alabaster_art

**EDIT Wed Dec 9 00:28:16 UTC 2009 **

The notification system has been fixed in the new release... we are currently processing the queue, which is upwards of 12m jobs... please bear with us while our workers chew through this large queue and get your notification / emails out. Some may come more quickly than others due to weights on the notifications themselves, but we are hoping in the next 24 hours to have all the queues cleared and all notifications delivered that had been queued up over the past few days.

Again I apologize for this inconvenience, but we are almost out of the woods as soon as we are done clear cutting some of the forest ;)

Thanks,

** END EDIT**

Hey Guys,

Unfortunately with our last release, and its instability, we were forced to roll back releases. Unfortunately in doing so, it would seem that our notification system has been broken somehow. Our engineers are working on this issue as quickly as possible. We hope to have a patch within the next day, so we can deploy our code and fix the notification system at the same time. Please *bear* with us ;)

Currently all notifications are being queued up so they can be processed as soon as the fix is pushed and verified to be working correctly.

Thank you,

LiveJournal: The First Decade

Just in time for holiday shopping, we're thrilled to announce the release of our ten-year anniversary anthology. Published by Blurb.com, the book showcases a decade of extraordinary talent drawn from LiveJournal users around the world. This must-read compilation features stories, memes, photos, comics, editorials, graphic content, and more, including:

1. Excerpts from Oh No They Didn't (a/k/a ohnotheydidnt), the largest community on LiveJournal, covering celebrity gossip, entertainment news, and pop culture
2. A look at post-Katrina New Orleans from the journal of Poppy Z. Brite
3. Gripping narratives, including a poignant reverie on a blind date
4. Photography that spans the globe, ranging from old-fashioned Polaroids to underwater photography
5. Mouthwatering dishes from food_porn

What began as a late-night inspiration back in Brad Fitzpatrick's college dorm in 1999 has grown to encompass nearly 25 million users worldwide, with journals and communities covering every conceivable hobby, passion, and topic. To get your copy, please visit the Blurb Bookstore. For updates and entries from book contributors, please join lj_turns10.

Tweaks and enhancements

• You can now ban a user from all of your communities and journals at once. To access this feature, hover over the person's userpic and choose Ban user everywhere from the drop-down menu.
• Follow LiveJournal on Twitter!

Give a little to help a lot!

In honor of National AIDS Awareness month, we've added a new charitable vgift. For each red ribbon you purchase for $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to support the development and global distribution of an affordable HIV vaccine (we'll cover credit card fees). You can read more about IAVI at lj_cares. While we're on the subject, we raised $740 from our November fundraiser for Love Without Boundaries, which supports emergency healthcare and adoption of Chinese orphans. We thank you for helping us help others.

Photos of the week

We're back with more incredible pictures from our super-talented LiveJournal photographers. Congratulations to ilya_gorokhov, who is the winner of our very first lj_photophile poll.

We hope you'll continue to post, vote, and comment! A gentle request: Please post only one photo at a time and limit size to 350x350 (so images display properly on friends pages). And now, without further ado, get ready to cast your ballot and view more awesome user content after the jump!

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Curtains

Thanks, again, for joining us. Stay safe and snug out there!

**EDIT Thu Dec 3 23:24:15 UTC 2009 **

Hey Everyone, we are about to run the last alter job that we need to on our database servers. This will effect userpics / scrapbook / vgift images for the next few hours. Have no fear, your images aren't lost, there is just a really intensive process running on the servers which store the information for mogilefs. Thank you for your understanding and all the LJ love...

Hey LJers,

I just wanted to let you all know that we are going to be performing some mogilefs maintenance over the next few days. We will be upgrading our current version to latest stable as well as changing some db config information to better handle the amount of files we are currently hosting. This shouldn't cause a big impact on site stability, but you may see some minor delays with userpic / scrapbook images appearing or other requests associated with our mogilefs. We would love to not have that happen, but unfortunately with some of the steps we need to take we have to cause a delay with images. I figured this was a better solution than taking down all of LiveJournal because well lets face it, we all need our daily LJ fix ;)

Thanks,

Wanted: Border and the Slow March Towards Entropy

2009 was a year of violence. Perhaps, with enough distance and perspective, we'll come to view as no bloodier than any other year, this country (and the world in general) endlessly bursting with the potential for human harm. But right now, especially in the light of the recent Ampatuan Massacre (people should refer to it by name) in Maguindanao, one cannot escape the nagging feeling that 2009 was a year where man's monstrous tendency to do evil won over his supposed capacity for doing good.

This concept is at the cold black heart of Ray Gibraltar's Wanted: Border, which is now showing at Robinson's Indiesine. There is a month left to consider, but as of right now, it is my favorite film of the year, because in just a little over ninety minutes, Gibraltar provides the painful release necessary to flush out that demons that lay in the terror of this year.

The movie takes its title from a misspelled sign the director would see on his way home to his apartment. The mistake provides a strange insight into the human condition; that as much as we value freedom, there's a lot to be said about the need for boundaries within ourselves. The movie centers on a group of people whose decisions are governed solely by their Ids. They gorge themselves with food, watch endless hours of pornography, take copious amounts of drugs, and constantly give in to whatever temptation is laid in front of them.

At the core of all this is Rosanna Roces, who plays Mama Saleng, the owner of a boarding house-slash-eatery that secretly serves up human flesh in its bowls of soup. We see her in four phases, the first with her as a child, being teased by other kids, called an aswang and accused of eating humans. In her second phase, she is the girlfriend of a brutal government agent rooting out communist agents for the dictator. It is in this part of her life that she comes to fulfill the prophecy laid at her feet through the cruelty of children, cooking up the victims of her lover in a vicious broth.

In the third phase, she is the mother figure, taking in lost souls at her boarding house, providing sustenance through her eatery. It is here where she truly becomes a monster, internalizing her evil as a calling from God, her way to helping clear the streets of people unworthy of God's good grace. In her fourth phase we see her in a discussion with what appears to be God himself, who not only condones her butchery, but asks to be part of it.

These phases are shown fragmented and out of order, but her path towards monstrosity is deadly clear. She emerges from a culture of violence, beginning life questioning her own humanity. Call someone a monster often enough, and they might just turn out to be one. In the same vein, if someone is told often enough that they're untouchable, they might just come to believe it. These examples come at two extremes, one from oppression, the other from power, but it is at these extremes where the boundaries of humanity are most easily taken away.

It begins with a small act of corruption that goes unanswered, a debt to civilized society that is never collected. In the movie, a horny stepfather begins his inevitable abuse with a cautious inspection of his stepdaughter's room. A whiff of her clothes. An odd caress here. An extended touch there. The satisfaction isn't from the act itself, but in getting away with the transgression. In our country it started decades ago, the fragmented nature of the nation giving rise of feudal lords who would fight over territory and curry favor with politicians by promising the support of their serfs, by hook or by crook. Usually by crook. And maybe it began with the beating of a member of a rival clan that went unnoticed by the authorities.

The abuse is inevitable. Should we have been surprised? Upset. Disturbed. Horrified. Angry. Yes. Surprised? Sadly, depressingly, no. The saddest part is in realizing how we let it happen. How we always knew about it, but did nothing about it. The film leaves its deepest bit of despair for the mother of the abused girl, who lived under the same roof, and saw signs of her husband's perversions, but did nothing to save her daughter from a very foreseeable fate.

The entire universe leans towards chaos, the very boundaries of space giving way as the cosmos expands beyond everything we can ever imagine. All matter, even man, follows the universe into entropy.

Amazingly, as bleak as the film is, it offers a glimmer of broken, twisted hope. In this world, evil can mostly go unpunished, but entropy also means a tendency towards self-destruction. These untethered beings most capable of doing harm to others cannot go on forever, their unbridled Ids leading them towards their own downfalls. There will be an evil too big to ignore that whatever decency remains in humanity cannot stomach it. In Wanted: Border, Mama Saleng leads herself towards crucifixion. In the real world, the same thing pretty much happened. It is a horrifying thing that we must go through this at all, but it is better to know the evil in this world than to close our eyes and pray it goes away.

I do not know if I have made much of a case for the film. I'm told people go to the movies to escape. But I would urge people to see this film to face down the year that was, and tell it that we're going to fucking survive.

Tweaks and enhancements

1. In order to improve site security, we've temporarily suspended the ability to change passwords for old email addresses that haven't been used for over six months. For further information and support, please visit our customer care page.
2. We've launched a new mobile site with an enhanced UI at m.livejournal.com. View spotlights, post to your journal, read and post to friends pages, and more, no matter where you roam! Please let us know what you think, since this will eventually replace our existing mobile interface. You can update your mobile preferences on your account page.
3. We've upgraded from Beacon to Facebook Connect to improve dual posting. If you've already signed up for Facebook Beacon, you're good to go. If you wish to update your Facebook Connect setting, visit Account Privacy settings and scroll down to the option labeled: "Send information about my updates to Facebook." You can choose Always or Ask each time. Remember to save (on the bottom left corner of the page). To learn more, check out FAQ 249. While we're on the subject, if you happen to be visiting that side of town, please join our Facebook fan page for a touch of home away from home.
4. You'll now receive the Writer's Block Question of the Day in the body of email notifications. To sign up for Writer's Block notifications, visit writersblock and choose the Watch Community option. Next, update your Writer's Block notification settings by checking the box to the right of "Someone posts a new entry to writersblock."
5. Paid and permanent users can now view, add, and edit Notes of commenters. Notes will appear beside the username of comment posters (instead of stars) on S1-themed comment pages.

Send some lovin' thanks to your friends with our holiday vgifts!

Photos of the week

We're so delighted with the immense talent of our growing, global lj_photophile community that we've decided to introduce a poll. Each week, we'll choose a half-dozen photos (based on user comments and staff feedback) and ask you to select a photo of the week. The winning photo will be announced in the next newsletter. If possible, please limit photo size to 350x350 to ensure that images display properly on friends pages. We want to thank you again (and again!) for sharing your passion.

Check out this week's photo poll and more fantastic user content after the jump!

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Curtains

Thanks for joining us. To our American friends, have a fantastic Thanksgiving. To all of our international neighbors, we'll eat a little extra for you!