In one of our first posts, we reported that shock-gother Marilyn Manson was set to reunite (sorta) with both ex-collaborator/friend Trent Reznor and ex-wife Dita Von Teese in a court of law amid a lawsuit filed by former keyboardist Stephen Bier, aka Madonna Wayne Gacy.

According to Southern California Public Radio (via these rockers), the pair have settled out of court over the alleged misappropriated purchase of Nazi paraphernalia, ex-wife Dita Von Teese’s engagement ring, a stuffed grizzly bear, a pair of baboons, and the skeleton of a 4-year-old Chinese girl.

For more on what went down, go here.

Meanwhile, Manson has taken to his MySpace page for a couple rants about the settlement and “the person that stood behind a keyboard—pretending to play music other artists in this band wrote.”

It feels like yesterday that Marilyn Manson was hyping a misogynistic, NSFW video to his new emo song “Running to the Edge of the World,” but alas, his latest album, The High End Low, will likely be the aging shock goth’s last major label effort. In an interview with Metal Hammer (via Blabbermouth), Manson revealed that he has reunited with girlfriend Evan Rachel Wood (star of Bono and the Edge’s upcoming Spider-Man musical) and that he has been “released” from his contract with Interscope Records.

Manson goes on to claim that much of his “creative output has been squashed” by his former label in the past, “so now [he] think[s] people can expect a whole lot more,” including a new album that he boasts will be “a bit like [Bowie’s] Aladdin Sane.”

And the feud rages on. We’ve mentioned Trent Reznor’s calling his former partner in crime a “dopey clown” a couple of times now, and at long last Marilyn Manson himself has joined the fray with some barbs of his own.

The Herald Sun quotes Manson as saying, “Since I’ve known Trent he’s always let his jealousy and bitterness for other people get in the way. I’m not talking about me — I sat back and watched him be jealous of Kurt Cobain and Billy Corgan and a lot of other musicians in the past. I just don’t find the time to do that. I stopped thinking about him a while back, but I know that every day I have a song played that money will go to him, forever.”

Seems kind of cyclical to me – remember their falling-out in the late nineties and Nine Inch Nails’ subsequent anthem “Starfuckers, Inc.,” which was, depending on the article, a jab at Manson? I do. Just saying.

Not all ties are severed, though. “As long as I have a record deal it will be attached to him financially. In the words of his own song, you shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds you — you should take that hand and punch yourself in the face.”

It probably isn’t easy to kick the booze habit when you have your own eponymous brand of absinthe, but that isn’t Marilyn Manson’s only hurdle in getting clean. He’s just too famous for AA.

“I went to one AA meeting and I got asked for an autograph. I got pissed off,” Manson told the Mirror’s Gavin Martin. “I think you should be able to go in there wearing a mask and say I’m an alcoholic, I’m anonymous. That’s a real alcoholic. They told me that the definition of an alcoholic is someone who drinks, screws up their life and knows it, but continues doing it. Well I screwed up my life up before I drank!”

This sort of talk does seem to confirm Trent Reznor’s recent claim that “drugs and alcohol now rule [Manson’s] life and he’s become a dopey clown,” but Reznor did also say of his former friend/collaborator, “he pretended to be f—-ed up a lot when he wasn’t.” As Prefix’s Nick Neyland notes, is Manson faking it for attention to promote his new record The High End of Low?

My guess is that he actually is messed up and needs help. For example, when his manager refused to get him drugs, “my eyes watered,” Manson said. “Then he asks me if I am OK! It’s ridiculous. It should be, ‘Here’s the mirror - and now are you OK?’”

Underneath the makeup, novelty contact lenses, wig, and corpse paint, Marilyn Manson is just some gangly, nerdy dude, right? He’s what Harris Trinsky would be if they had Hot Topic in 1980 (or Bill Haverchuck, perhaps). Either way, the man knows how to work it, especially around goths.

In a teaser for Kerrang!’s exclusive Manson issue this week, they posted a bit about how women love being insulted by the former Brian Warner. “The way I compliment a girl now is by saying, ‘I want to throw knives at your vagina’,” Manson said. “They go ‘Oh, you’re so cute, you’re so charming’. I say, ‘No, I’d like to set you on fire and snort your ashes’. ‘Oh, Manson!’ they reply.”

Manson says he had a dry spell with the ladies when he shaved his eyebrows, but he’s grown them back, so you better protect your daughters from the emo Rudolph Valentino.

Marilyn Manson’s former keyboard player Stephen Bier, aka Madonna Wayne Gacy, is suing Manson for $20 million. His claims include Manson’s using the band’s earnings to buy drugs, assorted Nazi paraphernalia, ex-wife Dita Von Teese’s engagement ring, a stuffed grizzly bear, a pair of baboons, and the skeleton of a 4-year-old Chinese girl.

Legal documents indicate that Manson plans to call Von Teese and ex-producer Trent Reznor to the stand in his defense. I suppose the baboons wouldn’t do well in cross-examination.

Nine Inch Nails’s Reznor will likely testify about Bier’s role in Portrait of an American Family, the album he produced for his Nothing Records label when the two had an amicable artistic relationship in the mid-1990s. Manson and Reznor subsequently squabbled over creative and personal differences, culminating in Reznor’s tribute to his former friend, “Starf*ckers.”

Von Teese will likely testify about the engagement ring and wedding, which Biers claims were paid for with the compensation owed to him.

If Von Teese is unable to appear in court, I think either Evan Rachel Wood or Isani Griffith, Manson’s recent girlfriends, could stand in, as they both are the spitting image of his ex.

Here’s hoping Manson and Reznor rekindle their old creative sparks. Manson could use Reznor’s flair for modern radio success and Reznor could use a little crazy.