dnalounge

http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2009/11/14.html

Some new photo galleries are up of last Sunday's Possessed, Impaled, and Sadistic Intent show; Thursday's Minusbaby, Trash80, Starpause and Crashfaster show; and yesterday's Deviant Nation party with Kaura, Everything Goes Cold and Deconbrio.

jwz

DNA Lounge update, wherein there are some photos.

warren_ellis

• BBC NEWS | World | Europe | ‘Body sold’ to Russia kebab shop
  "Police in Russia have arrested three homeless men suspected of killing a man, eating part of the body and selling other parts to a kebab shop"
  (tags:crime )

warren_ellis

"DAY-GLO HUMAN UDDERS!"

(I feel I must point out that these are really not what are best in life, and that Molly Crabapple should be arrested and probably waterboarded for making me look at this.)

(And also this.)

(Cowgirls. Honestly.)

theljstaff
news

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!

Curtains

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

warren_ellis

• Constellation 04: Cover for Sag/Cap issue
  "Here's a sneak peek at the new cover for Constellation's Sag/Cap issue out at the end of the month featuring Dame Darcy, Peter James from "Some Secret Place", Pluto in Cap, Travelmania, gorgeous photographs by Christina Labey, & horoscopes based on your inner animus. issue will be available at the end of the month."
  (tags:peopleiknow magazine design covers )
• Holy water dispenser combats spread of swine flu - Telegraph
  "…a churchgoer waves his or her hand under a sensor and the machine spurts out holy water."
  (tags:cult tech )

warren_ellis

Because Ariana’s sliiiightly crazy, she’s created a free HAPPY()SAD theme for Tumblr users. This is, of course, based on the HAPPY()SAD t-shirt she and Rich Stevens released yesterday.

warren_ellis

I’m not sure how the universe has withstood Rich Stevens (DIESEL SWEETIES) and Ariana Osborne (SHIVERING SANDS, this site, designing various things of mine at Avatar) teaming up to produce a t-shirt, of all things… but this is the result.

Available to order now, ships in 1 - 2 weeks.

warren_ellis

Simon Reynolds is one of my favourite writers. It’s funny, really: I agree with what he writes maybe half the time, at best, but he says it so fucking well, and in such a way that I always have to think about the subject again.

He’s now doing notes on the decade at the Guardian, beginning with a piece on "beard rock." I was, I admit, hoping for a clue as to why I find Will Oldham so inexplicably creepy, but, you know, it’s a fun piece anyway:

…beardedness is tantamount to a visual rhetoric, almost a form of authentication, as though the band are wearing their music on their faces…

warren_ellis

So, one week later. Copies of SHIVERING SANDS are now starting to arrive with people — I found this on Kat Foisy’s blog this morning:

(If you want to send me a photo of you posing with SHIVERING SANDS? Email it to my dump address at warrenellis [at] gmail dot com, along with your website address or twitter ID or whatever, and I’ll run it and your link here)

A week since launch of the book. We’ve sold, I believe, a little over four hundred copies. Given that the production of the book involved 1) me culling from seven years of jabbering and sticking it all into a couple of RTF files 2) Ariana flowing all that into a single file and spending a couple months’ worth of spare moments fiddling with it 3) Ariana uploading the thing, ordering a proof and spending an hour checking it over… we were well into any definition of profit by the end of day one.

It is, of course, the long game that pays off. It’s interesting to look at the first week, but it’s not defining.

A persistent criticism of my interest in POD has been that only writers at my level of cultural awareness can make any kind of success out of it. And some of them will now be saying, well, even Warren Ellis can only move 400 copies in the first week of a POD project. But, for one thing, it is about the long game. For everybody. The book doesn’t go away. And, for another, if I’m not aware enough of you to order that POD project — whose fault is that, really? Because, I’ve got to tell you, I wasn’t born with a book deal in one hand and an exclusive comics contract wrapped around my other flipper. Hell, when I was starting out, there wasn’t even an internet.

SHIVERING SANDS is published through Lulu.

dnalounge

http://www.dnalounge.com/backstage/log/2009/11/10.html

Well, I have some news. I wouldn't call it good news, but I would certainly call it better news than what the news could have been.

We have finally negotiated a settlement with ABC: we will be closed from Monday, January 4th through Thursday, January 28th, and that will basically be the end of it.

As you no doubt recall, they had been trying to revoke our liquor license and put us permanently out of business. So, this is better than that.

There are also a few years of "probation" on top of the suspension (basically meaning that if they hit us with a second accusation of being a "disorderly house injurious to the public welfare and morals", that would be really bad), but this 25 day suspension should be the end of this battle.

As the saying goes, "Our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over."

We could not have gotten a deal even this good without your help! Your letters and hard work of keeping the pressure on our elected officials were instrumental in facilitating this negotiation. So thank you all so very, very much for backing us in this fight!

Of course, it still cost us a fortune.

This all started in April 2007 when we kicked the hornets' nest by attempting to convert DNA Lounge to an all ages venue; that led directly to the retaliatory "lewdness" charge in August 2008. As I detailed on the Legal Defense Fund page, this fight has cost us well over a hundred twenty thousand dollars so far. That doesn't count all the money we've spent on lawyers and consultants since last February, nor does it count the truly staggering amount of lost revenue we're looking at by losing almost the entire month of January.

I think we've gotten around $25k in donations to our legal defense fund so far, which has been a fantastic and generous outpouring of support! But, obviously, we could still use some help... So if you can, please donate! It's going to be a cold, hungry January this year...

• DNA Lounge Legal Defense Fund.
• "Save DNA Lounge" Facebook group and t-shirts.
• "Stop the War on Fun" Facebook group.

jwz

DNA Lounge update, wherein the axe falls.

warren_ellis

People often ask me what comics scripts look like — or, at least, what my comics scripts look like, as there is no industry standard for comics scriptwriting. I have a few scripts up here on the site, and you’re welcome to download them. I write in OpenOffice and save in RTF. Beginning writers may find it instructive to compare the scripts with the published work.

(Please, don’t ask to be shown other scripts instead. These are the ones I have available. Okay?)

MINISTRY OF SPACE #1.

DESOLATION JONES #1.

DESOLATION JONES #7.

(Yes, JONES will be back one day.)

FELL #1.

(And so will FELL.)