PAPA'S GOT A BRAND NEW ROUTER, SO THE WEEKEND STARTS HERE (though you should check out Thursday's links also):

FRIDAY TIME-WASTER: The Babycal throw. I'm not sure what it is (and I know some Russian); I o­nly know it's hard to stop. It appears that you score more points by hitting a target repeatedly and by hitting more than o­ne at o­nce.

THE MOUNTAIN GOATS: John Darnielle -- a former Iowan -- is interviewed by the Ames Tribune in advance of their April 1st show at the M-Shop.

BILL WYMAN: The former charter Rolling Stone has taken up archaeology. Should I go for an Indiana Jones joke or the "he's going to be exhibiting Mick and Keith" joke?

SONGS TO PLAY AT MY FUNERAL: Not my funeral, really, but European funerals. The Germans -- choosing AC/DC's "Highway to Hell," Metallica's "Nothing Else Matters" and Queen's "The Show Must Go o­n" -- have a better sense of humor than their stereotype.

ROBOT ARM-WRESTLING UPDATE: Yesterday, I noted that three robotic arms were each beaten in a matter of seconds by a 17-year-old girl. It turns out that Panna Felsen has a lot going o­n.

HORTON HEARS HOLLYWOOD: 20th Century Fox Animation and Blue Sky Studios have landed the rights to adapt Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who as a CG-animated movie. Blue Sky Studios launches its second feature, Robots, today. ALSO: Dave Eggers and Spike Jonze are working o­n a screenplay for Maurice Sendak's Where The Wild Things Are.

GOOGLE NEWS can now be personalized. And you can see a real-time picture of what's hot at Google News with the Newsmap.

IKEA is guilty of sex discrimination by showing o­nly men putting together furniture in its instruction manuals, according to Norway's prime minister. The global furniture store fears it might offend Muslims by depicting women assembling everything from cupboards to beds, but Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik was quoted Thursday as telling the daily Verdens Gang, "It's important to promote attitudes for sexual equality, not least in Muslim nations."

IRAN OBTAINED CENTRIFUGES FOR ENRICHING URANIUM from the A.Q. Khan weapons ring.

LEBANON: Toppled Prime Minister Omar Karami reluctantly re-accepted the job, ten days after street protests in Beirut led to the collapse of his pro-Syrian Government. But his call for the Opposition to join a government of national unity was rejected amid fears that the country is heading towards prolonged political and economic uncertainty. The momentum in Lebanon may have shifted in Syria's favor following the huge Hezbollah-sponsored rally earlier this week. Former Lebanese Prime Minister Michel Aoun and a spokesperson for Lebanon's Progressive Socialist Party have both claimed that Hezbollah and Syrian officials used deceptive and coercive techniques to orchestrate the rally. Of course, both have political motives for making that claim. o­n the other hand, given that Lebanon has a population under four million, the idea that a rally of 500,000 may have included people brought in from Syria cannot be summarily dismissed, either.

SMITHEREENS: Move over, Guided by Voices -- Pat DiNizio is offering a a limited edition 21 disc set of Smithereens demos, outtakes, alternate versions and live tracks.

KINGS OF LEON: Rob G. of the Suburban Voodoo blog has six suggestions for you.

DAVID BYRNE loves PowerPoint.

THE MUSIC BIZ is threatened by the internet, where word of mouth can build a star.

PODCASTING: Since Sylvia Hauser alerted us to the podcasts from KCRW, the station has added "Le Show," a "weekly, hour-long romp through the worlds of media, politics, sports and show business, leavened with an eclectic mix of mysterious music," hosted by Harry Shearer.

HOWARD DEAN looks just heavenly in this picture.

SIN CITY: Yahoo! has exclusive photos and comic book storyboards from the movie, which gives me another opportunity to post the Jessica Alba promo.

BRUCE WILLIS GROPES LINDSAY LOHAN: Two can play that game, Demi!

PORN STAR KARAOKE: Every Tuesday at Sardo's in Burbank. Just thought I would mention it to attract traffic from people searching for porn o­n the internet.

ARE BLOGGERS JOURNALISTS? Jacob Weisberg gets it over at Slate: "The old A.J. Liebling saw about freedom of the press belonging to those who own o­ne no longer obtains. These days, freedom of the press is available not just in theory but in practice to an unlimited number of individuals."

THE POLITCAL INFLUENCE OF BLOGS is the subject of a study by a researcher at Blogpulse. The summary says, "Curiously, 59% of the mentions of John Kerry came from right-leaning bloggers, while 53% of the mentions of George W. Bush came from left-leaning bloggers." That's not curious to me, given that most blogging is criticism of some sort.

BASEBALL o­n STEROIDS: Major League Baseball executives vowed to go to court to stop the House Government Reform Committee from making Jason Giambi, Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire, among others, testify next week o­n Capitol Hill. MLB lawyer Stanley Brand lashed out at the committee - saying it had no jurisdiction and was merely trying to "satisfy their prurient interest into who may and may not have engaged in this activity." Brand is the perfect choice for MLB; he's Vice President of the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues (the governing body of Minor League Baseball) and a veteran counsel of many Washington scandals -- check the link for how George Stephanopoulos describes him. However, I doubt the jurisdictional issue is a winner for him. Unless the rules for the Committee o­n Government Reform have suddenly changed, the committee "may at any time conduct investigations of any matter ***." Jurisdiction doesn't get much broader than that. Others agree. ALSO: Committee spokesperson Dave Marin told NBC News that the committee has gone out of its way not to ask for specific names attached to drug test results, contrary to what has been alleged by Brand.

ATTORNEY ACCIDENTALLY SUES HIMSELF: Madison County, Illinois, has been a hotbed of class-action litigation in recent years, but this would appear to be a first.

DID THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART get an NPR reporter taken off the air over his report o­n the long-running controversy over the ownership of Egon Schiele's painting, Portrait of Wally? Morley Safer suggests that the broadcaster "has caved in to intimidation by a large, wealthy and powerful cultural institution."

FINALLY, A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Here's a tip for all you kids out there: Don't eat home-baked brownies sent to you anonymously. Sure, they might have hashish in them. But they might not.

A JOHN-AND-YOKO "BED-IN" is among the videos you can see at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's "1960s a GoGo" page. ALSO: It appears that Yoko has sanctioned a John Lennon Museum.

MEMO TO PHIL SPECTOR: There is a reason why you have the right to remain silent.

SWEET HOME JAMAICA: Bob Marley is given a retrospective in the new Rolling Stone.

LIMP BIZKIT'S FRED DURST has filed an 80 million dollar lawsuit against web sites that posted the footage and stills from the singer's X-rated romp with a former girlfriend. Gawker, the main blog of the lead defendant Gawker Media, responds in typical Gawker fashion.

KATHLEEN EDWARDS: The alt-country singer/songwriter, fresh off a third appearance o­n Late Night with David Letterman, is interviewed by Canada's National Post. You can hear streams from her new disc Back to Me, at her web site.

ROYALTIES BY THE DASHBOARD LIGHT: The Cleveland Plain Dealer recounts a tale of royalties, lawsuits and Meatloaf.

JOHNNY DEPP AND JOHN CUSACK attended the memorial services for Hunter S. Thompson.

HAMSTER HOME ALONE prompted a police raid in Berlin.

CATS: Image-recognition software is being used to stop Flo the cat from entering her house with a dead animal in her mouth. ALSO: A Madison, Wisconsin firefighter wants a law legalizing the hunting of stray cats. And I don't think he means Brian Setzer, either.

DOGS: The web site promoting the British comedy Gone to the Dogs features an o­nline quiz, "What Kind of Dog Are You?" It turns out I am a Dogue de Bordeaux, the breed featured in Turner and Hooch.

REAL INTERACTIVITY: Acts of Volition blogs that the interactivity of the internet goes far beyond the computer. Hey, the 2003 Claude Pate reunion and the very existence of this site prove the point.

PRESIDENT BUSH'S MOVIE WATCHING prompted him to meet with Paul Rusesabagina, the real-life hero depicted in Hotel Rwanda. Mr. Rusesabagina said that Mr. Bush was well briefed about what happened at the hotel; the two also talked about the mass killings in the Darfur region of Sudan, which the United States has labeled genocide.

MONTY PYTHON AND FOREIGN POLICY: Gerard Baker wites a column for the Times of London looking at U.S. foreign policy as filtered through Monty Python's Life of Brian.

A TINY BIT OF HISTORY is amde when fishbowl DC becomes the first blog admitted to the daily White House "press gaggle."

SATURDAY NIGHT LOOKS GOOD TO ME is a band from Ann Arbor that's going to be playing Chicago and SXSW. The band's site has some downloads that are very groovy, very Fauxtown in a late Jam sort of way, but with a cute lead singer anmed Betty Marie West.

A GIRL CALLED EDDY, in contrast, is cool chanteusery in a Dusty Springfield, Burt Bacharach sort of way. A Flash-based site allows you to listen to song snippets o­n a virtual turn table -- you drag a tone arm to the track you want to hear.

ROBYN HITCHCOCK is profiled in the San Francisco Chronicle, with a focus o­n Spooked, his collaboration with Gillian Welch and David Rawlings.

JOURNO SHOT BY U.S. TROOPS: The Moderate Voice has collected a boatload of links updating and reacting to the shooting incident that killed an Italian intel officer and wounded Giuliana Sgrena, a journalist being freed from the captivity of insurgents. I noted that the reporting of this story has shown some inconsistencies. CNN reprints Sgrena's story for her newspaper, the communist Il Manifesto. In this version of the story, Sgrena writes that the driver almost lost control of the car while trying to avoid puddles shortly before the shooting -- a detail not reported previously. Sgrena's article is also pretty revealing about her opinion of the war and the opinion of residents of Fallujah about her. Corriere Della Serra, an Italian newspaper described by the Guardian's media guide as a "centre-right daily that is critical of the country's current prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is raising a number of questions about Sgrena's story, including, "Are we really to believe Giuliana Sgrena when she says that she personally picked 'handfuls of bullets' off the seat, but that, in this premeditated rain of fire from an armored vehicle against an automobile with no armor plating, only one passenger actually died?" It also looks like what we have here is Italy's failure to communicate, based o­n reporting from the Italian newspaper La Stampa, the politics of which are not identified by the Guardian's media guide, but which has been described as centrist by the BBC. It's possible that the trajectory of this story is being affected by the fact that Italy has elections next month. All the more reason to see what an investiagtion of the shooting discloses.

CULT OF THE iPod: Alexander Payne (not the film director, afaik) blogs about flirting through iTunes. The Washington Post rounds up a few gadgets to help mximize the hidden benefits of the iPod, including Bose's SoundDock, which my friend Shahin enjoys very much. And Associated Press reporter David Bauder believes his iPod is taunting him like a Greek chorus.

STEROIDS IN BASEBALL: There are plenty of links, plus commentary at Only Baseball Matters. Imho (and I claim no expertise), the commentary is dead o­n about used car salesman Bud Selig, but probably goes a bit easy o­n Barry Bonds.

THE TABLOIDIZATION OF SCIENCE: Iain Murray looks at a disturbing trend among science journals to chase headlines at the expense of the sort of nuance o­ne expects from a scientific journal reporting medical studies. Although this article is published at National Review Online, o­nly o­ne of Murray's objections has to do with politics.

ANTI-MUSLIM BIAS IN EUROPE: The BBC reports o­n a study by the International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights that looks at "widespread" negative attitudes towards Muslims, including unbalanced media reporting which depict Muslims as "an enemy within." The main example used in the article -- the French ban o­n wearing head scarves in school -- may not be the best of examples: it appears that the hijab is a traditional, not religious head cover that dates back to ancient civilizations, and is not supported or advocated by the Quran.

THIS AIN'T NO MUDD CLUB, NO CBGB: New York's legendary rock club CBGB, which helped launch everybody from Blondie to the Ramones, faces closure if it does not resolve a dispute over unpaid rent with the homeless charity that owns the building.

KYRGYZSTAN: Regular readers of this site probably thought I was joking when I noted a growing democracy movement in the former Soviet Republic, but things are heating up there quickly after alleged violations of the election law in the first round of the parliamentary elections.

SUFFRAGETTE CITY: Women are protesting for the right to vote in Kuwait.

WONKETTE: Ana Marie Cox, the DC-base gossipblogger (who is even less family-friendly than I am) models for the Lucky magalog.