Those Old Playpenitentiary Blues (1/3) by The Silver Fox

(1/3), (2/3), (3/3)

Long time no see, www.catsandkittens.com; hell of a long time, come to think of it. Now, far be it from me to suggest that people who spend long enough on the Internet to pick over the detritus that litters the scrubby grass verges of this particular Information Super Lay-by don't lead full and busy lives - buying tat on Ebay, looking for dwarf porn, talking to some 68 year-old pederast in Helsinki who claims to be a high-school gymnast with a penchant for exhibitionism, etc - but it did occur to me that there may be some of you who have wondered where The Silver Fox's column has gone to these past few months.

Actually, it's courtesy rather than arrogance that prompts me to explain this lengthy absence from the Thisisull scene. Much though I would like to think that for many people, the perusal of these pages has been an increasingly desperate and forlorn affair without the occasional sustaining glimpse of a few paragraphs of half-baked paranoia and knob-gaggery, I can't really believe it. The fact is, despite strenuous efforts on my part to avoid it, I was brought up with a strong sense of the proprieties.

One can't, it occurs to me, swan in and out of even the most doggerel-infested website without some form of explanation. It simply isn't done, and leads to the sort of ludicrous situation that Crossroads fans will remember, whereby an intelligent audience is led to believe that someone (albeit a phenomenally retarded bloke in a woolly hat) could spend three years or so fetching a spanner from a shed.

So here goes. Firstly, I have to admit to a certain laziness. My hectic schedule - playing the occasional CrackTown gig, sitting around in my pyjamas playing video games, and experiencing bouts of ennui that are hardly becoming in an adolescent (much less a full-grown man with a beard) - is an exhausting one. Understandable then, that it isn't always easy to muster up the strength of will to sit down at a keyboard and disagree with Richard Littlejohn.

Secondly, as I have mentioned before, it isn't easy to find new and thought-provoking ways of reiterating that the world is (and always was) an ungodly shithouse that is apparently run by - and solely for the benefit of - the rich and the morally suspect. Regular readers (if there are any) will be painfully aware that this is generally the crux of any argument that I offer, and it isn't likely to change anytime soon.

Certainly, recent events have done nothing to provoke in me more than the occasional grandiloquent shrug and heartfelt sigh of resignation - and you can't make a column out of that, can you? Even the recent General Election offered little of interest except for the reduction of once-respected political journalists to the status of schoolgirl gossips as they hashed over the supposed rift between Tony and Gordon. "John Humphries said that he'd been sitting next to Robin Cook and he saw him getting a text off of some bloke from the Telegraph that said that Gordon knew that Tone was giving him evils while he was making his keynote speech at Conference - and besides, Andrew Neill fancies Cherie but it's a secret, so anything he says is a big fat lie!" and so on. Hardly worth cranking up Microsoft Word for, I think you'll agree.

Continued ......next page

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