I left work today and decided to walk a little. I walked from 52nd and 7th to 14th and 1st. I usually do this when I leave work kind of late and don't feel like putting up with the crowds on the subway. Too many people all in one place and today was one of those days where I felt like there was a good chance I'd punch someone.

This was one of the most enjoyable walks I've ever had. Fag! It started when I saw this giant billboard for Lord of the Rings. I was smiling at the prospect of going to see that in just a couple of weeks. I get as giddy as a Hobbit. I'll need to do a separate post about LOTR. I could go on forever in all my newfound nerdiness.

Anyway, I started to imagine myself on the billboard. And that got me laughing. I would look pretty funny on the Lord of the Rings billboard. I would love to try and do that, then stand there and listen to people ask other people who that skinny guy is next to Aragorn. "I don't know. I don't know. An elf? He kind of has big ears, I guess."

I was walking through Times Square, which can either be a lot of fun during the holidays, just because it's so full of energy and nuttiness, or it can make you want to go insane, just because it's so full of energy and nuttiness. There was this teenage girl who wanted her mother to take a picture of her in front of some MTV thing. But in order to get the picture, the girl had to be near the curb, while the mother had to be on the other side of where all the people were walking. So the girl runs to the curb, sees a gap in the pedestrian traffic and yells, "Take it! Come on! Mom, now! Take it! Hurry!" I think the mother snapped the shot in the middle of her daughter saying "take," so the photo is going to be of the girl just bitching at her mom in front of TRL. Not smiling, just standing there, looking absolutely frightened that someone will get pissed that they're taking a picture. "... And here is me, scared shitless in the middle of Times Square."

People just look like they expect to get split up from their party and one of them will be kidnapped and murdered. It's what they know of New York. All those tourists getting murdered. Does anyone know of any tourists ever getting kidnapped and killed in New York? Probably not. Sometimes I think that maybe I should go on a tourist killing spree, just because people expect it. There's an audience for such tragedy. When I get caught, my defense would be, "Hey, just giving the people what they want."

I continued on. I got to this intersection where a couple of cars got stuck waiting for pedestrians to cross. I can't really explain the whole situation, but it was causing major traffic, all because of this one car that couldn't move. So me and this Tall Fella who was walking decided to stop and let the car go, which would help the flow of traffic. Tall Fella waved for the car to go, but the driver just sat there and casually waved back at us, telling us to walk, as if to say, "Nah, it's cool. I'm perfectly content to sit here and hold up all of this traffic in the middle of Herald Square at 5:15 PM." The guy next to me yells "GO!" Still, the guy sits there with buses and cabs laying on their horns. Tall Fella and I proceed, and he yells out, "Fucking idiot. That's what gridlock's all about." It sure is.

On the next block there was a guy who was crossing when he wasn't supposed to, and a cab driver continued at his normal speed, but with hand firmly pressed on horn. They guy crossing just kept walking, not speeding up or slowing down, just held up his middle finger for the cabbie to see. He wasn't missed by much. I love how the cab driver made no effort to slow down. The horn was his defense. If he did hit the guy, he'd just be like, "Well, I had a green light and I was honking my horn when I hit him." OK, you're free to go. And I guess the walking guy was just thinking, If I die here, at least I'll die giving the finger.

Later on I was walking by a firehouse. There were two firemen outside handing out fliers to passersby. Everyone took one. Normally, I never take anything that people hand out, because it's usually for a strip club or a jewelry sale. Possibly a jewelry sale at a strip club. The flier they were handing out was urging me to call Governor Pataki and urge him to urge the developers of the 9/11 memorial to create a separate memorial for firefighters and cops. I'm all for that. Seeing the success the firefighters had in handing this stuff out, it made me realize that companies should hire these guys to hand their shit out. Who is going to decline taking a piece of paper from them? They are American heroes! They'd have much more success than some dude in a chicken suit. Perhaps the businesses could just dress up a guy as a firefighter and throw him out there. That might be a bad idea though if a fire did break out in the area. Someone would yell for help and he'd just shrug and say, "Sorry. Can't really help. I work for FlashDancers."

The walk ended with some funny little kids. There was this three-year-old girl just walking and singing some song about Christmas that I'm pretty sure she was making up, not paying any attention to what she was doing and walking into everything. People, garbage cans, more people. But she was so frigging cute that no one cared. If I did that, I'd surely get my ass kicked.

I finally got to my subway station. There was a little boy, probably eight, who was so excited to show his mother how he learned multiplication today in school. He was totally psyched and amazed at it all. It was nice to see a kid actually excited about school, rather than a little kid cursing up a storm and yelling at his mom. Don't worry, though. I did walk by him and say, "Nice homework, dork. Here's a problem for you; E = mc nerd." I don't want people thinking I'm soft.

Finally there was this other little kid, probably ten, who was on the subway platform with his grandma. Grandma went to look down the track to see if the train was coming. The kid grabbed her arm, pulled her back and said, "I don't like you standing that close." Two nice kids in one subway station. Very rare. And of course, when the train came, I did throw the grandmother onto the tracks. Again - not soft.

There you have it. Did you actually get this far down? I'm impressed. Boring, wasn't it? Well, expect more boring shit, because I've got a computer at home now, so I'm going to blog constantly about everything. For example, why are all these fucking dishes in the motherfucking sink? What the fuck!? Wash your fucking cereal bowl! It takes less than a minute! This is why we get mice! Goddammit!