When I got my mail today, I noticed that one of the windows separating the entrance of my apartment building from its lobby had been bashed in. The reason and mechanism for this remains a mystery, though it is probably safe to assume that someone kicked it in given that the window was close to the ground. However, I would like to point out that this was not merely a broken window; the glass was almost completely removed from the frame. Either someone delivered a powerful kick with a very large foot, or the procedure took several shots (N.B. I'm not a forensic scientist so this could be utter nonsense). None of this etiology really interested me, though, the main cause for concern with the sprinkling of glass shards that now graced the carpet. I thought someone should know about this, so I called my landlord.

Unfortunately, as it turned out, my landlord was out of town. When he told me this on a voice mail, he added an 'obviously' to this, perhaps implying that had he been in town he would have known of the broken window immediately and fixed it. Of course, my landlord is incompetent so, although I realized the possibility of his being gone for the holidays, I thought it was just as likely that he didn't notice. At any rate, since I brought it to his attention, he asked if I could be so kind as to clean it up. Most people would consider this an inconvenience. Admittedly, a part of me was not a fan of the idea, but I knew that if I didn't do it, it would just lay there until he got home. More importantly, however, I considered this as an opportunity to clean up something correctly for a change. Despite not being a janitor for almost two years now, there is still a part of me that cringes when I see the disrepair of this building: lights out, carpet missing, dry wall cracked and on the floor, &c. Sure I couldn't actually replace the window, but at the very least I could clean it up. And so I grabbed my garbage can, my broom and dustpan, and my vacuum cleaner and set to work.

There were a few things I discovered while cleaning up the glass:

• When the landlord cleans the floor, he apparently has no regard for the baseboards or the floor underneath the heating units. This was especially evident in the entranceway where the heating unit obscured an incredible amount of filth. Admittedly, it's a pain the ass to get under there, but it's not impossible.
• The landlord also does not seem to understand the usefulness of vacuum cleaner attachments. I get that it's hard to clean some places and that the chairs in the lobby are nailed to the floor. That doesn't give you an excuse for never vacuuming in the corner. Sure no one goes back there, but the thick layer of dust that had accumulated behind one of the chairs should have made you grimace enough to encourage a thorough cleaning.
• There are no outlets in the apartment building's lobby. This is just baffling. Sure, the lobby is not designed for much use besides standing around, but wouldn't you think it would be a nice idea to provide an opportunity for some electrical cleaning? As it stands, you have to prop open the laundry room door and unplug a dryer to vacuum. For those of you who may question my ability to find a power outlet, I confirmed this suspicion with the landlord who suggested the same method I used, though he did not seem particularly disturbed by its clusterfuckery.
• And finally, the front door, the one next to the broken window, does not unlock.

That last revelation is the most important, and, believe me, I learned it the hard way. Before I embarked on my cleaning I had not realized this because I had propped the door open to get my mail, and had done so when initially sweeping the entranceway as well. However, after going outside in an attempt to bang some of the glass out of my broom, I just let the door shut and found myself rather stuck. Bugger. Normally this would just be an inconvenience (though obviously one that should be resolved), but today it was particularly obnoxious: it was raining outside and the only other entrance had not been shoveled. So I trudged through the rain and the snow and wondered how long the door had been like that, and if anyone else had noticed. And if they had, did they call the landlord? Did they too have to trudge through the snow to get to the back entrance? Or perhaps, they decided on a more direct route: perhaps breaking through a window, crawling into the lobby and then opening the door from the other side.

This last possibility seemed fairly unlikely. First of all, it seems like it would be way too much work when you could just go around the back, snow or no snow. Secondly, why the hell would you break the lowest window? It would make a hell of a lot more sense to break the window directly next to the doorknob so that you could just reach in. I'm not writing this off entirely, though: one can never underestimate the power of stupidity and inebriation.

But again, I didn't really care how the window or the door got that way. I just cared about the mess, and I had cleaned that up nicely. Yes, I had entered complete janitor mode at this point. If I had had some duct tape I would have put a piece of cardboard over the broken window. If I had an extra doorknob (and the know how of replacing the cylinder so that people wouldn't have to get new keys), I would've replaced the broken one. Hell, if I had a shovel I would've shoveled the back entrance. Alas, I had none of these things so I simply vacuumed the whole lobby, rectifying the previous vacuum shortcomings.

Sometimes when I wander through this building and look at everything that needs to be fixed, I have an insatiable urge to just fix it myself regardless of time or cost. There are lights that have been out for six months here. The landlord says that this is because he can't find the replacement bulbs. Man, well take one in to Ace and tell them to get you one. Failing that, replace the fucking light fixture. Dumbass.

While cleaning up the lobby, it occurred to me that, on a certain level, I really do enjoy that kind of thing. However, it can't be compulsory. My apartment is a mess, god knows the last time I vacuumed it. Furthermore, though I recognize what needs to be done around here, I'm not about to volunteer to be a landlord. This is partly because of the snow, when it's your responsibility to get rid of snow, you live in constant fear of the next snowstorm. I'm so glad to be relieved of that.

Rather, I think I'd like to be some sort of rogue janitor. I'll just wander the country cleaning up public places whose caretaker has slipped in to apathy. I'll saunter in, sweep up the dirt, shine those mirrors, clean those baseboards and be on my way with a whistle and a tip o' the cap. Make no mistake, however, this would not be for some altruistic purpose nor would it be because of some overarching cleanliness fetish. Rather, I would do simply to proclaim loud and clear, "That's how you clean a lobby. Jerk."

Last night I had the romantic urge to go to the patio of a nearby café, buy a glass of US style absinthe, smoke a clove cigarette, and read Robbe-Grillet. I just recently discovered that this nearby café served absinthe, though it seems fairly obvious that they don't really know what they're doing. Everyone seems overly excited about lighting something on fire when I order it. This is one of those flashy things that never really works out very well. When I bought my own absinthe a few months ago I simply followed the non-pyrotechnic instructions on the bottle and had a very nice drink because of it. Last night, though, I got a flaming sugar cube which was quickly extinguished and sat rather hardened on the slotted spoon before the waiter dumped it into the distilled absinthe and stirred it around like coffee. I'm not enough of a snob to have sent it back, and anyway it tasted okay. I just don't understand the attraction of lighting drinks on fire.

After finishing the absinthe I decided to move inside. Though the absinthe was unusually strong, I could still read my book allowing me to conduct my favorite sociological experiment: How do people react to a bearded man reading a book alone in a bar? Usually the answer is: they don't, at least not vocally. However, it has occasionally sparked a conversation. Oddly this tends to happen when I'm reading Rabelais. It has nothing to do with the other bar patron having an interest in Rabelais, however, it just seems it's a coincidence. Inevitably, the conversation goes, "what are you reading?" "Rabelais." "What's that?" "He's a 17^th century French author. It's goofy as hell," and then a completely unrelated conversation will ensue. Tonight, however, I had Robbe-Grillet, which doesn't seem to produce any effect at all.

When a bartender whom I had borrowed a couple cigarettes from the other night was preparing to leave, I put down my book and offered to repay her with a drink. She responded that I didn't need to do that unless I had been bumming cigarettes from her the entire night. It seemed to me that that was obvious and that my intention was clearly not actually to repay her for two cigarettes, but to have a drink with her. Either she was incredibly dense or she was shooting me down. I assumed the latter and decided not to press the point and respond with "Well you can buy yourself a drink then, I don't care, but how about you do it when located in this seat next to me?" Instead, I finished my beer and headed out. This place was dead anyway.

I dropped Robbe-Grillet off at home and headed over to Paddy's Irish Pub. I like Paddy's but they don't really have a very good beer selection, so I don't go there that often. What they lack in beer, though, they make up for in atmosphere. You enter Paddy's through its outdoor seating area: a tight alley cluttered with a Stein's Gardens and Gifts worth of bric-a-brac and plants. The inside is similarly knick-knacked, though even more confined. All in all its kind of like having a drink at Grandma's house, as long as your Grandmother is an Irish eccentric pack rat with a penchant for Christmas lights. Therefore, depending on the size of the crowd, it can be like having a quite drink while your grandmother watches Wheel of Fortune or it can be like having a grandmother themed house party. Last night it was somewhere in between.

I sat at the end of the bar and ordered a Strongbow and asked for a complimentary basket of snacks. The snacks are nothing exciting, just Chex Mix, peanuts, and peanut M&Ms, but its nice to munch on something. While doing so I tried to make out the luminaries of Irish literature that were featured on a poster on the wall. I was far enough away, and intoxicated enough, that unless I squinted I couldn't actually read the names but I could see the pictures. I got Flann O'Brien, Beckett, Yeats, Wilde, and someone else (Joyce must have been in the area of the poster blocked by a contraption of some sort). I did not get George Bernard Shaw, because I don't care about him but I did find out that he had an enormous fuck off beard.

After awhile an attractive smoky-voiced girl sat next to me and began a conversation with a couple of dudes in sleeveless t-shirts. It was difficult to tell the provenance of this group. I wasn't sure if she knew the dudes, or had met them on the way to the bar. They seemed friendly enough, chatting about how she got scared watching a horror movie and went for a walk, and mocking one of the dudes who confessed to having a recurrent nightmare, but some people like talking to strangers. I was also trying to figure out how the dark haired fellow who wandered in and out of the group fit in. I took particular interest in him because his shirt had what looked like an SS style Totenkopf on it between two flags. I never got a good look at what the shirt was actually trying to say, but having anything that could be construed as a Nazi emblem on your t-shirt, seems like a questionable fashion choice. I wondered if he was aware of the implications of his Death's Head. I decided not to ask, just in case he did.

Because I was paying attention to him I immediately noticed when he told one of the bartenders to fuck off for no apparent reason. Since it seemed rather unprovoked, for about a millisecond I thought that this was some sort of jocular salutation. That is until the bartender responded by telling him to leave. Señor Totenkopf did not particularly agree with the bartender's suggestion and told him so by swinging his fist in the bartender's general direction. As usually happens in any fight other than ones in movies, the punch landed rather unglamorously and stupidly. In this case it connected on the right side of the bartender's neck. I can't imagine that that part of the body was what the guy was aiming for, but it did seem to have the intended effect: pissing off the bartender.

Grappling that takes place on either side of a bar looks absolutely ridiculous: obviously nobody is going to get pushed in any direction considering there's a large counter between them with no intention of moving anytime soon. Probably because of this obstacle, the grappling didn't last very long and both parties broke off in opposite directions. Now Totenkopf decided that his best chance of getting the upper hand in this dispute would be to elicit the help of some sort of nearby projectile. He decided on a bar stool. Perhaps because of the awkwardness of bar stool tossing, his intended target had plenty of time to get the fuck out of the way. Since the path of the chair was not disrupted by a human being anymore, though, it continued on its merry way directly toward quite a lot of bottles and, eventually, a mirror. One might think that some breakage might occur at this point, but instead the bar stool merely knocked one bottle on its side and bounced onto the floor, making the whole scene that much sillier.

It was at about this time that several people decided that perhaps the bartender's original suggestion was, in fact, appropriate, and escorted the upset patron out the door, never to be seen again. The bartender left the scene to cool down, and I realized that somewhere in the scuffle my snack basket was overturned and I had lost some Chex Mix. As I glanced around the bar I realized the entire party had exited leaving me with a clear view of a couple way at the other end of the bar who both had a look that clearly said, "the hell?"

I've never seen a bar fight before. It seemed odd to me that my only reaction was basically, "well that was weird." It just sort of happened and then didn't. For whatever reason, I had thought I would have reacted differently. Since I was, basically, right next to the thing I thought briefly that it would have been nice if I had tried to subdue Heinrich Himmler. But I don't think I could have done much. "Hi, I'm Nathan. You don't know me, but could you possibly calm down?" Because of this personal acquittal, I didn't really have much to say. The bartender involved in the fight eventually returned to his post, nursing his neck, and acting as hard as he could to cover up the fact that he really fucking hates people sometimes.

For my part, I had a couple more Strongbows, went home, put a pizza in and woke up about six hours later to find cat shit in the corner of my bedroom, cat vomit in the corner of my living room and, most disturbingly, a pizza shaped carbonized lump in the oven. The first two make me think that my cat is stupid; the last one makes me think that I'm stupider. Thankfully leaving the oven on all night only resulted in me ruining a pizza (rather completely I might add), rather than the entire apartment complex. For your viewing pleasure here's the result of my dumbassery:

Yesterday Paige and I went to The Twisted Fork to try their provisionally named "Flaming Coffee." Paige and I both had a paper on Bestiaries due that evening and so we thought imbibing an alcoholic beverage would be the perfect motivation for writing. The Flaming Coffee is The Twisted Fork's new signature drink. It is a strong cocktail of Bacardi 151, Kahlua, and coffee. Here's The Twisted Fork kind of inaccurate description:

"First, we coat the rim of your glass with fresh lime and then dip it in sugar. Next, we add BACARDI 151, KAHLÚA and our own blend of ALTERRA coffee, plus a few mystery ingredients. Then we light it on fire and things really heat up!"

Since they actually make it at the table describing the process in full, the possibility of mystery ingredients is a bit slim. I honestly think they just didn't feel like transcribing them. Also, they don't light it on fire after everything is in there. It's not like you get a glass served to you with a blue flame dancing around in front of your face. The lighting is actually done when the Bacardi is in there and continues on with the Kahlua. By the time the coffee is added the flame is completely out. Here's a video of one of the waitstaff making the drink: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nYxRO47Q50

Anyway, it's pretty good. It's no Magellan and Tonic and I'd rather get a normal coffee instead of one slathered in alcohol and flame but that's just me. Also it's eight bucks. If I'm going to pay eight dollars for a drink I'll just get a Tanqueray No. 10 straight up. That way, by the time I'm finished I can forget about the stupidity of paying so much for a drink.

The Twisted Fork has a contest going on to help them decide a name for the drink. The original name was the Flaming Spanish Coffee, but that makes about as much sense as calling it the Flaming Liechtensteinian Coffee. The impetus for entering the contest is two Midwest Express tickets to... somewhere. So people that want to escape Wisconsin are encouraged to buy an alcoholic beverage as their ticket out of here. The survey includes several uninspired names including the "Twisted Coffee" and the "Rum and Smoke" (WTF?). It also includes a space to write your own name in. Given that the apparent operation of the contest is a survey, writing in your name is probably just a waste of ink but it is the most intriguing option nonetheless. Paige and I set to work to think of an innovative name that would never see the light of day.

It occurred to me that satirically associating the drink with its Muslim origin would be an, at the very least, amusing idea. After all, the tension of Americans with Muslims is widely ridiculous and ill informed. The cultural and scientific influence of the Muslim World is far more widespread and important than a few morons with bombs strapped to their chests could eradicate. I think, at the very least, the culture of a people should be remembered before demonizing them to make our military actions seem more sanguine. I thought the best way to do this would be to offend everyone in a pithy drink name written on a piece of paper that would quickly be thrown away. I suddenly thought "The Flaming Jihad" would be a good possibility.

After all, representing a complicated religion with one small misunderstood aspect seemed like a good way to make people uncomfortable. When ordering a "Flaming Jihad" one could not help but think about both the cultural impact of the Muslim world and the stupidity of representing it with an overused metonymic cliché. I was proud of my tastelessness and Paige seemed both offended and amused.

But I was not quite satisfied. After all the idea of Jihad is overused and I don't feel I have the specialized knowledge of its complications to accurately abuse it. However, when in the bathroom, I was suddenly struck with a much more offensive idea and one rife with satirical implications: "The Muslim Car Bomb." I felt I had suddenly crossed the line from offensiveness to complete and utter tastelessness. It was with some pride then that I returned to the table and told Paige about my idea.

Now, before defriending me, here me out for a second. First and foremost, I felt I could write that name down on the piece of paper because of the wide use of the just as offensive drink name The Irish Car Bomb. How that has survived in the popular vernacular is beyond me. Hey this drink has a lot of Irish stuff in it, what could we call it that would exemplify the traditions and culture that birthed the ingredients? James Joyce? Yeats? Something to do with Irish music or set dancing? Any of the plethora of elements that are inexplicably embraced on St. Patrick's day when everyone's suddenly Irish despite years of explicit American racism? No, let's associate it with the deplorable actions of the IRA. That'll make people feel really comfortable every time they order it, right?

At least the Muslim Car Bomb has implications more closely associated with the drink itself. Fucking hell, the drink is on FIRE at one point. The only thing bomb like about the Irish Car Bomb is that you drop something into it. I mean, that's bomb like and all, but it sure as hell isn't car bomb like. Maybe if the shot glass of Baileys drove up next to the Guinness and exploded the two glasses it would be more appropriate but there would be some logistical concerns with such a scenario. On a totally different level, the elements to a Muslim Car Bomb are such a bastardization of coffee that Muslim extremists would, at the very least, shake their heads in embarrassment at the sheer debauchery of it. I mean, this isn't just coffee with some alcohol in it, it's fucking set on fire. They bring the shit out to your table and make it in front of you. The coffee's kind of an afterthought to make the alcohol go down more smoothly.

Of course, this is all kind of immaterial considering I would never actually expect The Twisted Fork to adopt such a patently idiotic name. In fact, if they did with unironic sincerity I would probably be the first to organize a protest if I could actually be bothered to do such a thing. Nevertheless I wrote the name down in the space provided, tongue invisibly planted in cheek. I included the parenthesized comment "Oh come on, like it's any more offensive than The Irish Car Bomb." Paige, for the record wrote down The Flaming Jihad. I would hope that The Twisted Fork would have the good taste to promptly throw both entries in the trash.

Only one thing bothers me about submitting the name: Without the vaguely specialized knowledge of the popularization of coffee originating in the Muslim world, the names are far more offensive as they don't have the possibility of being recognized as satire. Someone approaching the name without that bit of knowledge in tow would just scratch their head at the offensiveness. At that point I may as well have written "Y'all should call it the Nigger-loving Jew Faggot 'cause that's what all y'all motherfuckers are. Now gimmie a Bud Light." But whatever.

Maybe I shouldn't have put my name on the thing...