The Douchebag Bible (57 page)

devoid of anything as intelligent. We went from this:

The time to hesitate is through

No time to wallow in the mire

Try now we can only lose

And our love become a funeral pyre

Come on, baby, light my fire.

The Doors, Light My Fire

To this:

If I was your boyfriend, never let you go

Keep you on my arm girl, you’d never be alone

I can be a gentleman, anything you want

If I was your boyfriend, I’d never let you go, I’d

never let you go

Justin Bieber, Boyfriend

Am I the only one aware of this precipitous

decline or am I just the only one who cares or sees it

as culturally significant. Even beyond the

mainstream, I have found very little worth justifying

the existence of the generation’s music. Perhaps you

have some suggestions that could change my mind,

but I doubt it. I’ve looked pretty extensively for new

music that’s worth a shit and come up empty-

handed thus far.

To think, I used to feel like Limp Bizkit was the

worst band ever. Fred Durst seems like a genius by

modern standards. Everything is shit. Shallow,

uninteresting, boring shit. I thought that the older

generation was supposed to look at what the kids

were listening to and think it too crazy and extreme.

I look at what kids are listening to and think, “What

a bunch of unimaginative little pussies.”

Perhaps I'm just spoiled, however, since I grew

up listening to the great, under appreciated lyrical

master of our times: Marilyn Manson. A good

understanding of lyrical content is far more vital for

a Manson fan than it is for most fan bases (unless

you’re just some fan girl who wants to fuck him

because he wears make-up—not that there's

anything wrong with that). For instance, let’s look at

the lyrics to GodEatGod, the first track from the

album Holy Wood (In the Shadow Of The Valley Of

Death):

Dear god do you want to tear your knuckles down

And hold yourself

Dear god can you climb off that tree

Meat in the shape of a ‘T’

Dear god the paper says you were the King

In the black limousine

Dear John and all the King’s men

Can’t put your head together again

Before the bullets

Before the flies

Before authorities take out my eyes

The only smiling are you dolls that I made

But you are plastic and so are your brains

Dear god the sky is as blue

As a gunshot wound

Dear god if you were alive

You know we’d kill you

Before the bullets

Before the flies

Before authorities take out my eyes

The only smiling are you dolls that I made

But you are plastic and so are your brains

If you’re not aware beforehand that Manson is

juxtaposing Jesus Christ and John F. Kennedy, then

the lyrics can be a bit impenetrable. To fully

understand the song, you have to know going in that

“Meat in the shape of a T” is Christ on the cross. You

have to know that “Dear John and all the King’s men

/ can’t put your head together again” refers to the

Kennedy Assassination.

Why is Manson juxtaposing these two men?

Because they’re both revered figures in America who

were made all the more famous because of their

grizzly deaths. They're both martyrs.

The album’s title, Holy Wood, is not just a play

on Hollywood—it also refers to the tree of

knowledge in the Garden of Eden, to the cross upon

which Christ was crucified and to the wooden barrel

of Lee Harvey Oswalt’s rifle.

In Manson’s own words, “I make references to

the Zapruder film (of the Kennedy assassination)

being the most important movie ever made in

modern times. And the irony that anyone could

complain about violence in films and entertainment

when that was shown on the news. Growing up, I

saw it so many times—and I’ve never seen anything

so violent in my life. And that’s reality. To me,

Kennedy was a second Christ because he died and

enough people were watching, and so [he] became a

martyr.”

Further: “It’s strange that we accept the

crucifix as if it were an everyday part of our