After a grand total of about six hours hammering at it, I've solved the brake light problem.
The culprit? See the connector at the right? Well, this is the connector that ties the wiring harness into all of the functionality on the steering column—specifically, the turn signal, hazard flasher, horns, and shift indicator backlight. The black and red striped line entering the second pin from the far right of the connector comes from the intermittent side of the brake light switch, and it runs through the directional switch to actually power the front and rear turn signals. The problem is that the other side of this connector expects that this black and red line will plug into a completely different pin.
I'm not sure how the hell this happened. The entire time I debugged this problem I was under the impression that the problem was a burnt connector, a faulty ground, or maybe a frayed wire somewhere. In fact, it turned out that the right directional socket did have a torched ground connector, which was causing all of the non-brake-lamp failures in my previous post, but a quick trip to NAPA, $16, and a surprised look from me when they actually had the part has netted me properly illuminating lamps.
But the connector is still somewhat of a mystery. The only explanation I can muster is that someone accidentally pulled the line out while installing the CD player, but then botched the reinsertion. Whatever the problem, this likely wasn't a recent failure, so the previous owner has been driving around without brake lights for quite a while.
Whatever. It's fixed now, which means all I need to figure out are the transmission fluid leak and the odd clicking I hear from the distributor while it's got power but the engine is stopped.
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