The Gospel According to Anne

Sometimes Anne Rice won't leave her bedroom for days on end—and neither would you. Glass doors open onto a terrace that looks over the red-tiled roofs of La Jolla, Calif., to the Pacific Ocean. A live-in staffer brings meals to the table at the foot of her ornately carved wooden bed, which faces an ornately carved stone fireplace. She exercises in a huge bike-in closet. She's got two computers and enough books to last her a year. Splendid isolation? Splendid, sure. But she's often got family visiting in a downstairs guest suite, she reads The New York Times every morning—"Nicholas Kristof is a hero to me"—watches news "till I can't stand it anymore," and spends up to an hour and a half a day e-mailing with her extraordinarily faithful readers.

They've been worried about her. After 25 novels in 25 years, Rice, 64, hasn't published a book since 2003's "Blood Chronicle," the tenth volume of her best-selling vampire series. They may have heard she came close to death last year, when she had surgery for an intestinal blockage, and also back in 1998, when she went into a sudden diabetic coma; that same year she returned to the Roman Catholic Church, which she'd left at 18. They surely knew that Stan Rice, her husband of 41 years, died of a brain tumor in 2002. And though she'd moved out of their longtime home in New Orleans more than a year before Hurricane Katrina, she still has property there—and the deep emotional connection that led her to make the city the setting for such novels as "Interview With the Vampire." What's up with her? "For the last six months," she says, "people have been sending e-mails saying, 'What are you doing next?' And I've told them, 'You may not want what I'm doing next'." We'll know soon. In two weeks, Anne Rice, the chronicler of vampires, witches and—under the pseudonym A. N. Roquelaure—of soft-core S&M encounters, will publish "Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt," a novel about the 7-year-old Jesus, narrated by Christ himself. "I promised," she says, "that from now on I would write only for the Lord." It's the most startling public turnaround since Bob Dylan's "Slow Train Coming" announced that he'd been born again.

Meeting the still youthful-looking Rice, you'd never suspect she'd been ill—except that on a warm October afternoon she's chilly enough to have a fire blazing. And if you were expecting Morticia Addams with a strange new light in her eyes, forget it. "We make good coffee," she says, beckoning you to where a silver pot sits on the white tablecloth. "We're from New Orleans." Rice knows "Out of Egypt" and its projected sequels—three, she thinks—could alienate her following; as she writes in the afterword, "I was ready to do violence to my career." But she sees a continuity with her old books, whose compulsive, conscience-stricken evildoers reflect her long spiritual unease. "I mean, I was in despair." In that afterword she calls Christ "the ultimate supernatural hero ... the ultimate immortal of them all."

To render such a hero and his world believable, she immersed herself not only in Scripture, but in first-century histories and New Testament scholarship—some of which she found disturbingly skeptical. "Even Hitler scholarship usually allows Hitler a certain amount of power and mystery." She also watched every Biblical movie she could find, from "The Robe" to "The Passion of the Christ" ("I loved it"). And she dipped into previous novels, from "Quo Vadis" to Norman Mailer's "The Gospel According to the Son" to Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins's apocalyptic Left Behind series. ("I was intrigued. But their vision is not my vision.") She can cite scholarly authority for giving her Christ a birth date of 11 B.C., and for making James, his disciple, the son of Joseph by a previous marriage. But she's also taken liberties where they don't explicitly conflict with Scripture. No one reports that the young Jesus studied with the historian Philo of Alexandria, as the novel has it—or that Jesus' family was in Alexandria at all. And she's used legends of the boy Messiah's miracles from the noncanonical Apocrypha: bringing clay birds to life, striking a bully dead and resurrecting him.

Rice's most daring move, though, is to try to get inside the head of a 7-year-old kid who's intermittently aware that he's also God Almighty. "There were times when I thought I couldn't do it," she admits. The advance notices say she's pulled it off: Kirkus Reviews' starred rave pronounces her Jesus "fully believable." But it's hard to imagine all readers will be convinced when he delivers such lines as "And there came in a flash to me a feeling of understanding everything, everything!" The attempt to render a child's point of view can read like a Sunday-school text crossed with Hemingway: "It was time for the blessing. The first prayer we all said together in Jerusalem ... The words were a little different to me. But it was still very good." Yet in the novel's best scene, a dream in which Jesus meets a bewitchingly handsome Satan—smiling, then weeping, then raging—Rice shows she still has her great gift: to imbue Gothic chills with moral complexity and heartfelt sorrow.

Rice already has much of the next volume written. ("Of course I've been advised not to talk about it.") But what's she going to do with herself once her hero ascends to Heaven? "If I really complete the life of Christ the way I want to do it," she says, "then I might go on and write a new type of fiction. It won't be like the other. It'll be in a world that includes redemption." Still, you can bet the Devil's going to get the best lines.

Source:
The Gospel According to Anne, Viewed at 26th October 2005

Huge python, alligator in death match

The tail of an alligator protruding from the ruptured gut of a python, which had swallowed its foe alive, bore witness to a fierce and unusual battle between two of the deadliest predators in Florida's swamps.

US park rangers who photographed the remains of the two huge reptiles in the Everglades National Park say the clash demonstrates the threat to the fragile swamplands posed by a growing population of non-native burmese pythons.

Pythons, thought to have abandoned by pet owners, have been multiplying in the large swath of swampland, and environmentalists fear the exotic intruders threaten to overrun the national park, preying on native species.

The latest find suggest the huge pythons might even challenge alligators' leading position in the food chain.

Park biologist Skip Snow described the gruesome scene he found on September 27 in a remote corner of the Everglades park, which he said showed an almost four metre long burmese python had "apparently" entirely swallowed an alligator about half his size.

"I say apparently because the tail and hind limbs of the dead alligator were protruding from a hole in the mid-body of the dead python," Mr Snow said.

"Although some bones of the jaw were present, the head of the python was missing," he said in a field report, illustrated with graphic photographs.

The photographs show the hind quarters of the alligator protruding from the snake's mid-section.

"The stomach of the python still surrounded the head, shoulders and forelimbs of the alligator," Mr Snow said.

"When extracted from the snake, the alligator was largely intact except for two open wounds, one to the top of the skull behind the eyes and one on the shoulder," he said, adding that it was unclear how the python's gut was ruptured, or how the snake died.

Park officials have removed dozens of burmese pythons from the Everglades over the past years and are training a beagle nicknamed "Python Pete" to track the exotic invaders.

Source:
Huge python, alligator in death match, Viewed at 10th October, 2005

Repressed Lust Killer

John Reginald Halliday Christie was a typical 'repressed' lust killer who could achieve satisfaction only through rape, murder, and probably necrophilia. Over a period of 13 years Christie killed eight women, including his own wife, without causing the slightest suspicion. His respectable and quiet manner was in no way like it seemed. On December 14 1952 John Christie claims to have woken up to find his wife having a convulsive fit. He stated that her face was blue and that he tried to revive her. Christie went on to state that he couldn't bear to see his wife in so much pain, so he tied a stocking around her neck and strangled her 'to put her to sleep'. He went on to explain how he noticed a bottle of sleeping pills (Phenalbabitone) with a cup of water beside the bed. He told Police that there had been 25 tablets in the bottle and that only two remained, suggesting his wife had committed suicide. In his confession he stated that he left his wife in the bed for 3 days because he didn't know what to do with her. He then suddenly remembered there were some loose floorboards in the living room and put her there to 'rest'.


Source:
Repressed Lust killer, Viewed at Sept 22, 2005

Zoo gets world's first elephant treadmill

ANCHORAGE (Reuters) - Anchorage zookeepers are installing a 16,000-pound (7.3-ton) treadmill to keep an isolated elephant from getting fat during the long, cold Alaskan winters.

The 20-foot(6-meter)-long treadmill was designed specifically for Maggie, a 23-year-old female African elephant that has become the subject of a national debate over the proper care for captive pachyderms.

"It looks just like a big people treadmill," said Patrick Lampi, assistant director of the Alaska Zoo.

Because this is the first treadmill ever built for an elephant, zoo officials and an Idaho company studied mining equipment and treadmills used for race horses and racing camels, Lampi said.

Zookeepers said Zimbabwe-born Maggie would start using the treadmill in about two months.

The zoo is remodeling her indoor and outdoor spaces, making both about twice as large as before and adding a sandy area. In addition, the floor has been heated and the zoo is evaluating ways to make it softer, Lampi said.

Critics from Anchorage and around the nation have urged the zoo to send Maggie to an elephant sanctuary in a warmer climate and away from the near-Arctic zoo.

Elephants, particularly females, are herd creatures and need company, critics have said. But Maggie's companion, an Asian elephant named Annabelle, died in 1997.

Maggie's weight-loss program started more than a year ago, Lampi said, "She was slightly heavy for an elephant."

With diet modifications and new exercise inducements, such as hiding food in baskets and other sites that require some work to reach, Maggie has slimmed down a bit and is now believed to weigh a little over 8,000 pounds (3.6 tonnes).

"We estimate that she lost maybe 1,000 pounds (454 kg)," Lampi said.

Source:
Zoo gets world's first elephant treadmill, Viewed at 17th Sept. 2005

Power-dressing man leaves trail of destruction

SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian man built up a 40,000-volt charge of static electricity in his clothes as he walked, leaving a trail of scorched carpet and molten plastic and forcing firefighters to evacuate a building.

Frank Clewer, who was wearing a woolen shirt and a synthetic nylon jacket, was oblivious to the growing electrical current that was building up as his clothes rubbed together.

When he walked into a building in the country town of Warrnambool in the southern state of Victoria Thursday, the electrical charge ignited the carpet.

"It sounded almost like a firecracker," Clewer told Australian radio Friday.

"Within about five minutes, the carpet started to erupt."

Employees, unsure of the cause of the mysterious burning smell, telephoned firefighters who evacuated the building.

"There were several scorch marks in the carpet, and we could hear a cracking noise -- a bit like a whip -- both inside and outside the building," said fire official Henry Barton.

Firefighters cut electricity to the building thinking the burns might have been caused by a power surge.

Clewer, who after leaving the building discovered he had scorched a piece of plastic on the floor of his car, returned to seek help from the firefighters.

"We tested his clothes with a static electricity field meter and measured a current of 40,000 volts, which is one step shy of spontaneous combustion, where his clothes would have self-ignited," Barton said.

"I've been firefighting for over 35 years and I've never come across anything like this," he said.

Firefighters took possession of Clewer's jacket and stored it in the courtyard of the fire station, where it continued to give off a strong electrical current.

David Gosden, a senior lecturer in electrical engineering at Sydney University, told Reuters that for a static electricity charge to ignite a carpet, conditions had to be perfect.

"Static electricity is a similar mechanism to lightning, where you have clouds rubbing together and then a spark generated by very dry air above them," said Gosden.

Source:
Power-dressing man leaves trail of destruction, Viewed at 17th Sept. 2005

Rape, Power and Misconceptions - by Claire Konkes

Rape, power and misconceptions
By CLAIRE KONKES
06sep05

THE rape of boys is not seen as a heinous crime because of society's attitudes to young men's sexuality, Hobart psychologists say.

And boys are as vulnerable to sexual abuse as girls but less likely to report the crime because of these attitudes.

With 25-year-old Hobart teacher Sarah Jane Vercoe pleading guilty to shocking sexual acts with five teenage boys, the uncommon scenario of boys falling sexual victims to women was revealed.

Vercoe pleaded guilty to having various sex acts with five teenage boys aged between 14 and 16 while she was a teacher at Rose Bay High School earlier this year.

The assumption that teenage boys wanted to have a sexual experience as early as possible made it difficult for society to understand the serious nature of such crimes, Hobart psychologist Peter Nelson said yesterday.

As well as peer pressure to assert themselves sexually, there was also the attitude of adults who should be trying to protect them that could lead to the sexual assault of boys being overlooked.

He said: "It can be seen as a coming-of-age experience rather than a situation that can be traumatic for boys."

Mr Nelson said it was wrong to assume women could not rape boys.

Rape is about power and taking away someone's control, he said.

"The teacher had power over the boys at the outset," he said. "You could never say they were on an equal footing with her."

Clinical psychologist Sabina Lane said female sexual predators were less common than men -- but not unusual.

Dr Lane said society did not generally consider males as victims in sexual assault but adolescent boys were particularly vulnerable.

"Their hormones are rife at this age, so to have someone pay them some attention is a nice thing. It can be very exciting," she said.

But a nice thing could quickly get out of control, with boys doing things they did not want to do, out of confusion or intimidation.

The age of consent protected them from becoming involved in something they did not have the maturity to deal with, she said.

If the boy believed it was his fault or that "real men" didn't say no to sex, then the abuse might continue for a lot longer because they kept quiet about it, she said.

"Males generally find it difficult to communicate, or communicate differently so it can be harder for boys to get help," she said.

Dr Lane said recovering from rape and sexual assault -- like grief -- depended on the individual but the response from family members played a huge part in the healing process.

Source:
Rape, power and misconceptions, Viewed at 6th September 2005

Sharon Goes Lights Out for Ozzy

Sharon Osbourne has just added to her multihyphenate--wife of Ozzy, organizer of Ozzfest, Emmy-winning matriarch of The Osbournes, ex-talk show host, cancer survivor and now Iron Maiden basher.

The missus has admitted in a statement that she cut power to British metal icons Iron Maiden during an Ozzfest concert this summer. She says she pulled the plug after the band's lead singer, Bruce Dickinson, let loose a litany of anti-Osbourne sentiments from the stage.

In a press release written as an open letter to Maiden manager Rod Smallwood, Sharon Osbourne explained why she unplugged his band during its set Aug. 20 near San Bernardino, California.

"For 20 shows we were forced to hear Dickinson's nightly outbursts from the stage," she writes.

She then recounted some of what Dickinson said of her husband, including an alleged dig at Ozzy requiring a TelePrompTer to perform live.

"Dickinson got what he deserved," she added.

In a posting on Iron Maiden's Website, Smallwood had claimed the band deserved an apology "from a number of people, and you know who you are."

And Dickinson told Britain's Sun, "We could tell there were a lot of disgusted fans who had paid good money to see us."

But Osbourne was unrelenting.

"Was Dickinson so naive to think that I was going to let him get away with talking s--t about my family night after night? I don't think he realizes who he's dealing with."

She signed her letter: "the real Iron Maiden."

Indeed, long before Sharon Osbourne became a household name in America thanks to MTV's hugely successful Osbournes, she was known in music industry circles as one of the fiercest managers in the business.

She conceived the massive Ozzfest tour as a vehicle to introduce younger fans to her number one client, and the tour has become possibly her most successful business venture.

The traveling summer show, which rakes in upwards of $25 million and attracts nearly 500,000 fans, is built around Ozzy as the headliner, with typically younger metal bands warming up.

Iron Maiden found itself badmouthing the wrong clan when he spoke ill of Ozzy's brood--fans reportedly pelted Maiden with eggs and other projectiles on Aug. 20, roundly booing the band before Sharon went lights-out.

Fans appeared particularly offended at Dickinson's remarks about Ozzy's declining health following a lifetime of hard living.

Earlier this month, the Osbournes released a statement saying this would be the 56-year-old Ozzy's final Ozzfest as the headliner.

Some fans who were at the Aug. 20 show posted messages to blabbermouth.net that Sharon may have been behind the anti-Maiden episode. "There is NO WAY any fan could have snuck in 36 f---ing eggs," one concertgoer vented. "They patted us down so good, I felt like asking for a cigarette afterwards."

If Osbourne did egg on fans, she is uncharacteristically staying mum.

Regardless, Maiden is off the tour--their last gig on the currently-touring festival was Aug. 20. Velvet Revolver will fill out the remaing Ozzfest dates.

Ozzfest touches down next at the Starwood Amphitheater in Antioch, Tennessee, on Wednesday.

Source:
Sharon Goes lights Out for Ozzy, Viewed at 31st August 2005

Duff, Slash Gunning for Axl

The bad blood among the ex-members of Guns N' Roses has boiled over into a federal case.

Duff McKagan and Slash filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles Wednesday against Guns ringleader Axl Rose, accusing their former frontman of trying to cheat them out of royalties to the song catalog of the iconic hair band.

Duff and Slash, now part of Velvet Revolver, say they are still partners with Rose when it comes to the old Guns tunes like "Sweet Child O' Mine" and "Welcome to the Jungle." They contend that Rose, without their consent, signed a multimillion-dollar publishing deal with the U.K.-based Sanctuary earlier this year that included the lucrative Guns N' Roses back catalog.

Because of Rose's "arrogance and ego," per the suit, he has failed to "acknowledge the contributions of his former bandmates in [creating] some of rock's greatest hits."

"Rose's actions were malicious, fraudulent and oppressive, and undertaken in conscious disregard of [Slash and Duff's] property rights." They say that a $92,000 royalty check covering the first quarter of 2005 went directly to Rose "and his accomplices," instead of being split three ways.

The former Gunners are accusing Rose of fraud, copyright infringement and breach of fiduciary duty.

There was no immediate comment from Rose's reps. Deke Arlon, chairman of Sanctuary's publishing division, told E! Online he couldn't discuss the dust-up because "the matter is subject to legal hearings."

The original members of the Los Angeles band drifted apart in the mid-1990s--leaving the band's legacy in dispute. Rose was eventually awarded rights to the Guns N' Roses moniker and continues to play (or not play, as is more often the case) under the GNR banner. But Duff and McKagan sued Rose in April 2004 to determine control of the back catalog.

That breach-of-contract lawsuit, which is still pending, specifically alleges Rose unilaterally blocked the others from licensing Guns music for movie soundtracks, effectively shutting off potential revenue streams to Slash and Duff. The duo claimed Rose "whimsically refuses to license Guns and Roses Music" even though he, they allege, dropped out of the partnership in 1995.

Even with the feuding, the band's studio albums have all gone multiplatinum, and Guns' songs are still among the most requested in the publishing biz. The band's tunes recently turned up--along with Rose's vocal acting talents--in 2004's biggest videogame release, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

What hasn't turned up is Rose's forever-in-the-works album, Chinese Democracy, with his revamped version of Guns N' Roses.

Earlier this year, the New York Times ran a lengthy feature examining how the seemingly mythical Chinese Democracy has failed to surface, despite being finessed in various studios for the better part of the last decade. The article concluded that the delay was due in part to Rose's fabled eccentric and reclusive nature.

In response to the March article, Sanctuary Group CEO Merck Mercuriadis fired off a vitriolic letter to the Times, saying Rose will "have the last laugh" and that the singer is simply a "soft target for the sort of rubbish you have chosen to print."

Last we heard, Sanctuary was aiming for a late November release date for Democracy, but that was before the label's financial problems became public. The company is said to be heavily burdened by debt and is struggling to survive.

Despite their open feuding, Duff, Slash and Rose did manage to reunite last year to sue Universal to block the release of Guns N' Roses Greatest Hits. The band lost, and the album wound up debuting at number three on the Billboard 200 and ultimately sold over 2 million copies.

Source:
Duff, Slash Gunning for Axl, Viewed at 26th August 2005

NIN interview

Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor has finally pulled himself out of his personal downward spiral and released the band’s first record in more than five years. And, he admits, he’s a changed man.

“The world doesn’t revolve around me, people tend to know more than I do and it helps to listen, occasionally!” Reznor reveals.

Rewind to 1995 and Nine Inch Nails were in the early stages of their ascension (thanks to the mega-selling second full-length record, The Downward Spiral). Trent Reznor’s status as a cult figure and martyr for the depressed and dispossessed increased daily, but the then-25-year-old auteur’s dog had just died, falling 50 feet from a balcony in Ohio.

“I’m happy that his dog died,” a fan told People magazine at the time. “I like it when he’s depressed. It’s good for the music.”

To paraphrase a famously dark star’s inked pelvis, it was a case of quod me nutrit, destro. If the music of NIN was cathartic for the band’s followers and allowed them to explore (and, in many cases, survive) their darkest hours, they were perfectly happy for their idol to bleed out every line for their personal benefit – even if it meant misery, self-destruction and God knows what else for Reznor.

The newly calm Reznor laughs about it today, but ten (or even five) years ago he found himself trapped in a vicious cycle of stimulus-response.

“Certainly a motivating factor in my making music was my being depressed, because I found music was a cathartic way for me to feel better, to get that out of my system,” he offers. “I learned that drawing on negative experiences – whether it be anger, or depression, or heartbreak, or gloom, or frustration, or madness… those are things that acted as a catalyst to make music. But later I started to believe that I had to be in the midst of a tormented phase to have anything pertinent to say, anything relevant or meaningful. And then that led into me thinking, ‘I wonder if I also need drugs or alcohol to maintain that state’. There’s enough bullshit writers and poets that would lead you to believe that all creativity stems from a bottle or whatever it might be.”

If you’ve been out of the NIN loop over the past few years, here are some cliff notes: on the outfit’s last large-scale tour, in 2000, Reznor overdosed on heroin. But following rehab in 2001 and some wilderness years of self-examination and creative breathing space, Reznor has clawed his way back to a semblance of normalcy.

For the droll ex-Pennsylvanian (who recently turned 40), this hard-won clarity is something of a milestone.

“For sure,” Reznor says. “I also learned that I never turned to drugs or alcohol as inspiration. If anything, that ended any sort of creativity. I just did it because I didn’t want to feel bad, I didn’t want to be in pain, and that was the only way I knew, reliably and easily, that I could do that. And it does work, for a little while. Then it leads to a place far worse than when you began.”

It was a place Reznor has only just begun to explore throughout With Teeth, NIN’s first full-length release since 1999’s The Fragile, a record Reznor now feels was overblown and misguided (even if it did contain mini-masterworks like ‘Into The Void’).

Upon With Teeth’s release earlier this year, Reznor was quick to announce it was his most personal record, though he now tempers that statement somewhat.

“I think what I meant when I said something like that was that the process of writing this record was a lot different to what it had been in the past, not just the strategy of execution – which was starting with piano and vocal, I hadn’t done that before – but the process of actual writing and creating,” he explains. “I felt a lot, as it went on, a lot freer and a lot more confident and willing to take chances, and a lot less concerned about wondering if it’s good enough or wondering if people will like it and all that nonsense.

“I know I’ve invested a lot in feeling that way in the past and feeling confident enough to say, ‘Yeah, let me try this’ [or] ‘Is this ‘right’ for Nine Inch Nails?’. [But] who cares? Do I like it? Yes. All right, [then] quit overanalysing it and quit talking about it and quit being afraid!”

It was the first time, too, that Reznor felt no pressure to succeed commercially or appease to his notoriously passionate fans.

“This time I was divorced completely from external pressure, but I had my own bar that I’d set that I had to make sure I’d pass. But going into it [not knowing] if the record label wants to even put it out, or if anyone cares, I think, in a way, that was freeing. I really achieved a sense of humility and of being humbled through the process of my own life bottoming out. It’s tough to feel real cool when you’re vomiting in a fucking toilet in rehab with junkies about to kick your ass; it’s tough to feel important in that state.”

Even though he didn’t realise it at the time, waking up in a London hospital with tubes in most orifices was, on some level, a window into a new creative mindset.

“I had a fresh well of experiences,” he laughs, “things that I’ve barely started to even sift through. I’ve had enough negative, terrible times for several more double-albums if that’s what I chose to do. It was the biggest change in my life and the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through, for sure, and the most searching… I felt like I had a loaded gun at my head saying, ‘Do this or you’re going to die’.

“But having done it, I’ve learnt more about myself and others and I learnt so many things that I was so full of shit about!”

So is this the beginning of a beautiful new relationship, a healthier way of going about things?

“Let’s see how it goes,” Reznor laughs. “I’m still learning on this process, but I have learnt an incredible amount so far.”

Source:
NIN interview, Viewed at 26th August 2005