Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

Badgers, like university students, are nocturnal creatures. You can't blame them for doing what comes naturally. Digging up your rosebushes, hanging out with their weasel friends in your backyard. Skateboarding outside your window at 2:00 in the morning.

An oddity of USJ is that there is no campus pub. The university is dry, both literally and metaphorically. This is utterly reasonable considering the legal drinking age is 21. It means the students are preparing to graduate at the same time they're preparing to drink beer for the first time.

A side effect of this condition is that when I show beer advertisements in class I have to first explain what the product is. Poor dears. So I'm sure it's not my students who patronize the Badger's Den on South Street, then play with their weasel friends underneath my window late at night. After all, beer is served in that den of iniquity.

The Badger's Den serves Buffalo wings and cheap beer in pitchers, is humble in its decor, and offers a choice of large and small viewing screens for watching Sharks games, however — and I cannot stress this enough, Gentle Reader — it is not the university pub. For one thing, it's not on the campus, it's on South Street, where I live; a full two blocks from the eastern boundary of the campus. For another, I'm sure it's just a coincidence that USJ's football team is nicknamed the Badgers.

I was awakened just before 2:00 my first night here by a shrill noise that sounded like weasels being tortured. Turns out that's not what it was. Turns out I wish it had been. But it was only kids, boys, probably from the school, and they were only doing what boys that age do: acting like assholes.

I fell back asleep, eventually, and dreamt of water balloons.

I remember learning about the nature of nocturnal rodents in zoology class, but what I couldn't figure out is, why here? This is a quiet street, lined with large apartment complexes on both sides. My building allows cats but strictly forbids dogs and weasels, and the building across the street keeps them out through high rents and skunk repellant at the gates. So I knew they didn't live in the area.

I fell in love at first sight with Sixty South Street, and saw it only in the daylight. The entrance to the building is at the south end; the Badger's Den at the north, and when I walk to the university I go south, then west. I'd been living here two weeks before I noticed the pub at all.

Well, at least I had my explanation.

And free high speed Internet. See, when I found the pub, and went inside to investigate, I saw the signs promoting free wireless access for customers. Have I mentioned the Badger's Den is directly underneath my apartment window? Tonight I'll be catching up on the first three epidodes of "CSI: Miami," which are available for online viewing at the CBS Web site.

In the next story, Postmodern Sass stops whining about California and watches a San Jose Sharks game.