I've decided to become a vandal. Of course, I'm not going to be any ordinary vandal, I'm going to be a vandal with a cause.

As some of you may have heard, last Friday morning, while some of you were getting up for work and others were catching a last few winks, a bunch of busy little lunkheads were scurrying around car dealerships in the Los Angeles suburbs setting fire to sport utility vehicles and sprawling graffiti like "I (heart) pollution" and "Fat, Lazy Americans."

A third bit of graffiti shed some light on what brought on all this bizarre behavior: "E.L.F." was painted on the hoods of a couple of Hummers. For the uninitiated, or those who prefer not to devote memory space to the lunatic fringe, E.L.F. stands for Earth Liberation Front, a moniker that would sound right at home in a two-bit science-fiction potboiler.

These elves, however, aren't out to beat back an alien invasion or save the planet from an approaching asteroid ... they're lighting fires that produce huge plumes of black smoke to protest air pollution. They're (allegedly) burning down under-construction apartment complexes to protest urban sprawl, thus forcing the builders to hack down a few more acres of trees to fix the damage. Do you see a pattern here?

The people who commit these acts refer to themselves by pretty names like "monkey wrenchers" and "ecoterrorists." The implication is that their cause is somehow noble, and thus deserving of being distinguished from common vandalism and terrorism.

Well, I'd have to say they may actually be right. Their actions are more reminiscent of Halfwit Harry than Hamas.

Let's look at the results of this well-planned and -executed operation at the dealerships. A number of SUVs were set on fire, and others were painted and vandalized.

The smoke from the fires was, of course, not passed through any sort of emission-control device. Remember that this took place in California, where emission controls are so tight the vehicles quite often put out exhaust that's cleaner than the air they take in. So several mobile air cleaners were destroyed in favor of creating the sort of raw, unfiltered pollution that makes the sort of people who set the fires so angry that they want to run out and set something on fire.

And it's not as if there's going to be one less SUV on the freeways in California. The only people suffering from this terrorism are at the insurance companies that cover the vehicles. Perhaps we should call these folks GEICO-terrorists?

I would say I suspect the Evil Squirrels are behind this, but their plots generally make a LOT more sense than this higgledy-piggledy sort of idiocy.

Perhaps I could sic the Star Wars Kid on them.

For those of you unfamiliar with the SWK, as the Star Wars Kid is commonly called, he's a Canadian teen known only as Ghyslain who did something I'm sure most of us have done in one form or another at one time or another: he performed a mock lightsaber duel against imaginary opponents. His weapon of choice was a golf ball retriever. Unfortunately, the SWK performed his "duel" in front of a video camera at his school. Some schoolmates found the video and uploaded it to an Internet file-sharing site and the legend began. The roughly two-minute clip has now gone through dozens of incarnations, from the addition of lightsaber video and sound effects to complete transformations into "The Hulk" and "The Matrix" themes.

Ghyslain is embarrassed and a bit mortified by the whole thing, and his parents have even threatened legal action against the parents of the kids who originally uploaded the video.

I can understand his feelings. Who among us hasn't had that moment of air guitar along to Led Zeppelin? That sword fight with the plunger after defeating a nasty clog? The duel with the mighty zucchini before you deal the death blow with your chef's knife? (OK, maybe that last one is just me.) Would you want those taped and shown to the entire world?

That said, the videos ARE a hoot and a half.

One creature who won't require any sort of "protection" from E.L.F. or any of the other fringe-dwellers is Elsie the cow, of Walpole, N.H.

A couple of weeks ago, some nasty thunderstorms blew through Walpole, and Elsie was grazing in a bad spot: on the crest of a hill. The next day, Elsie's owner, Nick Bickford, noticed that she wasn't quite as chipper as usual and called a veterinarian. The vet diagnosed Elsie's malady, which was evinced visually only by some bald patches and burns on her hocks, as the aftermath of a lightning strike.

The rest of the herd may be destined for a charcoal grill near you, but Bickford has decided that Elsie will live out the rest of her days on the farm. You don't grill a cow who's already survived Mother Nature's barbecue.

I welcome your comments, complaints, stories and professions of undying love. Large cash grants are also accepted. Just click here, type and send.

• Aug. 22, 2003: This Is The End
• Aug. 8, 2003: My Hat's In The Ring
• Aug. 1, 2003: Weird On Ice
• July 25, 2003: Enough, Already!
• July 18, 2003: Weirding The Storm Out
• July 11, 2003: Britney, How Could You?
• June 27, 2003: Fuzzy Menace II: The Rogue's Gallery
• June 20, 2003: They're On My List
• June 13, 2003: Blunting The Spike