My boss is going to Copenhagen in December and might get a chance to meet Obama AAAHHHHHHHH too excited can't handle this.

Why do I still feel the need to make a disclaimer whenever I do anything that reveals the truest me?

I am an artist, and artists blindly follow a pure harsh yearning, whether towards the truth or away from it I am not sure.

If I put painful reflections of reality in my song, or if I take reality and twist it around so that the opposite thing actually happened and then I put THAT in my song instead, either way I shouldn't feel like I have to explain it.

Ars gratia artis, ars gratia artis. I repeat it to myself as I walk through the dark, hands in my pockets, feet stepping gingerly on the black wet sidewalk, hood over my head and shoulders hunched against the November night.

If I listen to music, the first song that comes on my shuffle strikes me deep like a laser of grace. "Somebody could walk into this room and say, your life is on fire / It's all over the evening news / All about the fire in your life, on the evening news..."

I don't want no part of this crazy love
I don't want no part of your love
I don't want no part of this crazy love
I don't want no part of your love

Somehow, his voice is both righteous and gentle at the same time. This is what I need.

So today I finally recorded a song of mine that's over a year old now. It's called "Half a Revolution." Please to listen here, and to read the lyrics ( here. )

Whew. This past week has been quite an emotional whirlwind. Right now I feel quite irritated. But I also feel vaguely peaceful, like I'm returning to myself after a little time spent away... hello self.

Notes augmented

We've enhanced and de-bugged Notes. If you haven't tried it yet, now's the time! You can create a private note when you ban multiple users. You can also delete multiple notes at once. Lastly, paid users have the option to add a note (visible only to you) whenever you add or remove a friend (guaranteed to avoid embarrassing social mishaps). If you don't currently have a paid account, you can upgrade now! It only takes a few minutes and costs less than a bad shopping mall haircut (plus, it's way more fashionable)!

Product tweaks and bug kill

1. In another effort to zap spam, comments containing links from domains LiveJournal deems untrustworthy are now automatically screened
2. If you sign up to get notifications of the Writer's Block question of the day, you'll now see the daily question in the email notification, so you'll have a little extra time to ponder before you post. You can subscribe to Writers Block notifications here
3. The issue causing random comments to vanish has been fixed!
4. If you visit a LiveJournal page and get prompted to log in, you'll be returned to the same page after you sign in (Thanks, Dreamwidth)!
5. If you don't edit the timestamp for an entry at all, the entry timestamp will indicate the time the entry was posted instead of the time the Update Journal page was loaded
6. Comments with paddings/backgrounds render correctly within the comment box (and will no longer wrap outside the box and break frames/margins)

New FCK fixes rich text editor!

1. We've updated our RTE (Rich Text Editor) to FCKeditor version 2.6.5
2. When switching from the RTE to HTML editor, links for syndicated feeds are no longer broken
3. RTE now functions properly in Safari 4.0
4. An extra line/space will not be auto-inserted whenever you switch from RTE to HTML editor
5. The insert image link now works correctly in all browsers

LiveJournal Cares

We’re pleased to introduce you to lj_cares, a new LiveJournal community dedicated to raising awareness and funds for U.S. charitable organizations that improve the health and well-being of people around the world. Each month, we’ll spotlight a nonprofit that is making a significant global impact through medical research, public outreach, and/or humanitarian social programs. Charities will be selected in accordance with the U.S. calendar of national health observances based on a high rating (of over 60%) on Charity Navigator and global scope of impact.

In this, our inaugural month of November, we will celebrate national adoption month by offering a charitable virtual gift (priced at $2.99) to support Love Without Boundaries, an organization that saves the lives of orphans with life-threatening diseases and places them in loving homes around the world. LiveJournal will donate 100% of the proceeds from the sale of charitable vgifts (we'll cover the cost of credit card transaction fees). To learn more about Love Without Boundaries, please visit lj_cares and read about how they helped save Baby Kang and the Rainbow Twins from fatal illnesses, who are now thriving in nurturing families. You can purchase your Love Without Boundaries gifts in the Virtual Gift shop.

Papered in postcards

A couple of weeks ago, we asked you to send in postcards to surround us with LiveJournal community. Thanks for coming through! We've received postcards all the way from Germany, Finland, and Canada and from all over the US, including Texas, Florida, Alaska, Montana, Wyoming, Indiana, Hawaii, and Oklahoma just to name just a handful. We're thrilled with our improved decor.

Please keep the love coming for one more week by writing to Frank the Goat, Esq., c/o LiveJournal, Inc., 539 Bryant Street, Suite 210, San Francisco, CA 94107. Be sure to include your username, since we'll be drawing the names of ten random contributors next Thursday to win paid account credits!

Photos of the week

We have more dazzling images posted by talented LiveJournal photographers from around the world. We're hoping to span the entire globe, so please continue posting and tagging. Of course, you can also sit back and enjoy the view at lj_photophile.

You can see a sample of this week's gorgeous photos and check out spotlight communities and awesome user content after the jump!

( Read more... )

Curtains

We thank you, once again, for joining us. See you next week!

GOD, I am just FREAKING OUT right now! It's pretty great! It's really COLD, and I'm really EXHAUSTED, and I feel even colder because I just came into the warmth OUT of the cold, and I feel even more exhausted because I've suddenly begun waking up early for some freakish reason, and I really miss my sister and in fact my whole familyyy. And I just got out of a hilarious lab with my climate change teacher Gidon. It was hilarious because I had no idea what was going on, and we were doing intense crazy statistics, and he was trying to make something work in the Excel program and it kept not working, and he got confused and annoyed, and the rest of us were stifling laughter and trying to understand anything, anything at all, and I was just totally lost and staring blankly at numbers and I was so tired I literally couldn't SEE the numbers, and it was just amazing. AND now people are running around screaming outside my dorm and blowing horns which sound like wounded elephants, gah gah gah...

...Meanwhile, please observe the highway that leads across the sea.

Hey evreyone,

Im CJ and i have a weird life that would consider me a man-whore dude to my actions and my female friends. Ive recently have been having some personal female problems and i always look for advice from me friends online  some quick info about me.

Name: CJ
Job: Military
Activities: Paintball, Vol. Fire Fighter 1st Responder, flirting with random women

Oh i also get excited and adventurous sometimes and post random pictures.. Most of my journal entries are friends only so feel free to check me out. 18 and up only please.

In the above picture, you can see ten thousand galaxies. I just think everyone ought to look at this picture from time to time.

EDIT@08:16 UTC/GMT. Wow. That was ugly. I expected it to go for 30 minutes and have maybe 1 minute of broken connectivity. Instead it lasted over 4 hours and we had 10 minutes of downtime directly related to the load balancer upgrades and then another 5-10 minutes of downtime when our primary Pingback database server crashed and the secondary couldn't take over; which could have been indirectly caused by the network upgrade missing a self-VIP.

Anyways, we're up, we're working, the load balancers are barely breaking a sweat right now and I need some food and a shot of whiskey. I don't even *like* whiskey!!

Thanks mhwest and dnewhall for helping out!

---

On Saturday the 14th at 4AM UTC/GMT we will be upgrading the operating system of our network load balancers to a newer version, one that will allow us to use both CPUs! Nifty, because multiprocessing is nice.

Since we have 2 load balancers, the plan is to upgrade 1 at a time, and there really should be very little impact to our website. Hopefully you won't notice a thing and I'll get to go back to the hotel and watch some wonderful late night infomercials.

We've got a lot of exciting projects coming up for 2010 and we're hoping that we'll be able to deliver them all to you, that you will find it useful/cool/lovely and then you will use the site even more. Behind-the-scenes work like this will give us the capacity to handle the anticipated traffic, so expect a few more maintenance windows especially in the beginning of next year as we've got some neat ideas to improve performance around here! We had the recent 30-45 minute outage yesterday due to one of our logging databases filling up disk space -- not so great design coupled with my human error in handling the initial problem -- and it looks like we're going to finally have some resources to eliminate stuff like that. I can't wait!

As usual, I will be updating status.livejournal.org before and after, just in case you are not able to reach our main website during the work.

Go to Google maps: http://maps.google.com/
Type "California" in the "Search Maps" box. Click "Search" (or press Enter).
Click "Directions".
In the empty field, type "Taiwan".
Make sure you have selected "By car" as a means of transportation.
Click "Get Directions".
Read the directions.

LJ user schnee, whom I don't even know, posted this genius explanation of cromulence and its correct usage as a comment to an entry in the "denglish" community.

'If "cromulent" isn't a cromulent word, how can you use it to state your opinion that "cromulent" isn't a cromulent word? Put another way, if "cromulent" isn't a cromulent word, then doesn't the term "cromulent word" not make any sense to begin with, and isn't it thus nonsensical to say that "cromulent" isn't a cromulent word? (And therefore, doesn't the fact that you're using the term "cromulent word" imply that "cromulent" is, in fact, a cromulent word?)'

EDIT: URGENT BULLETIN: "eeueoueooieuiers" is the Afrikaans word for "centuries-old ewe's udders." Fourteen consecutive vowels, folks.

I'm Merry and I'm 19. I'm going to copy what is in my profile, because I can!

I'm a dreamer, a romantic, I like to imagine things, I love MLP and Hello Kitty. I'm basically a kid in a nineteen-year-old's body. I have Asperger's. I was born in the wrong era. I love Audrey Hepburn and Bing Crosby. I collect books and love to read them. I'm a geek at times. I love computers and technology. I get excited over paper dolls and paper toys. I love hand-written letters and packages in the mail.

Other stuff:

I like Nintendo DS! And Sims 2, and other computer games.

I love to draw/write in my paper journal.

I like indie music.

Fandoms are: Cardcaptor Sakura, LOTR(books), HP(books),Inkheart(books, only again! XD), Haibane Renmei, Narnia(books and a little of the movies), A Little Princess and The Secret Garden(books only!).

I love the style of Sweet Lolita, though I don't dress it. And I love girly stuff. ^_^

That's about it!

If you want to friend me, just comment on my FO post! :D

-Merry

Hello! My name is Meghan. I’m a 22 year old girl from central PA. I’m going to college here in central PA. I’m majoring in social work and minoring in history. I have four cats. Here are some of the things that I like:

-Lord of The Rings
-Harry Potter
-Invader Zim
-Star Trek
-Cats
-Ancient Rome
-Watching foreign movies
-Anything paranormal
-Abandoned buildings
-Meeting new people
-Making new friends
-Chatting with people

Some other ways to reach me are:
AIM: Odd Earth Girl
Yahoo: inwe_sindanarie
MSN: meghan723@gmail.com
ICQ: 385399090

I write in my journal everyday and I’m not afraid to leave comments either. Add me and you won’t be disappointed. Hope to hear from you all soon!

The infamous Psycho Mall Walker gets Powerhoused courtesy of Raymond Scott :)

Blatantly posting just to meet my quota tonight.

I ache all over, but in a good way that makes me smile like a pleased cat. I didn't do a single piece of homework this weekend, but I'm going to get up early tomorrow and do the only thing I really need to do before work. I stress out when thinking about the future and money and getting a job, but at the same time I feel absurdly confident about these things. I need to change the fishes' water tomorrow too, somebody remind me. I'm such a lazy bum, but I love it.

(P.S. I can't believe tomorrow is already November 9. Happy almost-Wallday, everyone.)

Hi you all! I'm Tim, I’m traveller. Sometimes I travel on my country and create short movies.
I want to show you some amazing video.



( Ufa is... )

also, I can hospitality you in http://www.couchsurfing.org/people/timaldo/

If you liked this post, please register under this reference http://vk.com/reg1084994 , this will help me to win a laptop.

please add me to your friends. my lj is about jewelry and other things I make and sell.  I want to meet people!

In early October, I wrote:

"WONDERFUL WONDERFUL NIGHT. Am I even alive? Who on earth am I? Am I capable of anything? Or am I just going to live like fireworks in the sky, exploding below the level of language and burning out before anyone discovers the Word?"

This morning around three, I wrote:

"Time is a basketweave, and parallel universes are the third dimension."

I'm not sure where I'm going.

My sucky Friday was only sucky for two reasons. It ended up much better thanks to cazimirtfarley being awesome as usual, but the first part of the day was bad. Like I said, two reasons.

Reason 1: The woman I work directly under at my job is amazing. I'll call her J. J lives with her husband, who's on disability benefits and can't work (and is being threatened with having his benefits canceled right now), and her two little granddaughters, who she has to take care of due to their mother not being fit for parenting, and yet continuing to pop out babies (despite the fact that she was apparently living in a shelter at one point, she still was trying to get custody of the kids). So J works full-time while also trying to be a good grandmother/mother-figure to these two little girls, who have certain behavior problems thanks to the few years they spent living with their mother before J got custody. J is also diabetic and has various health problems, which her meager health insurance can barely cover. Something's always going wrong for her: for example, she broke her foot this past spring and was in a cast until just a few weeks ago. As soon as she got her cast off, she came down with the swine flu. It's incredible, what this woman has had to go through. Then, to top it all off, I came into work today and she told me that her landlady has informed her that the beautiful house J and her family finally moved into less than a year ago has just been sold, so they need to find a new place ASAP. It's doubtful that the landlady's even going to let them stay until Christmas.

Reason 2: I only just found out today, over six months late, the fate of a good friend of mine from freshman year who got expelled and whom I hadn't heard from in a while. Apparently he and his brother became bank robbers. They robbed fifteen banks. Hearing this news really brought me down, because one of the last times I saw this guy Wojecich, he had had an epiphany and was planning to turn his life around, stop using drugs and drinking, focus on his education and try to do well in his classes, etc. But then practically next thing after that he got expelled, and then I heard from him only scantily – he was in Poland, he was doing construction work in New Jersey – until, wham, there's his mug shot in the Times. He really had potential, too – he was a theology major, thoughtful and clearly a smart guy (I mean, fifteen banks before getting caught? You can't help but respect that!).

So, yeah, I feel kind of emotionally exhausted right now. I wish I was in a position to be able to help all the people I know who need help.

The first question to oneself is obviously "What to do with it?" Have the neighbors seen? No? Good. Bring it in. It's small, inoffensive but somehow disgusting in its smugness. Is it a toy? No, false hope, it's alive. The eyes are sunken, the horns are fleshy, the feet are undefined. You have to hold your breath as you pick it up, but nothing happens. Those teeth look pasted on. Is that a scrap of gold ribbon trailing from its mouth? Was this thing wrapped? It looks like a child's crayon drawing incarnate. You're surprised at your lack of surprise.

Next to it is, of course, the requisite pile of bark shavings. And when you see them, you wrinkle your nose in scorn, realizing what the whole thing is about. They do this every time. Scrappy, half-rotten, but somehow intended to make up for this indescribable horror. The horror would be indescribable, that is, if it hadn't happened so many times before. You're heartily sick of it by now, but you can't resist. You're soft, you know. That's why they take advantage of you like this. They don't know that you've got the words now.

You step inside, behind the curtains, holding it in your hand, leaving the bark on the doorstep, beginning to speak quietly. You say each word like you're dropping a sparkling diamond into a dark mossy well, abandoned in a deep black forest. Each word floats like a knife in the sweet air. Each word creates a crystal shield about you. Each word destroys this monstrosity a bit more. They thought you had sympathy. They didn't know you've also got control.

(Note: she was wrong. The scraps of wood were wet from gasoline.)