LiveJournal is not shutting down. :-)
There was a lot of truth in what I said, which several of you were quick to point out. Actually, you all must have known there was truth in it, else it wouldn't have been so believable.
I'm really optimistic about LiveJournal's future and I'm not going to stop caring about it anytime soon. I am enjoying a nice little break from it, though. It's giving me time to clear my head and think about different ways to attack LJ problems that I was too frustrated to realize before. Also, maybe the game server I've been working on the last few days will be integrated into LiveJournal.
Several people asked if this was all a ploy to get more people to get paid accounts. No, it wasn't. I hadn't actually thought of that until the first person mentioned it, at which time I checked the number of incoming payments.... there wasn't any increase. Not sure if that's good or bad. ;-)