I believe the giant middle finger, "gone" and his lack of posting in 3 days means that he's going away for a month. Of course he doesn't know that yet they always come back.
I will be the defender to his right to depart this board for as long as he'd like too. But if he did leave who said what to piss him off this time?
I gave him a 15-day friendly warning for calling someone an idiot in M/C and, instead of accepting it like a man, he went all hormonal and threw down this post: For which Lanz hit him with a (completely deserved) full warning. If he's going to get that riled up over a totally justifiable friendly warning, then he can stay gone.
Oh, and the green status (above the avatar) pips disappear. But that can also happen if you've been accidentally put in the wrong group.