The Bureau of Labor Statistics released a projected list of the 30 fastest growing occupations in the next ten years. Among the predictable healthcare and computer nerd work, a few occupations stand out, none so much as gaming and sports book runners and writers, which fall in at number 14 and are slated for a 28% increase.   If you’re thinking of making a living helping folks make cash off sports betting, you won’t need an advanced degree, and you don’t need to know much about sports.  According to the bureau, training is “short-term on the job.” Sound good? Well, as the Las Vegas Review-Journal tells it, the sports book writer shortage hasn’t touched down yet.    Check out also, the list of not so hot jobs.

Update: 11:39 a.m. — Bureau site down. Need more computer guys.

Here’s my vote for bad ass amateaur video footage of the year.

It’s a rare day when I’m happy to be a 35-year-old who still black holes a monthly rent check to the landlord.  But according to housing woe projections from Fortune on CNN Money, it looks like my lack of buying power might bring smiles for at least the next five years. According to their crystal ball, an $856,000 home in the Washington area may sell for as little as $641,000 in five years. The reason? At current prices and interest rates, it’s more cost-efficient to rent.  Check these projected values for upscale homes around the country.  

At around 11 p.m. on Nov. 26, Ronald Thornton was watching a home improvement television show when he heard what sounded like a truck smashing at high speed into a building. Then he felt the floor tremble.

Thornton and his neighbors in Mount Vernon Square filed onto Ridge Street NW to see what had happened. Across from Thornton’s home, part of an abandoned two-story row house had crashed to the ground. Bricks lay scattered across the street. Some had tumbled against a home nearby. A side of the building was gone.

The collapse was the end of what neighbors say is a storied history at 460 Ridge St. NW. Neighborhood lore has it that the boarded-up house, which is owned by the District, has sat vacant since 2002, when crack smokers accidentally set it on fire.

It was “demolition by neglect,” says Cary Silverman, president of the Mount Vernon Square Neighborhood Association.

The fallen house is one of more than 100 vacant buildings in a seven-block radius in the neighborhood, many of which are owned by the District, Silverman adds. “All of these properties are a danger,” he says.

As the Washington Times reports, Rep. Bob Filner of California got fined $100 for some minor violence he let go on a United Airlines baggage employee at Dulles this summer.

Filner entered an Alford plea in the case, allowing there is sufficient evidence to convict him on the charges, but not actually admitting guilt. Good for him. What’s there to feel guilty about?

As the accusation goes, Filner flipped out when his bags were held up and gave the baggage lady a shove or two. Not conduct becoming of a legislator, for sure, but who hasn’t dreamed of kicking an airline employee’s ass from time to time?

I’m a fan of the most e-mailed lists in the online versions of most newspapers. The lists provide a quick route around the top headlines (what editors think is important) to the stories readers enjoy.

Of course, when the people speak, crap sometimes settles to the top with the gems. Consider Sunday’s New York Times story on District elite shopping at Costco. The story nailed the top spot on the most e-mailed list on Sunday. As of this morning, it was hanging at number two.

The story, summed up, is this: Rich and influential Washington party folk buy wine, frozen Salmon and other stuff at Costco. Sometimes they serve it to their guests. How un-Camelot.

The story breaks off into snapshots of moneyed power folk and their Costco habits. There’s Sally Quinn, former Rumsfeld advisor Richard Perle, Vernon Jordan’s wife…all, gasp, buying in bulk.

Hey, that’s three people. It’s a trend. So in the great NYT trend story tradition, the writer waxes anthropological to explain the why of this amazing cultural shift. Perhaps it’s the result of rising oil prices and the crashed mortgage market? Or is Costco “reverse chic,” the Pabst of the power set?

Hard to know. Maybe they are just cheap, a few more examples of the well established frugal and rich phenomenon? I’ve lived in the area long enough to understand why Washingtonians might find this interesting. But the real mystery is why anyone else would care.

Want to lower the District murder rate? Get yourself to a Virginia gun shop poor folk, lay down cash on a nine and take back the neighborhood.

If only that were legal. That’s the message of today’s  sloppy logic editorial in The Examiner, which argues the D.C. gun ban is to blame for the  number of homicides in the city.

The Examiner arugment goes something like this: Back in ‘76 before the ban, the perecentage of homicides involving a firearm was 63 percent. Today it’s 81 percent. Must be because of the ban, the writer reckons. What else could it be?

Further, for those of you law-abiding people who live in crummy neighborhoods, the gun ban hurts you most because you are rendered completely defenseless from the gun-toting thugs.  They murder your ass and you don’t even have the constitutional right to return fire.

Even the biggest gun fan ( myself included) can weed throught the faulty logic.

But like abortion and the Bible, the cultural divide on the gun question makes intelligent discussion impossible. So I won’t quote the stats from public health schools on gun violence (or accidental deaths of kids and spouces).  Who cares what those eggheads think? They probably don’t even know a .22 from a .308.  I won’t quote the police chiefs of many large cities, who overwhelmingly support handgun control measures. What do they care? They are free to carry.

I’ll just argue that clearly a few things besides haircuts have changed in the District since the gun ban in ‘76.  So why compare D.C. today to “neighboring jurisdictions that permit an armed citizens” as the Examiner does?  Which jurisdictions are we talking about? McLean? 

Let’s choose pistol towns like Baltimore or Detroit (most dangerous locale around last I checked) for comparison. Check the stats, 1976 and today, on firearm homocides. Going up or down? Must be the gun laws, by your logic.

When you get back after the holiday and take back your editorial page, let’s talk it over. We’ll grab a six pack. I’ll let you borrow a .45. We’ll pace off targets and see who is a better shot. Of course, we’ll have to go to northern Michigan to do it. I keep my guns at deer camp. I believe the statistics.

 It’s cold out. Time for orange and red leaves, miniskirts and absurd footwear for women.  

Regardless of whether or not the supposed drug jenkem warranted the buzz it generated in the last few weeks, the story of kids spaced out on fermented piss and feces proves once and for all an eternal truth: Regardless of how toxic, brain deadening or simply disgusting a substance may be, tell a 16-year-old it will get them wasted and it’s believable that he will huff it.

Jenkem is supposedly a drug made of human crap that may or may not be the narcotic of choice of street kids in Zambia. As Salon.com reported, the fear that American kids might be turned on to the poo stems from a hoaxed shit fumes snorting posted on the Internet. A sheriff’s office in Florida bought into the hoax and a jenkem scare followed with the help of Midwestern television crews.

In hindsight, I might claim that as a 16-year-old, I would have drawn the line at raiding baby diapers to get high. Probably a lie, though, if you consider the hash stashed in my Nova’s tail lights on return trips from Ontario, banana peals baked dry in my parents oven, and more to point, a mysterious substance called Rush.

In the Lake Huron town where I grew up, there was, and likely still is, a dry strip joint named Deja Vu. On your 18th birthday, the strippers tie you to a chair on the stage and perform a special show. When they finished on my 18th, a stripper grabbed my crotch and said, “you’ve been here before, haven’t you?”

In fact I had. Although those under 18 were barred from the show, the book shop was all ages. We didn’t buy books or movies. We went for Rush, the tiny bottles of liquid marketed as some kind of aphrodisiac incense.

Not sure about the aphrodisiac qualities of Rush, but at school dances, boys pre-buzzed on Natural Light and Bartels and James coolers filed into the bathroom to pass the Rush bottle. Unscrew the top and the liquid instantly began to evaporate. Fill you nose with the vapor and the buzz (if you could call it that) is immediate: your face turns red hot and warmth shudders through your head and is gone. If I remember correctly, it felt like the moment right before fainting.

Most guys would take a few blasts and head back out to dance to Billy Idol. A guy named Steve stayed in the bathroom snorting heroic doses. He claimed one night he breathed in so much his finger nails turned blue.

The trouble with Rush was the cap. Someone would always screw it down too tight. The plastic would crack, the goods would evaporate and you’d be back at Deja Vu.

Anyone with half a mind should have caught the jenkum hokum. It reeks of Joey Skaggs . But if it was a hoax, it certainly is not now. Somewhere in rural Michigan, a group of kids has heard the news. On Friday before the football game, they will raid a port-a-potty wondering if they can dry the shit in their parent’s oven, since the sun won’t shine until May.

Not even on the so called ‘quiet car” on the MARC train from Baltimore to Washington can a rider enjoy a book without a cell phone screamer breaking through. This morning I was forced to listen to a woman with an annoying Virginia accent (all Virginia accents are annoying to varying degrees) complain about her brother’s alcohol problem to who I imagine was another family member.

As the New York Times reported Sunday, there is a solution, albeit an illegal one, in the form of cell phone jammers. The story doesn’t say how long these techno marvels have been around, but supposedly the devices, the prices of which range from $50 to more than $1,000, can wipe out a wide swath of cell phone signals at the push of a button.

The Times story says the owner of an upscale Maryland restaurant bought one to keep his employees off their phones but had to get rid of it to keep out of trouble with FCC bad guys, who carry equipment that can pick up on a jammer.

Jammers can be fined up to $11,000 for a first offense. It’s against the law to block out someone’s chatter. Cell phone screamers could be calling 911 after all.

Aside from the fine, another problem with the jammers seems to be the distance at which they work. The Times story mentions 30 feet. From my experience, the collateral damage from cell-phone screamers carries at a much further distance.

Maybe jammers aren’t the solution. Maybe cell phone screamers should be dealt with like cigarette smokers. Kick them outside, in the cold, and certainly out of the quiet car.

At 5:30 p.m. on Sunday, car headlights slashed through the dark streets. It felt like 1 a.m. Daylight Savings Time is over. Standard Time, shit time, no time at all, is back.

President Bush’s smartest act came in 2005, when he signed the energy policy that beginning this year gave us four more weeks of Daylight Savings Time, or Summer Time as they call it in the European Union. A good man for that.

I have never understood the logic behind Standard Time. In the season when daylight is at a premium, we hack off another hour of after-work sun and pass it over to the morning. A bad trade. I can get to work in the dark.

Standard time. Compare the dour phrase to Daylight Savings Time. It’s darkness before Miller Time, the end of after-work tennis matches, blinking lights on your bicycle handlebars.

Bush extended Daylight Savings Time to save energy.There are better reasons. Sunlight makes us happy. A nation of fat bastards needs time to play. Let’s get rid of Standard Time, maybe even kick the clocks forward an hour in November. We’ll call it winter Daylight Savings Time. Screw the kids waiting in the dark for their school bus. Clip blinking lights to their coats. Give me light.

Forget the Post’s advice columnist Carolyn Hax and her advice for lovelorn singles on the Dating Hamster Wheel of Despair (DHWD). Not interesting. Forget Dan Savage and this week’s fringe fetish.

The perils (love and otherwise) of the District’s married with offspring and a decent lump of cash set make for a far more interesting soap opera. The best look inside their heads is the online parent support group DC Urban Moms and Dads. Although I don’t have children (and from the look of the sexy maternity wear advertised am not the target audience) I’m a devoted reader.

If you’re looking for the good stuff, skip the forums on breastfeeding, servant wages, and tips for getting your child into the best private schools. Scoot down to the off-topic forum for a look at what happens when things go wrong.

Where in D.C. can you find a good private investigator to bird dog your cheating man? What should you do if you’re a mom suddenly into the ladies? What if your cleaning woman bleaches your carpet? What if your flabby gut makes you embarrassed to get naked in front of your husband? Forget Carolyn and Dan. This place has the answers.

Garrett Mays figures he got played as a sucker. He runs Specialized Services and Associates, a D.C.-based builder. In 2006, Mays met Orlando Sales, a Baltimore construction contractor who was preparing to bid on a contract worth more than $1 million to replace 90 windows at Shepherd Elementary School in Northwest. Sales asked Mays to subcontract on the job. Mays agreed, but the two never agreed on a price. Because Mays runs a local, small, and disadvantaged business, Sales stood to gain preference points on his bid.

When Sales eventually won the contract, Mays says Sales sent him a low-ball contract, and the two parted ways, although Mays is still listed as a subcontractor on the school’s contract.Ultimately, Sales did not need preference points from Mays’ company to win the Shepherd job. His company was the only bidder.

Mays still could get the last laugh. On Sept. 28, D.C. Schools Office of Contracts and Acquisition sent Sales a letter threatening to default the contract because the window job had not passed muster.

Sales did not respond to calls for comment. “That’s the way he is,” says Mays.

When Washingtonians think Hamilton, tow-in surfing pioneer Laird Hamilton isn’t the first guy who comes to mind, but a loose-knit local group is doing its best to make the District a little bit gnarly.

Members of the Yahoo group surfersdc are meeting up online for weekend rideshares to Delaware beaches, Assateague Island, and the Outer Banks of North Carolina in search of the imperfect wave.

From the looks of messages, a few of the members are transplanted Californians who brought their boards East and the majority are women.

Lake Atlantic isn’t exactly Pipeline and even body surfing in East Coast waters can be an exercise in futility, but if the weather is real shitty, you’re bound to get a few whitecaps. It’s raining outside. Thunderstorms are the forecast. Load up the van. It’s surfing weather for sure.