A disgusting piece of trash

'A disgusting piece of trash' is probably quite close to the truth when describing the Catholic church.

The ever-progressive Pope is once again in the news as he battles to have a modern art sculpture in Nothern Italy banned.

Pope Benedict has called the work blasphemous in a letter to Regional president Franz Pahl.

Pahl is working hard to get the sculpture removed. "Surely this is not a work of art but a blashphemy and a disgusting piece of trash that upsets many people," he said.

Clearly unpursuaded by his own arguments, Pahl went on hunger strike and had to be hospitalised in his efforts to get his views heeded - and the work of art removed from the Museion museum in Bolzano.

The wooden sculpture, called Zuerst die Fuesse, is by the late German artist Martin Kippenberger and depicts a 4-foot high frog about nailed to a brown cross and holding a beer mug in one outstretched hand and an egg in another.

It wears a green loin cloth and is nailed through the hands and the feet in the manner of Jesus Christ. Its green tongue hangs out of its mouth.

I'm not much for it myself. I much prefer the Dead Kennedys album cover of In God We Trust, Inc., which features Jesus Christ crucified on a cross made of dollar bills.

Kippenberger's work has been shown at the Tate Modern and the Saatchi Gallery in London and at the Venice Biennale, and retrospectives are planned in Los Angeles and New York.

Freedom of expression, anyone?

Shameless marketing

We give these away free at our gigs. To find out when and where we're playing, have a look at our myspace page.

Ping Pong is coming home

Boris Johnson - buffoon or comic genius? Whichever he might be, is he really the kind of guy you'd want as your leader?

PC quote of the day

Said John Molony, Mayor of Mount Isa, a quiet mining town in the Queensland outback:

"With five blokes to every girl, may I suggest that beauty-disadvantaged women should proceed to Mount Isa.

"Quite often you will see walking down the street a lass who is not so attractive with a wide smile on her face. Whether it is recollection of something previous or anticipation for the next evening, there is a degree of happiness."

What the fuck is this guy on?

Shit taste in music

My car was broken into this weekend when it was parked on the street near to my house. The bastards broke one of the little side windows to open the door.

The weird thing was, they stole absolutely nothing.

There were a couple of euros on the floor amongst the shards of broken glass from the window. The back seats were pulled down so whoever was in my car could look in the boot. There was nothing there to steal apart from a couple of old t-shirts that belong to the drummer in my band. He wraps his drums in them when we take them to a gig so I guess nobody would want to steal those. The front seats were both reclined a bit and pushed back. I could hardly reach the pedals when I got into the car to drive it to the police station to report the break in. There was a woolen hat that belongs to my wife left on the driver's seat (it had also been in the boot - weird).

The glove compartment, which the thieves left open, was full of CDs. They didn't take a single one. Not even Hawkwind, Dead Kennedys, Weezer, Bauhaus, Matthew Sweet, Queens of the Stone Age, Metallica, Frank Black, Pixies, Voivod... Nothing gone.

Clearly they thought I had a shit taste in music. It was probably a couple of nietas who only listen to reggaeton on their mobile phones. The little shits.

Some of those CDs are actually quite valuable. Voivod's Nothingface hasn't been re-released on CD for ages and people on Amazon are selling the fucker for over 250 euros! This is one time, therefore, I'm quite happy to have a shit taste in music.

Tribal Convictions

What a band! What a song!

Rock the kasbah

The fantastic Rachid Taha covering The Clash classic! Taha is a long time collaborator with another fave of mine - virtuoso guitarist Steve Hillage, once of Gong, who has had a successful solo career of his own - and more recently fronted the electronic project System 7. There's a great documentary on Taha that came with the CD that the Rock the Kasbah cover appeared on. Called Kienes, it follows Taha around on his tour of Mexico and shows him backstage, on the radio and even shopping. All the time Taha plays the joker, laughing at one raido interviewer who asks him whether he considers his music Rai by saying he loves Ry Cooder. He's always said he's more of a punk than a world music guy, and says the first album he bought was indeed by The Clash.

Culebrones

Brilliant!

Rainbow

A never-aired episode from the famous 70s children's show - apparently written by a pissed-up script writer who'd previously worked on Carry On... films. Hilarious! I used to watch this when I was a kid and never got any of the innuendo or double entendres.

Jerry and me

Jerry Only congratulates me on a great gig last night in Madrid's Sala Copernico. Kind of.

Lip up fatty

Forgot to take the camera to the gig last week. Buster Bloodvessel's lost a bit of weight - though he still makes all the "you fat bastard" comments. I'm not sure how much of the line-up was original, though they certainly put on a good show from a very cramped stage (8 in the band) at Gruta '77.

All together - YOU FAT BASTARD!

Do Nothing

Much-covered classic from the UK ska revival in the late 70s and early 80s. Most recently I saw Bad Manners covering this is in their encore in Madrid last week. Another stand-out cover is Frank Black's from the b-side of one his Catholics singles.

Pavement

The perils of crucifixion

The Philippines government issued an Easter public heath warning - on the dangers of crucifixion.

Did it read, Don’t do it, it’s nuts?

Did it fuck.

Instead of warning people against self-harm in the name of the Catholic church, it simply advised them to get a tetanus jab first and "use clean nails."

Well fuck me, I think rusty ones would be better for people with the (lack of) brains to crucify themselves. In a kind of Darwin Awards way, it’d give them more chance of removing themselves from the gene pool.

It’s good to see corporate social responsibility alive and well and living in the Catholic world too. The crucifixions in San Fernando City – where 23 people, including two women, were nailed to crosses at three improvised Golgothas – were sponsored by Coca-Cola.

Ahem.

The grapes of wrath

The world’s gone mad – we all know that. But this story proves that there’s still a modicum of common sense left in it.

An accountant who tried to sue Marks & Spencer after he slipped on a grape and injured himself has lost his case and been ordered to pay legal costs.

Alexander Martin-Sklan, 55, sued for more than £300,000 over the 2004 incident in which he said a squashed grape from the store got lodged under the sole of his right sandal, causing him to slip and fall.

He said he suffered a ruptured quadricep, adverse psychological effects and depression following the incident, which meant that his business suffered and he could no longer ski or play tennis.

No longer ski or play tennis? The poor fella.

But the judge ruled against him, determining that while there may have been a grape or some "crushed fruit or similar" on the sole of Martin-Sklan's sandal, he was not persuaded that it "caused the claimant to slip."

The judge clearly has his head screwed on. He said: "In my judgment it was one of those accidents that could happen to anyone." Too many times these days – and especially in the USA - “accidents that could happen to anyone” result in legal action.

Martin-Sklan, who represented himself in the case, was ordered to pay the retailer's legal fees of nearly £20,000. Could he also have been fined for wasting the court’s time?

He refused to comment after the judgment. I wonder if he’s planning to appeal?

So, my question is this: Are grapes like banana skins - we all hear about people slipping on them but have never known anyone who's actually slipped on one?

Awareness test

Manowar

We've all had our fashion faux pas. The only thing I can say in their defence is... maybe Moses gave them a bit of whatever he was on.

Guyana

Joey deMaio - what a genius!

Moses on drugs

Moses was high on Mount Sinai when God spoke to him. Literally, according to a story in The Guardian.

An Israeli researcher claims the prophet may have been stoned when he set the Ten Commandments in stone.

Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, says that psychedelic drugs formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times.

Concoctions based on the bark of the acacia tree, frequently mentioned in the Old Testament, contain the same molecules as those found in plants from which the powerful Amazonian hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca is prepared.

"The thunder, lightning and blaring of a trumpet which the Book of Exodus says emanated from Mount Sinai could just have been the imaginings of a people in an altered state of awareness," says Sharon.

He adds: "In advanced forms of ayahuasca inebriation, the seeing of light is accompanied by profound religious and spiritual feelings."

According to the researcher, references in the Bible where people see sounds, is another "classic phenomenon", similar to religious ceremonies in the Amazon in which drugs are used that induce people to see music.

And Sharon should know about this - he's tried it more than 150 times. "I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations," he said.

He also thinks Moses was high on mind-altering drugs when he saw the "burning bush".

No shit.

Here's my question. How many other great works of fiction are a result of the consumption of mind-altering substances?

The perils of texting

An amazing six million Brits were injured last year while texting and using their mobiles.

More than one in ten people were hurt after stumbling into lamp-posts, bollards and litter bins in the street.

The story's from The Daily Star so it must be true.