over lunch (a book I can gladly say I did not judge by its cover but rather by the album it inspired) and the last few chapters of Strange & Norrell at night.

Oh, anyone know anything about Eco's latest book? Umberto's Island of the Day Before ranks as one of my favorite books, so I'm always interested to see what the Italian writer is up to. That book had everything: shipwrecks, incurable diseases, imaginary brothers, unrequited love and perhaps one of the most satisfying endings to a novel I've ever read.

I recall once reading an interview with R.E.M.'s Peter Buck where he said he always has about four books on the go at any time. I suppose the notion becomes more palatable when you consider we regularly keep the storylines of several television shows sorted out. (Although maybe that's unfair. A novelization of The Apprentice wouldn't likely stir a great literary debate: "Trump's 'firing' obviously signals a shifting paradigm, a frightening resurgence of the oppression of the proletariat and the glorification of the bourgeousie." Nah.)

Of course, it's readily apparent what the most ill-conceived novel of all time is: voila.

Post O.C. Script: That murderous rampage to cap off a season? That's so first year criminal law. Defence of necessity anyone? But kudos for the Ryan Adams inclusion, and perhaps the only song subtly and eponymously lamenting the death of TV's Friends. (Adams is a self-proclaimed die-hard fan.)