LooLoo

How did I come by this, you ask?

• first stop: Wall Street Journal, under new management;
  
• 2nd stop: "The Blogger Mom, In Your Face," (Lots of businesses get hate mail, but few owners react the way Heather Armstrong does. She prints out nasty emails, puts them in her driveway and drives over them with her car. "That's the attitude I have," she says, "and it's made my life a thousand percent better.")
• and from there to dooce.com, et voilà.

These days, reading the Journal, I feel a bit like the shy kid on the first day of preschool:

Randy Bothwell, a police detective in Chester, Pa., considered and rejected a number of ways to rid his yard of bamboo: salt, an exorcism, shooting it with his service revolver. When he asked for advice at a local garden center, he says, they "laughed hysterically."

So Mr. Bothwell whacked the stand with a machete. It grew back. He bought a pickax and tried digging up the roots, a process that traced a 30-foot arc across his once-pristine lawn. One month and two broken shovels later, he rented a Bobcat minibulldozer and a big metal trash bin, acquired 14 gallons of poison and bought 24 cubic yards of dirt to fill the resulting hole. Total approximate cost: $1,500.

One year later, a single shoot appeared. "It gave me ... the final salute." Mr. Bothwell says. "I was like, 'Mother of God.' "

Call the Pandas: Bamboo Engulfs Defenseless Yards
by Matthew Rose

As fun as that sounds, I find myself thinking that what I'd like to do is just stand here by the cubbyholes and watch the other kids for the next six or seven months or so.

I don't know why.