THE FIERY FURNACES:  Matthew Friedberger says the subject matter of the Widow City album is feminine, but the music is "often the masculine part of the song." (Thanks LHB.)  Part of the melody of "Ex-Guru" seems eerily like John Lennon's "In My Life," but your mileage may vary.

NEW RELEASES:  Oof.  Kinda slow week.  Dan Wilson (Trip Shakespeare, Semisonic) is the main thing streaming via Spinner.  The soulful Angie Stone is streaming via AOL.  R.E.M. releases that live CD/DVD combo.  The Capstan Shafts (a/k/a Dean Wells) brings more lo-fi pop and Americana on Environ Maiden.

THE WHITE STRIPES are selling limited-edition cameras.... but not just any cameras.  No, these are Lomography cameras.  Inasmuch as a picture is worth a thousand words, you can check out the Flickr pool for the Lomographic Society International to see how the original cheap Russian design plays out in today's cameras.

THE CMJ MUSIC MARATHON:  Selected sets are streaming live via KEXP and NPR.  For example, The Hold Steady are playing at 4 p.m. ET today.

RAY DAVIES will release his new solo LP, Working Man's Café, free with every copy of The Sunday Times of London on October 21.  Times Online has the track "Vietnam Cowboys" -- about globalization -- available as a free download, if you register at the site.

ISAAC HAYES:  Sure, we've heard the theme from "Shaft" (and we can dig it) -- but you may not have seen Hayes unveiled by the Rev. Jesse Jackson.  Or heard his take on the Burt Bacharach-Hal David classic "Walk On By."  So that's your Twofer Tuesday.

THE KLAXONS, this year's winner's of the UK's Mercury Prize, got a good write-up from Jon Pareles in the NYT.  But in London's Guardian, John Harris thinks future British Invasions -- by the Klaxons or others -- are a pipe dream.

THIRTEEN:  Over at MOKB, Dodge is streaming multiple covers of the Big Star classic.

A PALER SHADE OF WHITE:  At The New Yorker, Sasha Frere-Jones wonders "why rock and roll, the most miscegenated popular music ever to have existed, underwent a racial re-sorting in the nineteen-nineties."  That he refers to the nineteen-fifties as "when Elvis Presley stole the world away from Pat Boone" suggests a certain lack of clarity, but we get the point.  OTOH, the folks at NPR recently wrung their hands when white artists covered Rhianna's "Umbrella" -- a song originally offered to Britney Spears.  It's so hard to figure out the politically correct position these days.  Maybe we should just let people make music.

LED ZEPPELIN is finally offering its catalog to digital-music fans; ringtones this week, downloads at spots like iTunes on Nov. 13.

KEITH RICHARDS, LORD of the UNDEAD, has staged interventions with bandmate Ron Wood, at knife- and gunpoint.  Of course, if you're so wacked that Keith Richards thinks an intervention is needed, weapons are likely also required.

SIENNA MILLER was... wait for it... caught canoodling co-star Rhys Ifans over the weekend in Notting Hill.  Pics at the link.

PAM ANDERSON and French Hotel sex tape co-star RICK SOLOMON, contrary to prior reports, may not have gotten hitched due to pregnancy, but instead to pitch a reality TV show.

THE FRENCH HOTEL:  Remember how the heirhead was going to show the world she's a changed woman?  It turn out that her trip to Rwanda may be filmed not only for a reality TV show, but also by her own crew for a film about herself.  In the meantime, she's been spotted partying with Kid Rock in Toronto.  I'm sure neither one was thinking of Pam Anderson or Rick Solomon, either.

PEREZ HILTON, high-traffic gossip blogger, is being sued by Lindsay Lohan's friend Samantha Ronson for libel, by Britney Spears' label for copyright infringement, and was booed at an AIDS benefit in L.A. the other night.

CHAD VADER:  The NYT profiles Aaron Yonda and Matt Sloan, who have become Tube stars with their satirical series depicting Darth Vader's brother as a power-hungry manager at a grocery store.

COLIN FARRELL has revealed that his four-year-old son James was born with a rare form of cerebral palsy called Angelman Syndrome.

JENNIFER ANISTON is reportedly obsessed with bikini waxing, according to the ever-reliable Star magazine.

RATATOUILLE:  The animated French rat is really cooking overseas, having raked in 271.4 million so far.

JUSTICE LEAGUE:  Director George Miller flew in Saturday from his native Australia for a marathon casting session of younger (and cheaper) actors.

STACY HEDGER:  It seems right -- but so very wrong -- to feature Miss Douglas County on the same day as Chad Vader.

TERROR in the US?  The FBI's elite Joint Terrorism Task Force in Newark says it is not only monitoring a number of North Jersey residents with ties to al-Qaeda, but that agents have quietly "disrupted" their activities and even deported a few.

MIDEAST MYSTERY:  The NYT joins the list of media outlets reporting that Israel's air attack on Syria last month was directed against a site that Israeli and American intelligence analysts judged was a partly constructed nuclear reactor, apparently modeled on one North Korea has used to create its stockpile of nuclear weapons fuel, according to American and foreign officials with access to the intelligence reports.  The paper claims that "Neither Iran nor any Arab government except for Syria has criticized the Israeli raid...North Korea did issue a protest," when in fact Iran did condemn the raid.  So the two remaining members of the "Axis of Evil" are identifying themselves here.  We can all take great comfort that the UN's nuke watchdog did not know about any undeclared atomic plant in Syria and has asked Damascus about information that such a site was targeted by the Israeli air strike.  If Syria had an undeclared nuke site, would they start blabbing about it to the UN now?

IRAQ:  There is widespread agreement that AQI has suffered major blows over the past three months, but is not defeated.  There has been a 50% drop in monthly suicide bombings, from more than 60 in January to around 30 a month since July. Captures and interrogations of AQI leaders are on the rise; the flow of foreign fighters from Syria has slowed, as AQ may be sending them to Afghanistan instead.  Lt. Gen. Odierno, the second-ranking US commander in Iraq, estimated that the group's capabilities have been "degraded" by 60 to 70 percent since the beginning of the year.  Writing the linked article had to gall the WaPo's Thomas Ricks.  A year ago, he was painting Anbar province as lost, while milbloggers and embedded reporters were reporting on the Anbar Awakening Council's nascent campaign against AQI.  In March, as the first "surge" troops were getting in plcae, Ricks wrote a piece trying to throw cold water on one of its premises -- that the February 2006 Samarra mosque bombing was a major tipping point for the war; the bias in that piece was exposed by Evan Kohlmann at the Counterterrorism Blog.  Ricks should re-read his own book to remind himself that the personnel, strategy and tactics have changed since the time he wrote it, in ways that should encourage him.

TETLEY the miniature pig is the smallest of a litter of eight piglets born to Poppy Two Socks.  More awww...some pics at the link,

COW!  It was like a scene from a Steven Spielberg movie, Roger Rollin said, describing what began in a dense fog and ended with "squealing tires, thuds and a few moos mixed in there."

THE SQUIRREL THREAT:  The Irish Squirrel Survey recommends that grey squirrels should be given a contraceptive in a bid to prevent the wiping out of their red cousins.  However, the co-author of the survey said such a product was not currently available.  If left unchecked, the grey squirrel population could also affect the timber industry.

THE WORLD'S WEIRDEST MOTHS:  The Death's Head Hawkmoth made famous in The Silence of the Lambs is just the beginning.

GOING TO NEED A BIGGER BOAT:  Six friends went to a fishing tournament looking to catch some grouper. They caught an 844-pound shark instead.  Pics and video at the link.  BONUS:  An Australian woman who was attacked by a great white shark described how she fought back.  Her husband described how he saw the shark rise up and bite the back of his wife's sea kayak: "(It) literally lifted itself in the back of Linda's boat ... and had the back of the boat in its mouth and gave it a shake."  Of course, this means we must go to the video. (NSFW)