Living next door to Alice

If you do read this blog then the gods bless you and keep you safe. I'm so gratified that I'll give you a free tip that will keep you healthy this Winter. If you have a needle phobia like moi or are prone to the sniffles and worse, I have a magic potion you can take - and I've had two colds in the last six years, neither of which lasted long - Royal Jelly. You can buy it in Chinatown for less than ten dollars a box; about thirty vials I think. So it's dirt cheap. The only catch is that it is so fucking powerful that it can kill you! (yeah, I know, that's some catch). Each vial is plastered with a sticker warning that asthmatics and highly allergenic people have been known to experience fatalities. I'm allergic to bee stings and it doesn't affect me in anything than a wholly positive way. You need to test it first to be on the safe side. Consult a good homeopath or Chinese herbal medicine practitioner.
Oh and some people don't like the taste so they get the flu instead. The logic beats me completely but there you go.

II

Kind of appropriate for Alice Cooper to be on a show called 'Enough Rope'. I'm not a fan as such but have no trouble acknowledging his importance in the rock pantheon. Marilyn Manson is, and always will be, a pale imitation.

I knew about his enthusiasm for golfing and the fact that his outrageous persona is largely confined to the stage. I didn't know he was a Christian but this is apparently an outcome of his overcoming his alcoholism. I do take issue with his support for a certain retarded statesman but found that interesting too (I don't really consider "Dubya Deathtoll" a statesman, it just sounded good). The thing is, I doubt Mr Furnier has thought very deeply about the issues. He was at pains to emphasise how Groucho Marx and contemporaries from that era saw the Alice Cooper show as vaudeville; the animal cruelty and fake guillotine were part of a macabre act much in the way that Mr Vincent Price was a perfect gentleman who just played dark and sinister characters.

And he said that rock music and politics don't mix; that when his parents would start discussing the issues of the day, he'd go into his room and put on the Rolling Stones. Fair enough in a way. I don't know where that leaves half the stuff I follow - yer Dead Kennedys, yer Clash City Rockers.
Even yer Sex Pistols - nihilism is as much a political philosophy as any other. But I'm not going to argue with what Alice Cooper perceives to be the province of rock. It's true for him, so be it. If Bush isn't for rockers who take a too-casual interest in proceedings then who is he for, after all?!