Considering Sunday is generally the day that I spend most time with the family, today was an exception. For each of their own individual reasons, the members of the Higgs brigade who hadn't already sought refuge in Canada decided to go their own ways, having "BBQ's and thing". This left me on my own in the house in charge of my own survival.

Having risen too late for breakfast I did myself the vegetable lasagne that had been left it the fridge. Now don't get me wrong, I'm a carnivore through and through, and this was clearly not a standard dish in our household. There are two reasons why this abomination of a perfectly good meal could have ended up in the freezer. Number one is an all time favourite/regular - The Mother didn't check the packaging as she whisked it off the shelf in Sainsbury's (Illustrated example: Yesterday we were treated to a wonderfully spicy pizza. No one in our house likes spicy food. Point made). The second option is slightly more frightening for my digestive system and that is that due to Sister Two's skin issues', her diet has been changed by her homoeopath who says (and I do not kid) she needs to cut out the chocolate and get on the birdseed. Mother thinks this is wonderful and had jumped on the healthy eating bandwagon, which means there is every chance that this vegetable option was not sheer coincidence.

The kitchen cupboards have been stripped of the usual teeth rotters like biscuits and all those other nice things, and it looks like a rather enthusiastic squirrel is to blame as it all has been replaced by hordes of nuts, seeds and dried fruit. If we get any more warm weather it could easily turn itself into a giant fruit cake.

My suspicions were later ratified by my evening meal - I reached for a frozen pizza only to recover a Spinach and Mozzarella concoction (which I have to admit I do quite like) but afterwards I realised that I have not consumed any meat today. On a Sunday. That must be the first time in... like... well... ever.

One shock revelation came today while I was only my daily interweb wander, and I'm still not entirely sure if I believe it or not. Apparently, Scott Jackoff, a.k.a. $Jark from DeviantART has been forced off the staff, a matter of days before the site's fifth birthday. Now this may not mean too much to most people, but basically the background is that Jark set the whole thing up and is sort of the face of the world's biggest online art community. DA has experienced massive expansion in the past few years and Jark was a figure head above everyone else. I always found it amazing how he could co-ordinate a network of 1.1 million users worldwide from a naval base in Japan and never meet the co-founder who lived in the States.

Anyway, I stumbled across a huge revolution on the site - staff members resigning by the dozen in protest and a mass movement to boycott submission of art except in support of bringing him back. You see, it's not so much that he's gone, it's the way he's gone. He just one day dropped off the staff list, and apparently without notice. The CEO, $Spyed, who is another big man in the whole thing, has become more of a public face in the past year, and is apparently responsible for the situation, whatever it is. The problem that faces most people is that no statement has been given by either of these two people, and no clear information has been given about what happened. What is known is that a number of site comments have been removed regarding the situation (this can only be made possible by staff, and DA's own rules state that comments - no matter what they are - cannot be removed). This has caused an outcry against censorship which has never occured before as there had never been any, and also leaves the community reeling over Jark's sudden, unexplained, but apparently nasty departure.

I am still in two minds over whether this is a 5th birthday joke, it's happened before, but usually on April Fool's, and if it was intended as a joke, it has gone way beyond that. I have a feeling that this has permanently damaged the community atmosphere with a good number of artists refusing to participate any longer.

On other fronts, I did little in the way of proper work and spent my time crusing the channels and listening to comedy radio programmes. A chilled out day, and a nice break.

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