Really, don’t. Sure, it might seem like a cool thing to do when you’re the unhinged leader of a murderer-commune determined to set off a race war because of something you once heard Paul McCartney shriek, but one day you’re going to look in the mirror and realise that you’re a 74-year-old man with a swastika carved into your own forehead.

California correctional officials have released a new photo of Charles Manson. No, we don’t know why either.

Charles Manson is primarily famous for two things. Firstly, there was his involvement in a series of gruesome showbusiness murders that shocked the word and effectively brought an end to the dream of the 1960s ideal. And secondly there’s his influence on a number of embarrassingly cackhanded indie bands.

Seriously, if Charles Manson had never been born there’d be no Mansun, no Marilyn Manson, no Kasabian and The Spaghetti Incident? by Guns N’ Roses would be almost five full minutes shorter. These alone are perfectly acceptable arguments for Charles Manson never to be released from jail.

And, you know, all the murder stuff helps as well. But apparently Charles Manson is due a parole hearing in three years’ time, which could be why correctional officials at California’s Corcoran State Prison have decided to release a brand new photograph of him. Or maybe they just felt like it. Really, nobody’s really bothered to explain why. Reuters reports:

California corrections officials released a new photograph of imprisoned mass murderer Charles Manson on Thursday, showing the balding, gray-bearded killer at the age of 74. The picture, which was taken at Corcoran State Prison in Central California, also reveals a glum Manson still bearing the swastika he carved into his forehead during his sensational 1970 murder trial.

If the photo is, as we’ve suggested, being released to show the world what Charles Manson now looks like on the off-chance that he gets parole in 2012, it’s probably a little bit redundant. True, we now know to keep away from him if we see him on the street, but that’s mainly due to the fact that he’s got a bloody great swastika carved into his own forehead – a sign of either a) clear mental instability or b) the world’s most unfortunate monobrow-trimming accident. Either way, we’ll avoid him thanks.

Honestly, no wonder Charles Manson looks glum in the photo, Reuters. That swastika’s probably going to hurt his reemployment chances quite a lot if he ever makes parole. We read on a job-seeker’s website the other day that your CV can be as polished as you like, but having a massive symbol of Nazi hatred slashed across your stupid old face is just as likely to put recruiters off as if your handshake is a bit effeminate.

Seriously, Charles Manson would probably have trouble even getting a job working in B&Q with that swastika on his face. And that’s saying something – they’ll employ anyone.

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Image courtesy of Corcoran State Prison

Trust us, it works like a charm. Just look at Lindsay Lohan. She couldn't get an acting job for toffee after she had all that rehab, so she decided to get her norks out in a magazine instead and – bammo – Lindsay Lohan's scored her first post-rehab acting gig, playing Charles Manson's sidekick in a movie by the producer of Barb Wire.

OK, so that first sentence should have read ' the best way to star in a film that nobody's likely to ever watch is to whap your boobies out' but it's too late to change it now.

Competitive place, Hollywood. One minute you can be on top of the world making film after film about ginger girls who wink at magical cars a lot, and then the next minute you've been arrested with cocaine in your trousers and thrown in rehab for about a year. Then what do you do? After all, even when you're a cocaine-ravaged mess there's always a younger, hotter cocaine-ravaged mess waiting to take your place.

Lindsay Lohan's got the right idea – the second she left rehab Lindsay Lohan knew that the only way she'd ever get work again was to stay in the public eye. She didn't care how that happened, Lindsay was game for anything. Endless non-revelatory interviews about herself, naked photoshoots masquerading as art, tawdry internet sex tapes – anything that kept her name in producers' minds. And we'll be blowed if this tactic hasn't paid off for Lindsay Lohan.

Even though it was widely assumed that Lindsay Lohan would never get another acting job because people were scared that if they insured her she'd fall down drunk in a puddle or start frenzidly rutting a tripod on the first day of shooting, Lindsay Lohan has apparently got her first role since leaving rehab, as one of Charles Manson's pals. E! Online reports:

E! News has learned exclusively that Lindsay Lohan has signed on to star as Nancy Pitman, once a loyal member of Charles Manson's not-so-merry band, in the movie Manson Girls. The film's producer, Brad Wyman of Junction Films, confirmed the casting coup. "Yes, I am doing it with Lindsay," he tells E! News. A source familiar with the deal says that despite the fact that Lohan has had some recent brushes with the law and just completed rehab, "the production company is insuring her for the film."

If Lindsay Lohan playing the friend of a notorious murdery weirdo sounds familiar, then that might be because this Charles Manson film sounds a lot like that Bobby Kennedy movie of hers that nobody watched or the Mark Chapman film of hers that's just been released in America to horrible reviews. 

But don't worry if you think that, by making yet another drearily unpopular-sounding movie about a real life murder, Lindsay Lohan is just adding more nails to her acting coffin, because her Charles Manson film is bound to be more successful than her mark Chapman movie. It hasn't got Jared Leto in it, for a start – and that's usually a good gauge of a film not being completely awful.

Read more:

Lindsay Lines Up for Manson Girls - E! Online