thanks to
galadriel618 who railed w/ me against the non-user-friendliness of LJ, and helped where she could with making sense of code.
This is certainly not the end product, but I am just so happy at this point after like 2 hours (at least) of trying to figure out why the code
tarlanx provided me wasn't compiling, then why it wasn't displaying on my journal.. etc.
I need a fucking beer.