it's simpler to just not look at any of it

For a long time, I've used Firefox and NoScript to suppress most of the images in my webbrowser. I used to be able to get pretty much the LJ experience I wanted (er...the visual experience I wanted) by blocking stat.livejournal.com and pics.livejournal.com. I never had to worry about blinking or animated LJ icons, but there were placeholders thingees I could click if I wanted to look at a picture or video included in a post. I don't know what changed last fall, but I stopped seeing the placeholders. I just see text like, "These are my favorite pictures of the baby so far," or "I can't believe they actually showed this ad on tv," and a big blank space. When I scroll over the blank space, looking for invisible buttons, there doesn't seem to be anything there at all.

I've tried changing my viewing options and customizing my journal style, trying to show placeholders, but I haven't made any progress. It doesn't even seem to help to tell NoScript to "allow scripts globally," which I had thought turned NoScript off temporarily. The only thing that lets me see images or video posted to LJ is to put stat.livejournal.com on the NoScript whitelist, which brings me right back to the visual overstimulation and sense of constant motion I wanted to avoid. Any suggestions?