So here’s what I like the most about the new part-time bookstore gig: BEER!

Which is to say, yesterday, I went in at two for register training. At five, we got cut loose for “lunch” (I’m one of five in this current batch of trainees) and I made my way across the street to a nice little bar and ordered an expensive beer, and expensive chicken tenders, and got caught up in a bar-crawl of some sort. This is not to say that I participated in the bar crawl, I was just mourning that the bar had gone from quiet and slow to loud and busy in about the space of a quarter-second.

The frat-boy-yuppy types on either side of me were ordering Irish car bombs ($10!!), and I remarked that there were some nice little bars in Baltimore’s Washington Village neighborhood which had great Irish car bombs, if they were ever in the neighborhood, remembering something someone had once told me about what happens to folks who order Irish car bombs from authentic Irish bars: i.e., required hospital visits.

Yeah, I’m a good person.

Here’s what I don’t like: vacation blackouts in November and December. Makes sense, and I suppose I should’ve realized I’d be facing it, but I’m thinking this means Thanksgiving in Connecticut is out (boo).

On my way to DC yesterday, in specific, on the race down I-95, some yahoo apparently decided to lose control of his car and flip himself upside down into the ditch between the north and south bound lanes (he flipped from north-bound traffic). Northbound traffic was backed up: no cops on the scene yet, but ambulances and police vehicles were moving as fast as they could on the shoulder. Southbound traffic was also all backed up: fucking rubberneckers. I was one lane right of the left-most lane, and some shitback douche fucking cockwad in a Mercedes slowed down and was halfway onto the shoulder, leaning out of his car with a fucking camera, while the guy behind him rode his ass with his hand (rightly) on his horn. What a sack of fucking shit. “Oh, look, some idiot just killed himself and everyone in his car because he wanted to get home two minutes faster! This is great blog material!” Really considered stopping my car, grabbing his camera, and throwing it as far as I could.

Not that I have any sympathy for the person who flipped: drive recklessly, you don’t get to cry about getting killed. In a similar vein, if you don’t vote, you don’t get to bitch about politics. Anyway, on 695, I got passed by some fuckwad on a motorcycle who was probably doing 100 miles an hour: what insanity! No turn signal, no indication that he gave a hoot about his own fucking life. Seriously, at that speed, on a motorcycle, Joe-Blow in his minivan could put on his turn signal, turn his head to check his blind spot is clear, and in the half second that he moves his head back and starts his turn, whoom! There you are, speeding on your bike, going so fast that even if you recognize his turn signal, you’ve fucked yourself, you’ve fucked everyone in the minivan, and you’ve fucked everyone who wants to be somewhere.

Folks who drive with zero regard for the lives of other motorists need to be taken off the road. Melt their car down, slag their keys, and chop off their hands and feets and stick red-hot pokers in their eyes so they can’t operate a vehicle again. Bullet in the brain, maybe, if they seem particularly retarded.

And since I’m on the subject of motorcycle-related deaths: also yesterday, a funeral procession enroute to Dulaney Gardens, made up largely of motorcycles, got tripped up on Padonia at York when the lights turned red. I don’t know if other vehicles got mixed in with the procession, but while I was waiting on the other side of the road, I witnessed people getting out of their cars and screaming and honking that people should drive straight through the red light into moving traffic. I mean, it’s like, “Yes, it’s very sad your friend is dead. But if you’re in that much of a hurry to join him, why not just shoot yourselves in the fucking head?” Personally, I think it’s absolutely ridiculous that funeral processions don’t shell out the bucks to have police direct traffic at these intersections. It’d be a hell of a lot safer. That said, the behavior exhibited yesterday at 12:20pm was completely uncalled for: you’re going to a funeral. There’s no rush. And no need for anyone to be hurt in the process.

Also: I just did my taxes. Sending a check to the State, and getting some cash back from the Feds.

Also: I’ve got Deadliest Catch on — ironic, I guess, since my project at work involves Discovery Communications — but since I’ve got No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood in Netflix envelopes, I need to turn my attention over to those. (I’ve also got The Talented Mr. Ripley, which I enjoyed when it first came out but haven’t seen since.)

Last: cute story about Trent Lott learning how to use the Metro.