6:13 pm | 26 January 2004 | art update

It's really cold up in this beehatch so my hands aren't working that well up in the typery, if you know what i'm saying. Is this what it'll be like to be 70? I mean, i can handle the memory lapses (in fact i pray for them) and the Superman-ice-cream-colour-range jogging suits, but this not-being-able-to-use-my-hands bits blows a horse cock.

Yesterday I made a painting that is either the best thing i have done all year* or is totally terrible. At least i spell it out for you, by way of a hastily-scrawled WE'LL TRY ANYTHING ONCE above the magnificent banner reading SUPERB OWL SUNDAY at the top. Under that, to your right, an apologetic-looking barn owl saying "It's less a matter of who than when" and, a bit further down the branch upon which he perches, a dead mouse (in most aspects realistically painted except for the X-ed out eyes denoting DEAD) who is saying "at least we tried." Below this jolly scape, in the background-esque region, a dim stand of pines, with the forest-most toppling clockwardly, and then, as so:

"I think I finally figured out
that riddle about the tree
that falls alone in the forest
--does it make a sound?--
and my answer is
YES: IT SOUNDS JUST LIKE HEARTBREAK: timber!

Does this sound confusing? It should. It confuses me. But it fills me with joy. It's done on a 4'x4' of plyboard, so those soothing particle-wood tones are present, and some scrubbed-in patches of cream and robin's-egg blue, and other than that, a lot of black. It's sort of Sean-Landers-and-Chris-Ware-have-a-slumber-party-esque, with a touch of Basquiat, in format, if Basquiat had been retarded. But it'll do.

OTHER THINGS I DID THIS WEEK

*Enjoyable, considering the crapward-ho nature of the year thus far, which has in other aspects been remarkable for the longevity of, like, TWO blemishes on my face that may have once been thinking of becoming zits but who have just settled in for the long-haul pause between NOW and GUINNESS BOOK OF WORLD RECORDS' "Most Tenacious Scabs, for real." Oh god!