New Poll: Inspired by my rant today (scroll down), I want to know if you consider yourself as an optimist or pessimist with regards to the rest of humanity. I mean, I think I generally trust people to behave decently, but time and time again I get let down (that jerk at my Dahl site, Bill Clinton, eBay sellers, etc.). Am I just being terribly naïve? Should I adopt a cynical tone of mistrust and then I’ll never be disappointed? What works for you?

That Kevin Smith vs. GLAAD thing that Kim reported yesterday seems to have been picked up by the mainstream press. I definitely agree that GLAAD are being jerks here, and that there are better ways of educating people about homophobia. This kind of thing is what gives political correctness a bad name. I’m just glad that the story presented both sides, at least.

Elizabeth Taylor finds new love… with JEFF GOLDBLUM? That’s just too weird. Thus endeth my long-standing crush on him.

Great. And the IRA set off a car bomb in west London last night. Lovely. I wonder if they’ll try to get Hammersmith Bridge again too? It’s practically in my friggin’ backyard. Wonderful.

It’s been a horrible week. Lots of people have left the company, including my friend Ferret and my housemate Nick. I can’t begin to explain how weird and sad this all is. Good people are leaving; the people that – to me – define where I work. The future seems uncertain. And our company Summer Party is today! I don’t feel very celebratory.

On top of all that, I was up til 2 a.m. listening to the stereo downstairs boom out the best of 80’s Crap Rock, as Nick reveled in his newfound freedom. Whatever – I’ll cut him some slack; he’s had a bad week. I reserve the right to bitch out the other people that were present though.

AND, WORST OF ALL, I just went to check on my newly redesigned and relaunched Roald Dahl site, when I noticed in my Admin site that someone qualified to get their name on the Trivia Master Board. “Sweet!” I thought. I’ve got to personally approve all the names, though, so I went to check who it was. It was “f**k_me”. (No asterisks; I just put those in for my mom’s benefit.) What kind of a jerk would do that? Why do I bother building nice free things for the people of the Internet when all they try to do is abuse them? Luckily I’ve got the bastard’s IP address, and if he tries it again, I’ll boot him for good. Suddenly I feel a little bit better.

(Sorry for the journal-like rant, but every now and then I feel the need to get angry in a public way. I’ll get back to weblogging, I promise.)

IT’S DONE! Behold, my magnum opus.

Killer peanut butter. *sob* What the heck am I supposed to eat now?

John Cusack for President!

I recently cleared out my digital camera’s memory card and here were some of the gems I found:

My sister with the little birthday cake Rodd got for her at Tesco. Yes, that’s a tea light on top. We didn’t have any other birthday candles. And please disregard the large bottle of Gordon’s Gin on the table beside her. I, uh, swear we don’t drink a lot. Or something.

Do not stare directly at the German’s legs! Blindness may ensue. This is my friend Christian, who Snookums and I call Sid (for various geeky reasons). He apparently lost some bet and as punishment had to wear this kilt all the way across London to pick up a girl. As compensation for embarrassing him, here’s a link to his extremely helpful PHP website.

Here’s my hair following the first of the “Intense Red” dye jobs. I get it done about every six weeks, although I really should get it done more often these days (my hair grows fast). Reds are also very tricky to maintain, as they tend to fade quickly and the color can wash out. I finally wised up and got some expensive yet effective color preserving shampoos. It was so funny when I went home in June, because half my family didn’t even recognize me.

There’s my sister again. This was from our ill-fated trip to the UK Blogger meet-up. See, I told you we were there!