This is kind of weird for me: I'm writing a column about not writing a column.

I was all set to go with another piece from your friend and mine, Tim Foil - the conspiracy researcher from hell. You might remember Tim from the last time he showed up at the rANT Farm and declared the Easter Bunny was a Communist? Or maybe you wondered how to get a hold of his seminal work Saturday Night Holocaust: How Hitler Invented Disco ?

Peerless, fearless and most likely dead wrong - that's our Tim Foil.

Well, if we'd proceeded according to schedule, Tim Foil was going to be holding forth on the connection between radical Islam and the Children's Television Workshop. You'd be reading about the things Tickle-Me Elmo dolls say when adults aren't in the room, a very tenuous connection between CTW and a mysterious arab with a silly name, and even more silly connections to people you've never heard of. All that and the lyrics for "J is for Jihad," mercifully pulled from the air and replaced with a rerun of the Count losing his marbles, brought to you by the letter "C."

But I got a few sentences into it, and then, after doing up the accompanying graphics, just said no.

I couldn't believe it. Me, Mr. Anti-Censorship, spiking something of my own? I could have at least approached it from a condemnatory angle, maybe with Yasser Arafat giving a guided tour of Palestine's version of Sesame Street, or something like that.

But no - I just said to hell with it and flushed it away. I'll probably use bits and pieces of it for something else; Nothing written is ever completely done away with, you know. But as a whole, total piece, that column isn't ever going to see the light of publication.

So why did I drop it?

Was it was the fear that the Children's Television Workshop - which was definitely not amused by the infamous Bert & Bin-Laden picture - might come down on The American Partisan and/or yours truly like a sack of hammers? Did I not want to waste the editors' time having to hmm and haw over running it, only to have to tell me that it just wasn't suitable? Or did I not want to give the impression of being too loose a cannon to the folks who have put up with me and my primal scream therapy disguised as commentary?

All that aside, I think it was just that the idea was too sick and tasteless, even for me. I love making fun of things, as you might well guess, and I've gone out on a limb on some particular subjects, just as I've gone out on limbs to excoriate certain individuals in dire need of a public spanking. But even I can't, in good conscience, try and connect Al-Queda and Sesame Street. Legal matters and copyright issues notwithstanding... that's just wrong.

Some folks think that everything is relative, but I tend to leave such meanderings to the social anthropologists. There is acceptable and unacceptable risk, taste and tastelessness, tact and tactlessness and - perhaps most important - right and wrong.

I like to think I know where the danger lines are. That little hackle I get up the back of my spine isn't always from laughter: sometimes it's my inner editor, going "harrumph!" and reminding me that old ladies and young children might be reading this, too.

Do I dance on those danger lines, now and again, anyway? Yes, because sometimes you have to pick up the shovel and fling some BS to make a point. This isn't the world's cleanest job.

But there's a difference between dancing over the line with your shovel and taking a bulldozer and carving out a swimming pool for your own excess. Some say that recognizing the difference is what separates the amateurs from the accomplished writers, but there's nigh-published columnists with all the ethics of a pouty schoolyard namecaller, and folks just starting out who are the epitome of class.

So I think, rather, that recognizing the difference is the mark of someone who understands the joy of knowing when to just shut up. It might be a bit castrating at times - maybe even cowardly at others - but knowing when to not sound off can save you a lot of time and trouble, not to mention the indignity of having to ask for a hand getting out of the deep muddy.

"Now that's enough tantrum for one day! Lie down... mother thinks you ought to sleep it off..."

- Sampled in "Waiting for Mommy" - My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult