Bram Teitelman at Metal Insider reports that fans at Germany’s Wacken Open Air, one of metal’s biggest and best festivals, have been warned about ways to avoid a possible swine-flu outbreak:

Citing “circumstances of limited hygeine,” the statement urges festival attendees to “resist close greeting rituals,” including hugging, handshakes and kisses on the cheek. They also asked not to let beverages “circulate.” Also, medical rescue personell have stockpiled antiviral medical inventory and isolation rooms to help prevent the spread of swine flu, also known as the A/H1NI virus.

Well, I’m not at Wacken (obviously), but as a misanthropic, maladjusted, socially awkward blogger, I tend to try and avoid “close greeting rituals” anyway. That being said, someone might want to point out to festival organizers that 75,000 people all packed closely together and in some cases deliberately slamming into one another will pretty much render any kissing/hugging/sharing of drinks moot. If someone in the crowd really does have swine flu, expect it to spread faster than Tawny Kitaen’s legs backstage at a hair metal show.

-AR

Thanks to this tweet from morrizz for the headline!!!

This provocative and entirely untrue headline was my way of:

1) capitalizing on the goodwill fostered by our previous swine flu posts,

2) letting you know that the recently reunited Boss Hog has joined the ATP NY weekender lineup, which also includes The Jesus Lizard, Melvins, Boredoms, and Black Dice.

Echoing my earlier sentiments about this overpriced music fest, even this new addition isn’t enough to convince me to shell out over $250 for tickets and a couple hundred more for accommodations. I mean, come on.

-GS

[Gary Suarez is still gonna call it swine flu. He also writes for Brainwashed and usually manages the consistently off-topic No Yoko No. Say, why don't you follow him on Twitter?]

“So that’s how you get swine flu!”

Dear Everyone,

• This post was a joke.
• If you’d clicked the included links, you would have seen it was a joke. Thanks to all three of you who did click said links.
• Mark Moritz-Rabson did not seriously write me a scolding e-mail. He provided me with the (in my opinion, hilarious) link included in the post. I tried to incorporate him into the joke. Clearly, that didn’t go so well.
• No joke is ever off-limits here at MetalSucks. For example, here’s a good one: What do you do after eating out the cleanest pussy in the world? Put the diaper back on. See? Pedophilia is funny. Ha ha ha.
• Get swine flu and die.

Kisses and bunnies and rainbows,

AR

I know that many of you are upset that I made light of the swine flu epidemic yesterday. Following a pretty harsh e-mail from longtime MetalSucks Maniac Mark Moritz-Rabson scolding me for making light of such a dire situation, I realized that this time I may have finally gone too far.

I implore you to go to this site to get the facts about swine flu. And, again, my apologies.

UPDATE: Thanks to Rob at Metal Injection for pointing us towards this site, which is also very informative.

-AR

This morning a friend of mine was riding the subway. Being afflicted with terrible allergies (as I am myself), he sneezed (into his hand – not the open air) and rubbed his sore eyes – at which point some fuckwit apparently started screaming at him about spreading swine flu and told him he should be wearing a mask. At which point, God bless him, my friend did the only logical thing: he started coughing in the fucker’s face.

PEOPLE: YOU DO NOT HAVE FUCKING SWINE FLU. THIS IS NOT A PANDEMIC. CALM THE FUCK DOWN. At best, this is the media’s way of distracting us from all the other fucked up shit going on right now. And if by some fucking chance it is mankind’s time to return to the dark ages – WHICH IT FUCKING IS NOT – well, you can’t say we didn’t have it coming.

Speaking of swine and people acting like fucking maniacs: here’s Pig Destroyer’s video for “Piss Angel,” off of 2001′s Prowler in the Yard. Thanks to my comrade Gary Suarez for the suggestion.

-AR