talk minus action = zero

Why, oh why, do I dislike all the layouts for LiveJournal available to me? There's always something really awful about each one. The current one (Machine) has stuff in the wrong place (like tags) and all these extra lines running all over the place.

Can I design my own with a free account? Does anyone know enough about this to help me? I want something clean, simple, no extra lines, similar to Beckett, but with some slight differences (no calendar, tags in a cloud, etc...).

Also, does anyone else find it weird that LiveJournal layouts have "Powered by LiveJournal" on them? I mean, the URL is <username>.livejournal.com...