Dr Pepper (not a real doctor) says it will give every American a free fizzy drink if Axl releases the new Guns’N’Roses album in 2008. Two exceptions: former guitarists Slash and Buckethead. And presumably everyone who refuses because they are not engaged in a competitive burping competition and don’t want to feel the inside of their noses itching.

This is a first in the barrel-scraping industry. To hi-jack a band’s unreleased work with a PR stunt like this. I hope the good doctor’s teeth fall out.

Every time someone asks where the new G’N’R album’s got to, I can hear Axl cackling away. Wasn’t it enough of a hint that he called it ’Chinese Democracy’? How much closer have we got to that in the last 17 years?

Our manager's gone AWOL. Not surprised. I'm about ready to kill him when I catch him.

I finally saw the book he's been writing about us, yesterday. At first, I wasn't keen on the project. He said it was a profile of a band in flux, and an industry in turmoil. That didn't sound like much of a reason to retread the path we trod in the 80s, when there were dozens of books (none of them with official interviews, I should add). So then he came clean and said he really wanted to put my genius on record, and ensure it was recorded in libraries worldwide. That seemed fair enough, so I let him do it.

He caught the band (and the industry) in 'interesting times' (as the Chinese might say). I can't even begin to explain what happened. A year I must either forget or regret.

So I went bananas when I saw he'd classified the whole thing as 'humour'. This isn't funny. It's my fucking life.

What's more, the book's supposed to be about me and I'm only in about a third of it. To see what I mean, check out the first two chapters. The book's on sale now, apparently. I'll be putting together a special limited edition, bound in our manager's dried skin. More news as I make it...

D/ove

chill man - just play the game dude - creak xxxx

Creak sent me this stupid flash game. It's like frogger, only you have to help a roadie cross the motorway to collect guitars and amps and stuff. It's some sort of road safety promotion. It seems the kids might die unless a rock band reminds them not to stroll into the path of a speeding juggernaut.

Full credit to the Dirty Pretty Things. They've clocked up their share of touring miles, so I know they're straight up about road safety. We've all seen smash-ups from the bus window.

But I do wish people wouldn't send me shit like this when I'm trying to write the new album. Especially people in the bastard band who are supposed to be writing too. Must focus.

D/ove xx

Retired pop muppets The Spice Girls ran a survey to see where their fans wanted them to play for their lip-synch revival tour. The winning Spice City was Baghdad. The NME reports this straight as the choice of the fans, but what is more likely? That the Spice Girls have a massive fan base in war-torn Iraq? Or that non-fans think it's funny to send the girls into the battle zone? Somehow, even after 20 years spent wrangling with music journalists, their idiocy still surprises me.

D/ove

Every day of my life, some brain donor asks me to hawk a tawdry product by attaching the fruits of my genius to it. Only yesterday a toy maker (which shall remain aimless) asked me to endorse an 'Animal Reined' plush toy - a lime-green monster which plays a 30 second sample of our song ("You treat me like an animal reined") when you lock its cage. No, no, no!

If I gave in just once, all the goodwill I have built up in my work would evaporate. The band would be transformed in the public's eye from a credible rock act into a comedy troupe. If we don't take the work seriously, how can we expect anyone else to?

Now I hear that the Manic Street Preachers have endorsed a recipe to be marketed at Glastonbury as 'A Design for Pie'. I love a good pun as much as I love a good pie, but if you don't stick up for your work, it loses its meaning. I used to think they were a credible act, but this is at least a lapse of judgement and perhaps a clue that they're not '4real' after all. It is possible to be serious about your music and show you have a sense of humour without denigrating the work.

D/ove

Full credit to Courtney Love for getting Doc Martens to axe the ad, even if she does have a dodgy history with Kurt's legacy (releasing trax he never approved and even his frigging diaries ffs).

It was exactly this sort of thing I was thinking of when I wrote 'Stay Dead' all those years ago, when John Lennon was jump-started to hawk mobile phones on the telly and Steve McQueen was dug up to sell a car invented decades after he died:

they rip the faces from the bodies of the dead
ransack their legacies
consuming all the things they did and said
when they come for you
you'd better just stay dead
they couldn't deal with you
they'll run it past your wife instead

D/ove