Dum Pendebat Filius

A joke I came across on the Internet a couple of years ago:

Q: How many bloggers does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: Two: one to change the bulb, and one to apologize for the fact the room’s been so dark lately, but you know, he’s been, like, really busy and…

I haven’t been home much over the past month or so; I’m constantly on business trips to lovely South Jersey.

I’ve spent a substantial amount of time in Atlantic County, NJ, over the past year and a half, and here are a couple of observations:

1. People in South Jersey like to drive fast. They like to drive fast even more than people in Maryland like to drive fast. Every time I look in my rear-view mirror in New Jersey, I see somebody so close behind me that I can’t even see their headlights; sometimes I think the driver behind me is sitting in my back seat, like something out of a cheap horror movie. The driving culture up there doesn’t seem to be characterized by the same kind of fuck-you-for-being-on-the-road-and-for-existing petty truculence that permeates my Northern Virginia home, but people in South Jersey drive really fast. Twice in the last week, I was diverted and shunted off onto a side street by police and ambulances at the scenes of horrific accidents: a pedestrian hit by a car and a grim collision.

2. South Jersey (and, I presume, the rest of the state as well) has got the best convenience stores in the world. Wawa really kicks ass. Every few blocks, there’s a huge, brightly-lit Wawa, with cheap gasoline, large bathrooms, a huge selection of sodas, excellent coffee, snacks, sandwiches… It’s like the Platonic ideal of a convenience store.

3. Gas is cheap up there, always 20 to 30 cents/gallon cheaper than in the DC area. But cigarettes are fucking outrageous, well over $5 a pack. How do NJ residents afford to smoke?