Karl 
WILCO: If you own a copy of A Ghost is Born, you can now download bonus tracks from the band's site or iTunes.
ON THE PITCHFORK: Brian Wilson is extending the Smile tour through this Summer, including cities like Seattle. I highly recommend it. Prof. Ken King — not a huge Wilsonite — saw it and enjoyed it highly, too. ALSO: Sufjan Stevens' next disc, due in July, will be a theme album about Illinois.
THE ROXY MUSIC ARCHIVE is near-complete.
MOUNT ST. HELENS is erupting again, apparently.
DOGS are being electrocuted in Boston.
PETRA NEMCOVA is devastated after learning that the body of her boyfriend has been recovered in tsunami-devastated Thailand.
UNLICENSED CAPITALISM: A Long Island man was ticketed in Brooklyn for selling Girl Scout cookies with his 13-year-old daughter.
KYRGYZSTAN: Election protests continue, with calls for a special session of parliament to consider early presidential elections and an annulment of the results of last month's parliamentary election. There’s plenty more (and who can get enough Kyrgyzstanian news?) at Registan.
IRAN: Student protesters — deeming prior elections futile — are demanding a referendum for the drafting of a new constitution that is compatible with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and all its associated covenants.
LEBANON: Nearly 500,000 pro-Syrian protesters waved flags and chanted anti-American slogans in central Beirut Tuesday, answering a call by the militant Shiite Muslim Hezbollah group to counter weeks of massive rallies demanding Syrian forces leave Lebanon. Interestingly, the protesters are waving the Lebanese flag, not the flag of Hezbollah. Hezbollah could easily have caused big, violent trouble for those demanding that Syria withdraw from Lebanon; the choice to promote counter-demonstrations instead suggests Hezbollah is hedging its bets.
VIDEO WIZ DAVID LA CHAPPELLE is responsible for this fantastically trippy Burger King ad starring Hootie, Brooke Burke and the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders (in QuickTime).
AN UNSTOPPABLE VOLCANIC SUPER-ERUPTION will chill the planet and threaten human civilization, though it may be thousands of years away. Yellowstone is a likely candidate for such an eruption.
PLAYGIRL EDITOR-IN-CHIEF explains why she voted Republican in 2004, Matt Drudge reports.
WALTER CRONKITE says Dan Rather should have been replaced long ago… a few days before rather steps down as anchor of the CBS Evening News.
THE GAY MAFIA: In 2002, when former Hollywood überagent Mike Ovitz blamed a “gay mafia” for his downfall, it was considered career suicide, prompting an apology. However, by 2003, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation was entertaining the notion that there might be a generation of gay power-brokers in Hollywood, though they were not the cause of Ovitz's downfall. In 2005, Time magazine decides it's a story. So is it a slow news week, or just slow reporters?
SIN CITY: A new trailer for the movie based on Frank Miller's critically-acclaimed graphic novels, directed by Miller and Robert Rodriguez, and starring Bruce Willis, Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Michael Madsen and more is now online. Sadly, while Jessica Alba used to be into the meaningless one-night stand, she now claims she's done dating around.
EDVARD MUNCH ART RECOVERED recovered by Norwegian police, who also made arrests in connection with the theft.
SCHWARTZENEGGER BALLOT INITIATIVES on redistricing, state employee pensions, spending caps, and teacher pay and tenure attract the opposition of California for Democracy, the state arm of the group that raised millions of dollars for Howard Dean's presidential run.
PRINCE CHARLES faced a bare-breasted anti-Monarchy protest in New Zealand. I'm sure it wrecked his day.
THE FIGHT BETWEEN CABLE AND SATELLITE TV may be won by souped-up PDAs.
CULT OF THE iPod: Yahoo! announces it will compete against the iTunes music store. Sony announces it will compete against the iPod Shuffle.
ARE BLOGGERS JOURNALISTS? The San Francisco Chronicle has its take on the case in which Apple wants to force a blogger to reveal his source for a story about one of its upcoming products and even quotes someone with a clue: “Under the First Amendment of the Constitution, I would be hard-pressed to find any distinction between bloggers and journalists,” said Paul Grabowicz, director of the New Media program at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. But, he added, “There are some potentially really bad things that could come without any distinction. Principal among them is, if there is no distinction, things like shield laws that protect journalists go away, because they apply to everybody else.” Others differ: “Bloggers may very well be entitled to protection as long as they are performing some editorial judgment, as I think most bloggers do,” said Peter Scheer, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition, which may file a brief on behalf of the bloggers if the case goes to an appellate court. “There needs to be an editorial screen or filter, an exercise of editorial judgment involved in the decision to publish information,” Scheer said. “For example, a site that's effectively a bulletin board, on which anyone can publish or post documents at any time — and that's all that happens in that site — may not be entitled to special protection.” Ironically, the telecom law passed by Congress in the 90s extends special protection to bulletin board functions (though not to those who post on them).
ARE COMICS ARTISTS JOURNALISTS? Maybe.
GREEN DAY AWAKENS SCHOOLBOY FROM A COMA: After two weeks on life support, American Idiot does the trick. If only Morrissey had known…
SOLOMON BURKE gets by with a little help from his friends, including Van Morrison, Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello.
WHAT IS FOOD? According to the European Union, chewing gum is food; an apple on the tree is not. Go figure.
IS MILK GOOD FOR YOUR BONES? Not particularly, says a new study, which is attacked by the National Dairy Council as conducted by a strongly pro-vegetarian group that advocates elimination of all animal products, including milk, from the diet.
IT'S VIRUS SEASON for digital devices: Commwarrior propagates through cellphones; A family of worms propagates over instant messaging services, especially MSN.
JOURNO SHOT BY U.S. TROOPS: Giuliana Sgrena, a reporter for the Italian communist newspaper Il Manifesto, has claimed that U.S. troops fired between 300 and 400 bullets at her car. That car has been recovered and shown on Italian television. The Associated Press has these two photos of the car. So why are there only a handful of bullet holes? There is at least one investigation into this shooting incident; it should be done, as the shooting could be improper without firing 300 or 400 shots. But I suspect it will be concluded fairly quickly.
SEN. JOHN McCAIN became a warrior for campaign finance reform after he was ensnared in the Keating Five scandal. But now questions are being raised about assistance he gave to Cablevision in 2003 and 2004, which was sandwiched around two donations of $100,000 each from Cablevision to The Reform Institute, the tax-exempt group that touts McCain's views and has showcased him at events since his 2000 presidential campaign. ''If it was a PAC [political action committee] or if it was somehow connected to any campaign of mine, I would say to you, that's a legitimate appearance of conflict of interest. But it's not,” McCain responded. ''There's not a conflict of interest when you're involved in an organization that is nonpartisan, nonprofit, nonpolitical.” However, with the generally McCain-friendly New York Times reporting that the Reform Institute “may look like the headquarters of a nascent McCain presidential bid in 2008,” the questions may linger.
