Anne Rice, Muslim-based super heroes, and pigeons as music critics

A quick pass of the Guardian UK reveals these juicy morsels:

SEEING THE LIGHT: Anne Rice on why she left the Church (again) and still thinks angels are cool

This is crazy. There is no basis in scripture for any anointed hierarchy, let alone a male hierarchy. It’s just not there. And how in the world did this man-god die, preaching against the temple, and then we wind up with St Peter’s in Rome? How did that happen? There were so many issues where I thought the church was flat-out immoral. I had to leave.

CRITICS TAKE FLIGHT: Pigeons, famous for crapping on the Kings of Leon and ending their concert, take aim at recent music in a laugh-out-loud funny review (okay, it’s from July and I’m still catching up, but how can you go past gems such as this?)

Now we’re usually drawn to cheesy music – reggae buskers, organ grinders, Kevin even exploded by flying too close to the speakers at a Ted Nugent gig once – but this is too much even for us. The jaunty upstrokes! The overpowering odour of 1996! The fact that this song insists you think of that droopy-faced streak of piss Neil Hannon having sex! Crap in its mouth! CRAP IN ITS MOUTH!

FIGHTING FOR RIGHT: And this rather timely piece about a bunch of Muslim-inspired superheroes forging an alliance with DC’s heroes. Here’s a taste of the border-breaking article, courtesy of The 99 creator Dr Naif al-Mutawa:

“In Kuwait, it’s so sad, it’s funny. When I was growing up, Animal Farm was banned. At least in the Soviet Union they understood the problem was that it’s about anti-totalitarianism, whereas in Kuwait it was banned because it had a pig on the cover.”