lookin' back, she just laughs.

lebaneselove
A wealth of resources for fans of the Lebanese entertainment world.

scenebyscene
This collaborative screenwriting community will accomplish an entire film script--each scene by a different writer--over the course of one year. It's destined to be crazy. Along the way, a slew of smaller challenges will be offered.

add_foreign_ljs
Looking to practice your language skills? add_foreign_ljs offers users a way to find journals written in a language other than their own.

i wish i could sit here and take this seriously, put careful consideration into what i'm about to write and carve it into something that sounds like a prologue to the latest in paperback, but i couldn't care any less.

i suppose i could use some friends, or a therapist.
there's a lot going on that i'd simply like to bitch about, but i'd like it to be followed up by thoughts, advice, etc.
i guess there are a few stragglers i could force to sit down with me and swallow coffee, but i feel like they just don't get it.
no one's perception is at all matching mine right now and i don't want any positive bullshit to be spit at me.
i want someone who can seriously look me in the eyes, maybe between drags from a cigarette, and say, "no, no.. i understand that everything is fucked, nothing around you makes any sense and there's really nothing you can do about it"
because it's a reality.

i try to entertain myself with silly activities, projects and to-do lists.

i know this is very lazy and pathetic, that i should just get up, apply to transfer schools, sell my car, buy that camera and get a job. but i'd rather be a big baby about it for ten minutes in a livejournal entry.

thanks.

so it's my birthday today. the big 2-0. feels weird. well, it felt weirder before it happened. now (as usual) it doesn't feel that different at all. school starts up tomorrow. i'll be a junior this time around. weird to think that i'm already halfway done with my greater education. not really ready to go out into the proverbial real world and get a real job and blah blah blah. but whatever. no use worrying about anything.

classes have the potential to be pretty rough this semester. but we'll see.

Development Goals and Basic Accounts

Last week we updated our development goals for 2008. Generally we noted a number of cool enhancements and investments to LiveJournal that we are working on, including improved search, usability, and site development.

We also wanted to let you know how we hope to accomplish all these things, and how we plan on paying for them. In order to accomplish our stated goals for this year and beyond, we need to increase the revenue gained from both groups of LiveJournal accounts: paid subscription accounts and ad-supported accounts.

As of August 28th, all users will be able to choose to downgrade their account to Basic through their Manage Account page. Additionally, we will start showing advertising to visitors who are not logged in to LiveJournal when they are looking at Basic Account journals and communities.

Basic Account users themselves will not see ads on any Basic journal or community while they are logged in to their account. If you want more information about this, take a look at our new post on lj_2008 where we outline our reasoning.

Indian Flash Fiction Contest

In other news, we are excited to tell you we've launched "Quick Tales" LiveJournal's first initiative for users in India, in celebration of India Independence day, August 15th. "Quick Tales" is a flash fiction writing contest in which we're partnering with Caferati.com, one of India's largest online literary communites. The contest's winners will receive some great prizes and it is open to anyone with a mailing address in India. We hope that users with an interest in Indian writing or just India will watch LiveJournal's india_writing community. That's where the finalists and winners will be announced, so keep an eye on it towards the end of September! If you're in India then enter the contest - if your story is slick and quick (under 500 words) then you could be the lucky winner!

Meanwhile, back at LiveJournal Inc.

We have updated and redesigned our corporate site. The goal of the redesign was twofold: first, to update the look and feel (Dystopia users will appreciate it!); second, we want to provide a destination for prospective employees, partners, and members of the press where they can access important information about the company. Kudos to our design team.