Don't say I never gave you anything

Here's a ready-made story idea for you authors out there looking to write a topical novel complete with exotic locales and avenues for social commentary.

Interpol launched a worldwide hunt on Friday for priceless Iraqi antiquities looted during the chaos of the U.S.-led invasion and warned collectors not to buy art treasures they suspected had been stolen.

The international police authority said it had set up a team to track down the looters and missing treasures. Agents will fly to Iraq as soon as possible to check on what was stolen in the mayhem surrounding the end of Saddam Hussein's rule.

Make your main character an Interpol agent troubled that s/he gets more access to a shattered country that is teetering on the break of economic and cultural collapse than aid agencies, mix in gung-ho farm boys from Iowa with Hummers and rifles, slowly fold in the struggle over the pursuit of things over the welfare of people, and a dash of anarchy, tribal warfare, mistrust and 7,000 years of human history and serve.

Material girl channels Metallica

Sharing must not be part of Madonna's Kabala faith because she is clamping down something fierce on online peer-to-peer piracy of her new album, "American Life," (due April 22).

Her people are flooding file-sharing networks with decoy sound files, and those who download tracks from such services as KaZaA are greeted by the voice of Madonna asking, "What the f ---- do you think you're doing?"

A couple thoughts here. As an artist, Madonna can do whatever she wants to protect or distribute her music, but as the culture vulture that she is, endlessly reinventing herself in all sorts of spotlight-hogging guises and life paths to dodge the bullet of pop culture irrelevance, I'm shocked that Madonna's such a control freak who never got the memo that you can't stop peer-to-peer file sharing. If anything, Mrs. Ritchie, you've now made the whole pursuit of your oncoming album a kind of game...who's got the purest download, who's got the raw deal.

Honestly, I'm surprised she never embraced the whole Web music culture, releasing a couple songs exclusively online for her fans, perhaps making the whole endeavor an exclusive, catch-me-if-you-can hacker game involving sexy images, computer servers and hidden files that vanish after some internal clock counts down to zero, akin to William Gibson's now-you-read-it, now-you-don't poem "Agrippa," originally published on a self-erasing diskette. I'm more surprised she never tried to seriously colonize the Web as her own personal accessory, like having children, embracing Jewish mysticism or acting. I mean, it was just sitting there, and she has a few bucks to spend. Why not go Microsoft, giving away some of her content and access for free in the beginning, draw in the online fans, and then charge whatever she wants when she shuts the door and has the only master key.

I'm guessing somewhere in Madonna's clever and money-hungry mind that this is all going to some ingenious plan. Make the content so exclusive that they can't have it and people will be clamoring for it. I imagine she already has some sound engineers slaving over a mixing board, trying to add her little online screed into a dance re-mix of her album, cannibalizing herself yet again as she readies to morph into some other highly marketable, drive-by, button-pushing image.

Frankly, I never cared for Madonna. As I see it, you could put the first Portishead album against the entire Madonna library, and the seminal trip-hop album will come out aces every time.