Shane MacGowan And Pals’ Charity Single

Today in music: “Shane MacGowan has gathered together a group of his musician friends to record I Put a Spell on You in aid of Concern Worldwide’s work in Haiti. The stellar cast featured vocals from Shane MacGowan, Nick Cave and Primal Scream singer Bobby Gillespie, the Sex Pistols Glen Matlock, The Pretenders Chrissie Hynde and Paloma Faith and finally Eliza Doolittle. On guitars were James Walbourne, The Clashs Mick Jones and Johnny Depp, who recorded his parts in LA.” You know what? Johnny Depp SHREDS. I fully endorse this video. [Via]

One of the best albums of all time-the New York Times once called it “rock ’n’ roll’s version of the Great American Novel,” which makes no sense because its creators are English!-is getting reissued. Come May 18th, Exile on Main Street will be released in an expanded version (with ten new, or newish songs.) There is also a DVD, says the Times, “of a new Rolling Stones documentary, called ‘Stones in Exile,’ which uses footage from an earlier, unreleased Stones film whose name we cannot print here. (The second part of its title is “Blues.”)” We can print it! It’s “Cocksucker!” “Cocksucker Blues!” I’m deliriously happy!

Chuck Klosterman’s last book, from October, has an attack on the use of the exclamation point as a marker of irony. It’s making the rounds today online, since someone is reading it. Klosterman’s opinion: It’s “idiotic. It’s the saddest kind of failure.” Klosterman is talking overall about the rhetorical practices of feigned ignorance, distancing in general and also about the most convenient punctuation markers to make things clear to the reader-though he believes these markers make things ever more unclear. At least, he approvingly quotes Fitzgerald as against exclamation points. Let’s look at some recent history!

(That was an exclamation point of excitement, not a marker of irony tinged with anger, as so much of exclamation-point related irony actually is. I did not at all mean the opposite of what I was writing! I was encouraging you to look at some history with me.)

Mark Nanos’s The Irony of Galatians: Paul’s Letter in First-Century Context, published in 2002, suggests that an inability (or unwillingness) to read the irony in Galatians had some ill effects, up to and including the Holocaust. But to any modern reader, the irony in Galatians seems extremely well-indicated.

This passage discusses Galatians 1:6. The 21st Century King James Version of Galatians 1:6–9 goes:

I marvel that ye are so soon removed from Him, that called you into the grace of Christ, for another gospel.

For this is not another; but there are some who trouble you and would pervert the Gospel of Christ.

But should we, or an angel from Heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached to you, let him be accursed.

As we said before, so say I now again: If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that which ye have received, let him be accursed!

On this topic, Nanos has this to say.

“The economics of news simply don’t support high salaries anymore. This changes the paradigm of desirability from hiring someone who’s good-looking and can read to someone who’s well-rounded and can present.”
-Industry consultant Steve Safran explains that, because of cost-cutting in network news divisions, even the real uggos will now get a shot to report on TV.

The BBC does not do embeddable video, so you will just have to go here to see this story about a volunteer group in Somerset, England, that knits sweaters for bald chickens. I cannot promise that it will be worth your time, but then again I do not know exactly how valuable your time is.

“Italy’s highest court on Thursday threw out the long-running corruption trial of David Mills, a former lawyer of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, in a move that casts doubt over whether a related corruption trial facing the Italian leader will reach a conclusion…. In its ruling, which is final and can’t be appealed, the high court said Mr. Mills had received [a $600,000 payment to lie for Berlusconi during a couple of earlier trials]. However, the judges found that lower courts-which had originally convicted Mr. Mills-had improperly interpreted the statute of limitations in the case. Therefore, they threw the case out.” Berlusconi’s lawyer, Niccolo Ghedini, will ask the court to suspend Berlusconi’s own trial in the matter. Italians are the world champions at running out the clock.

There are a lot of women out there who have menstrual cycles. Generally, they talk about it amongst themselves. But sometimes menstruation becomes public! Like in Brittany Murphy’s autopsy report, which, Us Weekly reports today, her husband has just read. (The magazine notes that he found reading it upsetting.) But women readers will note that there is some really intriguing menses-related information here.

Us quotes Murphy’s husband, Simon Monjack: “Like all deaths, I go over and over and over it. She was dead within two hours of waking up, saying ‘My chest is tight. I can’t take a breath!’ But that was part of her normal menstrual cycle. It was the perfect storm.”

Her normal menstrual cycle?

“As someone whose conversations with other women are at least 40% about menstruation,” said Rindley, probably an Aquarius, “I can honestly say I’ve never heard that one.”

(40%? “The other 60% is about dicks,” she explained.)

“Maybe she had PMS-related panic attacks,” Rindley suggested. “I mean, to get serious, that could be what he meant. The hormones take over, they really do, it’s nuts. I once cried for fifteen minutes over not being able to figure out a tool in Photoshop. Like deep wracking sobs.”

I asked Laura, 34, if she experienced Brittany-Murphy-like menstruation. “No!” she said. “I mean I feel like I want to die sometimes, but that’s for cramps-related reasons. But no, no chest-tightening at all.”

“Also,” Laura added, “Didn’t she have a bunch of cold medicine in her system? AKA the stuff that my summer-of-96 roommates would often try to turn into speed?”

Laura noted, however, that “this speculation resembles a rumor that would have been passed around before those gender-segregated fifth-grade assemblies sponsored by the makers of various menstrual products more than anything.”

I asked Vera, who is Jewish, the same question. “No NO NO NO,” she said. “Just rage and hunger,” she added.

“I mean I’m trying to think where he got this,” she said. “Cause your boobs can hurt, sure. But not on the inside.”

On the Internet, women often come together to discuss menstruation. According to an Internet website posting, yesterday, one woman admitted that “my period lasts 7–8 days, is painful, and is enormously heavy and messy. I routinely pass very large (think superball-sized, and larger) clots or masses of tissue-often multiple times in a day, and because of the clots I have intense cramping.”

I sent that link to Rindley for her thoughts. “Eww!” she said.

“In a rambling address on Thursday, Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi called for holy war against Switzerland.”

Yesterday was such a phenomenal shit-show that, this morning, I thought: maybe for the first time ever I’d better check my horoscope? (I was inspired by Maura Johnston, who checked hers this morning and… basically got a weather report?) Mine is way more exciting though! Oh, fellow Scorpios, are you ready for what Astrology.com has in store for you?

“Watching performances of ‘Hallelujah’ by people who aren’t Cohen-whose original take has an archness that’s wiped away by the clear-eyed sincerity offered up by his successors-you see one common thread: each singer really feels the song, closing their eyes at least once in every performance to properly communicate that what they are singing is Serious Business.”