Marilyn Manson’s voracious appetite for the high life may not yet have caught up with him, but he has been felled by a potentially deadly virus. Yes, the self-styled “God of Fuck” has gone down with a bout of swine flu, temporarily putting his career as an aging goth-rocker on hold.

“So I have officially been diagnosed, by a real doctor, with THE SWINE FLU,” he said. “I know everyone will suggest that fucking a pig is how this disease was obtained. However, the doctor said, my past choices in women have in no way contributed to me acquiring this mysterious sickness. Unfortunately, I am going to survive.”

Manson’s career has reached such a low point that he was churning out songs that had lapsed painfully into self-parody (I’m looking at you, “Pretty as a Swastika”). And his fans weren’t enamored, with this year’s The High End of Low hitting an all-time sales slump for Manson, and his interviews around the record sinking into desperate cliché.

[Consequence of Sound]