last night, i guess. just sitting, looking at the computer, and a conversation starts up behind me. swivel around in my chair, look at an empty room. tired, rub eyes, scratch head, turn back around. a band starts playing music. swivel, look at emptiness again. BIOari got into it that day, face screwed up, tongue out, grinding madly (quite literally, again) away at his artboards with crayons. at the end of one of the sessions he strode up to me, deadly serious, and presented me with one of his works.

"this," he said, "is for you." it was a first-grade-style house and yard, sun and fence, and a hunchbacked monkey standing by a tree. "that's me," he said. "i'm waving at you."

"why," i said, "that's real nice. here, i made this for you," and gave him what i'd been sweating over for the last forty minutes.

"i don't want that," he said, "it's ugly."

i know i said i wasn't artsy, but nobody likes getting a critique like that. about anything. least of all from some crazy fuck.

"okay," i said, crumpled it up, tossed it in the bin.

that night he hoofed it over the wall again, and the next day they bundled him into a van, off to camarillo for some long-term cold storage.

teach that fucker to tell me my art's ugly