» Readme: Ugly renditions of John Denver tunes at a karaoke party brought a man in Thailand to the point of shooting 8 people, including his brother-in-law. And I quote: "I warned these people about their noisy karaoke parties. I said if they carried on I would go down and shoot them. I had told them if I couldn't talk sense into them I would come back and finish them off." Also: A mother who was watching American Idol let her kid drown enough to have it end up in the hospital.

» In Los Angeles, conductor James Conlon has made it his goal to revitalize the works lost and forgotten because of the Holocaust. So far, Conlon has used his $5 million grant to stage two one-act operas and record much of the music he has found from composers who either died in the Holocaust or were forgotten afterwards. Those pieces include 20 composed by Viktor Ullmann while he was at Auschwitz and other concentration camps.

» Clive Davis, the Chairman and CEO of BMG, has told singer-folk to stop screwing around with their own songs. His unromantic view is this: You, Kelly Clarkson, were not signed as a songwriter--you're a singer, so it is your job to find hit songs, not to try and write them.

» Host-busters: From the UK: The media-lawyers group Wiggins has suggested that if ISP's begin to filter traffic to stop file-sharing, or notify users who are file-sharing, that 70 percent of people would stop file-sharing. The survey says that most thought it unlikely that they would be caught, but that if they believed they would, that they would stop.

» Gnarls Barkely's new video, Run, won't show up on MTV because it did not pass the Harding Test, a test created to check the potential for causing seizures. The old-soul-meets-drum-n-bass vibe is back, this time over dangerous but delicious visuals. Check it, you tough-stomached readers.

» Future of dist., in short: Reznor and Nine Inch Nails give away new instrumental album here; EFF to help out in the defense of a Phoenix couple who--knowingly or unknowingly--shared files over Kazaa; eMusic, after its success with rare MP3's is thinking about moving into video.

» The Rest, in short: Bjork screams about Tibet at a recent show in Shanghai; Snoop has beef with Oprah, apologizes for past meanness and rudeness; The Dandy Warhols will release their next record on their own label, Beat the World; Avril Lavigne releases clothing line at Kohl's; Blur bassist talks to kids about milk; YouTube looks into popularity of CSS video; Prince reportedly is planning to get hip replacement surgery because of his high-heel wearing; Radiohead's Thom Yorke says the song-writing/album-producing process makes him a bitch; New documentary reports that the Hells Angels tried to kill Mick Jagger; Another Stone, Keith Richards, has started modeling for Louis Vuitton; Boy Band constructor Lou Pearlman will plead guilty to all the horrible things he has done.

» Obits, in short: Canadian guitarist Jeff Healey, 41 (Cancer); Beatles producer Norman Smith, 85; Italian tenor Giuseppe Di Stefano, 86; Composer Leonard Rosenman, 83 (Heart attack).