i always have the most pleasant conversation with the person in the toll booth off I-90 and highway 2 on christmas day. without fail. every year i do that drive, headed between my grandmother (northwest ohio) and mia (cleveburg), and i always like the person in the toll booth. "merry christmas!" i say. "merry christmas!" they respond. last year i got the guy something for christmas. (well, just a hershey bar.) this year it was a woman, and as i was slowing down to stop i remembered that i had meant to get something. but i forgot. "merry christmas!" i said. "and a happy new year!" she said. christmas day was rainy.

information on the end of the transit strike: generally in life i have an internal principle, which goes as follows--josh is invincible. if i have to sleep upright in a chair in an airport, fine. i will be all right. if i have to walk in the snow, uphill, both ways, fine. i'll be all right. need to take ten subways to get there? just walk. helping move? carry the heaviest things there, because you won't get hurt, and it's good exercise anyway. whatever. whatever.

well, i walked the way from astoria (home) to the upper west side (work) three times during the transit strike. depending on your route, it takes from one and a half to two and a half hours. and now, my foot hurts. it actually (don't tell anyone) hurts a lot. like, it hurts.

but who cares. josh is indestructable. or, invincible--whatever. whatever i said before.

last night i was at a holiday party down near canal street. i came in late and didn't know many people, and a fight broke out, which upset the hostess, who asked everyone to please leave soon after. thanks to the fighting guy, i found myself in the sublime spot of being on the N train and emerging from the tunnel onto the elevated tracks in queens, staring at the slowly moving lights of manhattan as the time passed 12:01, and i wondered if the train conductor would announce whether or not the strike was beginning, and whether or not the train would be going out of service at ditmars boulevard. as with most things in life, it was far less dramatic than that, and he didn't say anything. i just got off at my stop, walked home, and heard on the radio that the police were beginning overnight to secure all the stations against vandalism.

this morning i walked to my usual bus stop by the triboro bridge, where i found people waiting. i couldn't get much of an answer what exactly they were waiting on, so i ran out into the road and knocked on a cab window. "125th??" he motioned me to get it, and he said, "today, sir, it is ten dollar over bridge. is zones today. you know, the zones. ten dollar." so i motioned people over and yelled, "125th!" and three more people got in.

i admire my own assertiveness, however only then did it become clear that it's ten bucks a person, so really i just helped the cabbie, not myself. and i got to ride in the middle for my trouble. nice to do one's part to reduce traffic, but the stupid city didn't put a restriction on the triboro bridge, so every car on it had one person in it. except my cab, which had five.

i paid everyone's bridge toll--just to be nice in case i accidentally tricked them into a ten dollar cab ride--and then walked the length of 125th, which was a mess. amsterdam was a mess, too. now, at midday, traffic looks normal, but i haven't decided yet how to go home. the queensboro bridge might be better, just because private cars have to pick up people there, because they won't be allowed on without four passengers.

watching the planes fly in and out of laguardia at night, over upper manhattan, can be a nice feeling. each one is a couple of lights, half of them flashing, and each glides steadily up or down across the black sky. while i stand in the dark in the window watching them, it feels like i would like to be on one. my official line is that i don't like to fly, which i don't particularly, but to be sitting alone right now in the row of three seats, watching the city below, on my way someplace--this i would do.

today i decided my hair was too long (and that i looked like a fat, shaggy slob), and coincidentally my fuel cell got a hole in it at work. yes, my fuel cell got a hole in it. sounds like a punchline with no straight line, right? ten bucks same as in town. ping pong balls, i thought you said king kong's balls. tony, my fuel cell got a hole in it. anyway.

while a new fuel cell was being hatched (like a pterodactyl), i went downtown to astor place to get a haircut. incidentally, i really love that their website looks like one i would have made in 1995. how else would it ever look?

astor place hairstylists is like a haircut sweatshop, and while i don't know anyone else who goes there, i also don't know anyone else who pays fifteen dollars for a long-hair haircut. i think i have been going there for like five years, and i still don't know if i'm a sucker for doing so or not. i keep saying i'm going to get a real haircut, or sign up to be a haircutting dummy, but i never do.

see, astor place is like getting a haircut in the 42nd street subway station. today the girl cutting my hair got into a fight with the haircutter next to us, and he said "how many fucking times i told you not to plug that fucking thing in there huh?" and she said, "who's talking to you? no one's talking to you." then she made eye contact with me in the mirror and said, "he's kidding. i think he's kidding." then she cut herself and said, "oh fucking shit! shit!" i said, "did you cut yourself?" she said, "yeah, i do it all the damn time, it's all right."

astor place used to be three storeys high, but recently they put a cold stone creamery (which sucks ass, by the way) in the top of it, and all the hairstylists got thrown into the bottom floor. i have been there a lot of times, and have gotten the best haircut ever there (by a ukrainian woman who was yelling in ukrainian the entire time), and perhaps one of the worst haircuts ever (by a gay guy who gave me a gay guy haircut, which i don't understand, because my longass curly hair was the furthest thing from gelled club hair when he started, and i think i only said something banal like "one inch off" when i sat down). also, i have gotten hair people who didn't speak any english, and also once an old man with a handlebar mustache and an english cabbie hat. however, i have never yet tried the punk rock guy. he looks serious. i think famous punk rock people go to him.

these days i always go in and say, "i need a haircut. i'm not going short. could i have a woman cut it please?" and i go wherever they tell me to. last time the guy said, "FRAAAN??! i think fran's free. back there. go to fran!"

fran is a young girl with a new york accent, and she's got short, dyed black hair. she's kind of cute and kind of awkward, and also kind of pushy. because, see, i got her again today, and she was the one fighting with the guy next to her. when i walked up to her, she said, "hey i haven't seen you in a while," which may or may not be bullshit that all haircutter people say. i said, "i was going to ask them if you were free, but i couldn't remember your name." and she said, "i'm fran, my name's fran, i'll give you my card sos you can ask for me nex time." then she talked about the transit strike. "i live in broad channel, an if they strike, i'm fucked. i mean, i am fucking fucked. i was up all night checking the news every half hour. i thought i could take this bus to queens boulevard, but then what do i do? it's not like i can not come in. i mean, jesus, and i just moved out there, the fucking A train stops at like a million stops and nobody gets on or off at any of them, and it takes like hours. they ain't gonna strike. no way."

last night mia and i went to a new orleans restaurant here in new york, and i ordered an abita to drink. the only kind they had was restoration ale, which i hadn't heard of. but it makes total sense, doesn't it? and it's good.

conversation had at the coke machine during lunch today, with a woman in the cleaning crew:

woman: (mumbling) it's like a penny, but it's some other penny. canadian. hm.

me: do you need a penny?

woman: no, i was just looking at this. look, it's not a penny, but it's like some other thing. it's a canadian penny. that looks like it's canada, right?

me: yeah, that's canadian. people give them to you, but sometimes they won't take them, so then you don't know what to do with them, and you don't want to throw them away.

woman: oh, no, i'll probably keep this one. it's kind of pretty. i think i'll keep it. look, it's even got a lady on it.

me: yes. queen elizabeth the second.

woman: (hits me with her elbow) aw, you smart, that's why you go here. you smart!

belle and sebastian have a new live record you can only get on i-tunes, and all the profits go to earthquake relief. i don't ever use i-tunes--i don't know why, i just don't. maybe it looks all severe and metallic. maybe i'm just used to windows media player. i've definitely got some neurotic tendencies, which i try to hide, but once i get used to the way my mp3 program looks, i don't want to change it. and i want the window to be a certain size, and i want things to order themselves how i tell them to.

so i download i-tunes and then download the record, and it comes in some weird "protected" format and won't let me make mp3's out of it. so i can't put it in windows media player. and there's all the this bullshit about how windows media player is clearly inferior, and about how m4p's or whatever the fuck they're called have "far superior sound quality" or something, but can't they see, i just simply do not give a shit. i want it in my blue program, not the silver one. all right?

is there a reason they always want me to feel like a criminal anytime i listen to anything? like, do i need to wear an ankle bracelet to track my movements? to make sure i don't try to play air guitar without paying the fee? so i'm going to make a copy of it. is this really that bad? a fucking copy, to put into another program?

have these dumb business lawyer accountant fucks or bill gates or steve jobs or whoever taken into account the guilty personality? listening to music is bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. all right, i get it.

there should be a card, and i get one, and when i've gone to my hundredth show at bowery ballroom i get it punched, and it's called a music geek card, and after that i can be assumed to be innocent until proven guilty.

today i stopped at mcdonalds and got two cheeseburgers. i brought them home, unwrapped them and put them on a plate, and i ate them at the table with a placemat and a napkin and a glass of water. once upon a time i used to do that a lot, but not for years and years.

in high school once i was doing that, and my friends teddy and justin showed up. they were laughing a lot, and i wanted to know why. they said they'd just been talking about how if you went to teddy's house the whole family would be sitting down to dinner and having deer steaks and potatoes, and if you went to justin's house his mom would be boiling hot dogs, and if you went to josh's house he'd be in his room eating mcdonalds on a plate, as if it were something he made.