A Farewell

To My Poor Little Lost Child,

It's hard to lose a child. It's easier when the child is not yet any larger than a kidney bean, but it's still hard. Hard to know that all of your potential was there, and it will never come to be.

Last month, your mother and I conceived you. We have wanted to have you since getting married, to join your brother Andrew and your sisters Caitlyn, Dagny and Darby. We looked forward to all of the firsts your little life would bring us. We looked forward to hearing your heartbeat and feeling your squirms. We looked forward to learning your gender and to your eventual emergence into the world. We knew from experience that we would learn as much from you as we taught you, seeing the world anew through your eyes.

Would your sister Caitlyn (as eldest sister) have risen to the occasion and taken on a mothering role, wishing to graduate from nurturing baby dolls to nurturing her baby sibling? Would your brother Andrew have come to welcome you into the family, even had you presented as female, further diluting the influence of the male gene in our household? Would your sisters Dagny and Darby have welcomed yet another new sibling into their family, younger this time rather than older?

We had talked about your name, and had come to call you Liam (a name I've always loved, since before I chose to take it for my nom de plume), and discussed "Lea" as an alternate, had you chosen to present as female.

What joy we felt when learning that you were growing within your mother. What a difference one day makes, one day full of hope and joy for your future, the next for whatever defect of your genetic structure or failure of your implantation, to know that you will not be joining our family.

Liam (or Lea), we will try again. We will try to have your brother or sister, and raise him or her with your name. We wish you had seen fit to join us this time.

Love,
Dad.

Copyright (c) February 27, 2005 by Liam Johnson. http://www.liamjohnson.net

Tonight's Rant

Tonight's rant is about useless laws. It is spawned by an article I just read on cell-phone delivered porn, and how (at least in Britain) the industry is trying to crack down on it's delivery to the underaged before regulations are imposed upon them.

I am not in favor of children having access to hard core porn, but the thought of new regulations points up something that has long annoyed me: Passing new laws when old ones will do.

A few years ago, we had the Digital Decency Act (or whatever it was called), making it specifically a crime to traffic in child pornography over the internet. Why? Child pornography is already illegal. Has been for many years. That law has no limitations on it, as written it doesn't say "...unless you get your dirty pictures of children via an electronic medium". Making, selling, distributing or possessing child pornography is illegal. So what did we gain by passing a law to make it explicitly illegal over the internet?

The most likely answer is: Nothing, it just allowed the politicians who voted for it to talk about the tough stance they took on crime.

Alternately, it might be argued that the existing laws were not being enforced. But if that's the case, then how does adding a new law help? Somehow the same people who don't feel it's necessary to enforce the current laws will say "Oh, but this one is new, so we'll enforce THAT one."

Another example of these laws-of-dubious-need are anti-hate-crime laws. Again, virtually everything prohibited by these laws is already illegal, the new laws merely set new standards of punishment if the crime was perpetrated based on some form of prejudice. But again, why? If I get beaten up, robbed, assaulted, car jacked, or otherwise victimized, does it really matter whether I was picked because I'm white or because I'm convenient? And who decides which prejudices are "hate crimes"? It's somehow more heinous if someone comes after me because I'm gay (if I were) than if they come after me because I'm fat (would that I weren't)?

The fact is, assault is illegal. It should be prosecuted. In order to assault someone, you have to have a certain level of anger or hatred in your heart, so at what point is it NOT a hate crime? And if it's always a hate crime, then why have a special law for when it is?

Gun laws are another great example of excess. Why does it seem that every make, model, category and caliber of firearm has it's own specific laws? It's illegal to assault someone with a deadly weapon. A gun is a deadly weapon. Do we really need a law making it SPECIFICALLY illegal to assault them with an AK-47?

My final example of the night is DWI/DUI laws. They're already on the books, and every so often, someone pushes to make NEW ones, with STIFFER penalties. Do you know why this is necessary? Because the ones we have already aren't being enforced. Making the penalties stiffer is not the answer.

Regardless of what some people think, police officers are human beings, they don't (in general) relish punishing people any more than we as parents relish punishing our children.

Imagine for a moment that your community passed a law that said children must not talk back to adults, and it was left to parents to enforce. Now imagine that the punishment was set at 24 hours without meals. How many of us would tend to look the other way, pretend we hadn't seen the infraction, because we felt the punishment was excessive for the crime?

Now imagine that because so many people were looking the other way, the incidence of children talking back did not go down (or perhaps even went up), and imagine that because of this, the town's governors stiffened the penalty to 50 lashes with a rattan cane AND 24 hours without food. The logic SEEMS sound, if the previous punishment is not sufficient deterrent to the crime, make it stronger. However, it doesn't address the problem, because the problem wasn't with the deterrence of the punishment, the problem was with the enforcement of it. By making the punishment even more extreme, all that's accomplished is making parents even LESS likely to "notice" when the kids break the rule.

This same is true of DUI/DWI laws. Yes, we have a problem in this country, and yes, we need to do something about it. But when we stiffen the laws such that any infraction, first offense, requires a minimum 30 day license suspension, we just incent the officer to look at the harried mother-of-two who can't afford to miss 30 days of grocery shopping and decide to "overlook" the crime this time, so that she doesn't lose her license.

More and tougher laws are not always the answer. Enforcement of the laws we already have is USUALLY plenty.

Copyright (c) February 25, 2005 by Liam Johnson. http://www.liamjohnson.net

There's Gotta be an Essay in here SOMEWHERE...

Read the news tonight. Seems the Pope had a relapse of the flu, leading to an emergency tracheotomy. Which begs the question, just how much more holy can this guy get?

Quick note...

Since Janet has now begun posting, we have created individual users for ourselves. From this point on, if Janet writes something, it will be posted by Janet, if I write something it will be posted by me, and if we work together on something, it will be posted using the "Liam and Janet" account.

Liam (& Janet)

The Birds and the Bees

The Birds and the Bees
With my two daughters, I certainly know what I want my girls not to do, what I want them to avoid. I don't blush in the slightest telling them about their bodies. They, at 8 and 5 have asked most of the 'difficult' questions. They know the words: vulva, vagina, labia, clitoris, even perineum and anus. They know about the penis (they even know that the plural is penes), thanks to my friend's nudist one year old son. But, the wisdom I want them to have concerning sex, I have no idea how to share that, or even if it is possible.

I want them to know that girls who have sex too early simply can't handle it. I wish that they could see the damage that sex can do. I wish that they could hear the way that boys (who cannot handle it either) talk about girls who do have sex, how they seemingly disdain them. I've seen girls who loved themselves, who loved their boyfriend start to have sex in high school. I've seen them hold on to a dead relationship because, while they called the value 'old fashioned', they felt real shame at having shared something so intimate with a person they would now like out of their life. It seems that for them admitting that the sex was a mistake was far more difficult than admitting that the relationship was over, mostly because they had the sex.

Sex is often about power. I've known men who didn't particularly like the act of sex. They loved the conquest though. I've known women who felt the same. And with each and every conquest, they damaged the possibility that they would have a cherished and sacred sex life with their life partner. I want my girls to know about that.

I want my girls to know how powerful it is to be a woman. The message has bombarded them since birth, beauty is power. But, simply being female is so powerful. We have the power to choose. Men do the asking out, but women do the choosing. And what we barter with is our femininity. Our very place in society can be decided by how we carry ourselves, by how we view ourselves, and whom we share ourselves with.

I want them to know how dangerous a weapon it can be. How hurtful, more to themselves than to their man. I wish I could convey the cliché that sex is 10 percent of a healthy relationship and 90 percent of an unhealthy one. I want them to take rejection seriously, whether giving it or receiving it. I know it can destroy a relationship if it is used to get one's way all the time. I want them to cherish their relationships and their spouses.

How far is too far? I remember my mother told me it was shameful to 'make out' in public. I knew that French kissing was probably OK. But I wasn't comfortable going 'in private' and there was no private place to go. I remember my brother used to make uncomfortable remarks about 'prick teasers' and also about 'sluts', with the former seemingly more horrid, and the latter more unseemly. I had an older sister, who was pregnant and married by the age of 16 to her onetime boyfriend (she was neither a slut, nor a 'prick tease' I surmised), so while she could define 'too far', she had no real line for me either. It seems strange, thinking back. I didn't date in high school. In junior high, I had a couple of uncomfortable make out sessions with Randy LeJeune (very tall, made my back hurt, so it was hard to focus on whether I liked it or not). I had a brief 'relationship' with a boy named Don, but I found out that he had already 'gone all the way' and he really couldn't focus on anything else. After that, pretty much only crushes. But, the morality of each individual sex act was a minor obsession. I knew what my Church taught about intercourse... the rest was a mystery.

I haven't figured out all the answers about it. Is this a sin? Is that? I really know that if it feels 'too far' than it is 'too far'. I will tell them that they need to decide BEFORE doing any particular act whether they want this someone walking around, this someone that they may eventually despise, having experienced that level of intimacy with them. There is nothing so awkward as running into someone who has had their hand on your naked butt!

With careful use, I want them to know exactly how wonderful sex can be, what a gift from God. I want them to have that level of intimacy with their husbands. I want them to have a wonderful sex life. I want them to have planned pregnancies. It would crumple me to know that one or the other had a therapeutic abortion. It would hurt me if I knew that they had a difficult time discussing their desires with their spouses.

So, approaching the subject isn't difficult. We've been talking about it since they could talk. I was so fearful of them being molested, and me not knowing, that I taught them the vocabulary early. But, how do I get the values across??? I guess we will be doing a lot more talking before my influence wanes.

Copyright (c) February 24, 2005 by Janet Johnson. http://liam-and-janet.blogspot.com

Well, isn't THIS nice...

I just learned something, something which would make EXCELLENT fodder for a humorous column... only I learned about it in a humorous column in the newspaper, and so writing my own would feel like stealing.

However, since this blog has also been used to comment on stupidity in government, here's a good example of it. If you think the department of Homeland Security is not spending money stupidly, check this out.

I live in New Hampshire. Somewhat northwest of where I live, Rte 89 crosses into VT and immediately crosses Rte 91.

Just south of there on Rte 91, between exits 9 and 10, there has been (ever since 9/11) a border patrol checkpoint more often than not.

Those of you who know the area, or have consulted your atlas, will note that the nearest national border is at least 2 hours drive away, either up 91 or up 89 to Burlington. They will further note that although Rte. 89 is a straight shot to Boston, Rte. 91 really doesn't go anywhere at all. Sure, eventually it leads to NYC, but not for another 5 hours of driving.

So tell me what they're doing?

The reason that I'm posting this little rant is something I learned about IN that humorous commentary in my local newspaper: They're building a PERMANENT structure there to house this checkpoint. That's right, when I drive down Rte 91 to visit my friends in Springfield, MA or Hartford, CT, I'm going to have to go through CUSTOMS. Will I have to declare the contents of my car? Will there be a "duty free" store on either side of the checkpoint?

Of course not, because they aren't actually STOPPING most people who drive through. No, the majority of us (those of us fortunate enough to look euro-caucasian, anyway) are waved straight through. Slow down enough so that the customs agents can glance into the car, and they wave me right on through.

So where do they get the authority to do this, when their area of authority is the border? How much authority do they have to pull me out of my car and search it, if they decide I somehow look funny? And how much admissability-in-court will be given to anything they find in such an illegal search and seizure?

People wonder "Are we wasting money in the war on terror?" People ask "Is the 'Patriot Act' really an assault on our freedoms?" Can the answer to either of these be "No"?

I can only assume that the ever contentious northern half of VT has finally decided to cecede from the Union, and our Homeland Security boys and girls are just getting a jump on things.

I can't decide which would be worse, to find out that there are a lot of these little random checkpoints sprouting up across this nation of ours, or to find out that in all the land, the middle of nowhere VT is the one spot we've focused on as being crucial to breaking the back of international terrorism.

Either way, I find this abuse of governmental power scary, and only not surprising because it merely serves as further example of why I consider the current administration to be one of the most damaging to the very fiber of this nation as I have ever known in my nearly 40 years on the planet.

Copyright (c) February 23, 2005 by Liam Johnson. http://www.liamjohnson.net

The Grand Experiment

Over the next week or so, having finished up my series on sleep apnea, I'm going to try my hand at social commentary with a current events bent. If I can make this work, I should have endless material for essays. After all, what's NOT funny about a President spending years with a "Screw the rest of the world, we're going it alone, we don't need anyone else" policy, to such an extent that our leaders bravely took action and renamed "french fries", and then turning around and visiting foreign leaders with the goal of lecturing them on foreign cooperation? (Keep in mind, this is an experiment. If you see no such posts in the next week, it means I determined that I'm not a very good political pundit, and produced nothing worthy of posting.)

Before I start, however, I feel I should give you a little bit about my political leanings. I am not a liberal, and I am not a conservative, and heaven forbid I'm neither a Democrat nor a Republican. I feel that both parties occasionally get it right and both occasionally get it wrong, and both parties have a tendency to take the things they get right to such an extreme, they are no longer "right" any more.

I prefer to take my political candidates on an individual basis. I believe that no party, and certainly no person, is so perfect as to be above making mistakes. And I believe that it is fair to point out our political leaders' mistakes, and to have some fun with them.

I have liberal friends and I have conservative friends. At the moment, we're in the middle of a conservative upswing of power, and an administration that I strongly disagree with, and so I am tending to get along better with my liberal friends than my conservative. The reverse was true under President Clinton.

I believe that George W. Bush has thus far presided over one of the most damaging administrations this country has known in my lifetime, and I include in that assessment the administration of Richard Nixon. I will not hide my disgust for the current President and his policies, while at the same time holding dear this country which allows me to express such things without fear of political reprisal. But such comments should not be taken as a repudiation of all things conservative, merely of one particular man and the small group with which he surrounds himself. I have Republican friends who privately agree with my assessment of Mr. Bush, but voted for him anyway because they couldn't bring themselves to vote for the Democrat.

I believe the goal of any election should be to elect the best PERSON for the job, and that the job of President largely involves protecting this country and our interests, through use of foreign policy. I believe political hot topics like gay marriage and abortion belong in the states and are floated during Presidential elections as a smoke screen to cover shortcomings in the candidate or his proposed plans. I believe we're at our best as a country when we vote for the person who will do the best job, and at our worst when we vote for the person merely because of his or her political affiliation (instead of because we happen to agree with his policies, which we are admittedly more apt to do if he is affiliated with the same party we are).

It is my opinion that some of my more liberal friends have lost sight of the goal, and now vote for the Democrat candidate to the exclusion of all else. I believe many of them would vote for the Democrat if the party nominated Koko the signing Gorilla. I would make the same theory about my Rebublican friends, but after the most recent election, I don't need to.

Copyright (c) February 23, 2005 by Liam Johnson. http://www.liamjohnson.net

Sigh...

I'm sorry to anyone who is eagerly awaiting part three of the sleep study series.

I was working on it, I just finished about 45 minutes of work on it, and my computer crashed. And of course, the last version I saved has my basic outline, but NONE of the stuff I fleshed out.

Suffice it to say, it was much funnier than either of the previous two, and will almost certainly not be as good when I try again.

I'll give it another shot tonight or tomorrow. I had hoped to have it posted this evening.

Liam.

Time for a complaining session

Let's play a little game called "What's Bothering Liam Today?"

There are a litany of things, and together they have me awake 2 hours after having gone to bed.

There are just so many things. In no particular order:


Itching.

I have made no secrets of my depression or my apnea, so I suppose there's no shame in admitting to high cholesterol. I've had it for most of my life. Since being diagnosed with this condition in college (roughly 16 years ago now), I have kept it BARELY in check through diet and exercise. Recently, I read that high doses of niacin were said to help like the statin drugs do, but with fewer side effects. To me, this sounded like a good solution, in so far as Niacin is something my body needs anyway. There is no Recommended Daily Allowance for Lipitor. My breakfast cereal is not "Fortified with 7 Vitamins and Zocor".

So I discussed it with my doctor, and we decided to give it a try. You may or may not know, but niacin comes in three forms: Niacin (nicotinic acid), Niacinamide (Nicatinamid) and Inositol Hexanicotinate.

Of the three, the first causes flushing, which doesn't sound like a big deal, but spending 30 minutes a day beet red and feeling like your skin is on fire gets old really quickly. The second has not been shown to have any effect on cholesterol. So after some trial and error, we settled on the third, the so-called "Flush Free" niacin.

Only it turns out that while it may be free of the FLUSH, you trade that flush in for a non-stop all-over body itch that just won't go away. Certainly this is much less PAINFUL than the flush, but unlike the flush, you can't count on it to subside in 15-30 minutes. And so tonight, as with many recent nights, I'm lying awake thinking about how much I'd like to rake an industrial sized garden soil aerator across my whole body, repeatedly, until the last itchy patch of skin had been flayed from my body, leaving me bloody and disgusting, but wonderfully itch free.


It's vs Its.

I am as big a usage, spelling, pronunciation and punctuation snob as you'll find. It bugs me to no end when someone throws an apostrophe into a word which is merely plural ("Hey, we're having lunch with the Johnson's today!") and it makes me cringe when I see your and you're confused, or there, their and they're. The rule is simple, you use an apostrophe when dealing with a possessive (“John's book” and the like) or a contraction (“You Are” becoming “You're”, “Do Not” becoming “Don't”, etc).

But what in heaven's name is the justification for the exception in the case of the word “it”? I can apply both rules to a proper noun, as in these examples: “Sara's coming over” (contraction, short for “Sara is coming over”) and of course “Let's all play with Jessica's rabbit” (the rabbit belonging to Jessica). So why suddenly change the rules when dealing with the word “it”? Suddenly it's only applies to “it is”, while “belonging to it” is further compressed into “its”.

I know English as a language makes little sense and follows little rhyme or reason, but this one just galls me, and so as one commenter politely pointed out, I tend not to always follow it, in protest.


People Who Think They Are More Important Than Everyone Else.

Where do these people get off? Who raised them? We run into them every day, but what gives someone the god complex to think “Oh, following the rules is for little people?”

We've all seen them. Driving in traffic, taking a busy exit that's backed up for a quarter of a mile, watching a steady stream of drivers zipping past on the left, and then at the last moment “remembering” that they want this exit, and cutting into the line right at the head. People with upwards of 40 items in their grocery cart eschewing the longer lines and jumping into the “12 items or less” line, because there are less people in it.

I volunteer at a ski resort on weekends during the winter. It's a nice arrangement, I give them a couple of hours of checking tickets, they give me a free lift pass. It's not that I couldn't afford my own lift pass, of course, but my lethargic weekend tendencies would have me at home on the couch dozing and watching television, always saying “Well, I'll go skiing NEXT weekend” until the season was over. This way, I'm forced to get my lazy butt out of bed and over to the mountain, and once there, why, I might as well ski!

But while checking tickets on the lift lines, it's astounding the number of people who will attempt to avoid going 10 extra feet to enter the lift line from the end. These people would rather struggle to duck under or step over a rope that is clearly there to prevent exactly this behavior, often cutting in front of other people, who are making the arduous trek to the end of the line. The most common excuse is “But I'm with them” and gesturing towards a set of people about to get on the lift, people who have come through the line in the proper fashion. Oh you are, eh? Interesting how you couldn't be bothered to be “with them” when they were on line, but suddenly they're at the front, and NOW you're with them?

I get annoyed looks from people when they're held up because they didn't put their ski pass on the OUTSIDE of their clothing. Anyone who has EVER skied knows how it works, you take one of those little wire wicket things, thread it through a zipper pull or other loop on your clothing, and then put the lift ticket on there. That way it's available for everyone to see. But these geniuses put it in their pocket, or on their inner most layer of clothing, and somehow consider it MY fault that my job is to make sure they HAVE one.

In the parking lot, every day, we start the day out by putting out bright orange traffic cones to mark off the sections of the parking lot which are reserved for ambulances (this is a ski resort, after all), or for bus loading and unloading. And invariably by end of day, we'll find some kind soul has politely gotten out of their car and MOVED the cones so that they could park there. Yeah, genius, we put those cones there JUST because we knew you were coming, and wanted to save you a prime spot when every OTHER joker who showed up two hours after we opened is parked in the next county over.

The list goes on. Trust me, if you see yourself in this list, if you've ever justified this behavior to yourself with words like a former associate of mine used (“I don't DO lines”), if you somehow feel that rules aren't so much made to APPLY to you, but rather to apply to OTHERS to make YOUR life easier, the rest of us secretly hate you. And sadly, if you are one of these people, you probably don't even care.


CPAP & Lack of Sleep.

I can't even remember how long I've been trying to make this stupid CPAP contraption work for me, and still I can't get to sleep with it on. Combine this with the itching, and I haven't had a good night's sleep in weeks.


And finally, Writing.

I love writing. I do. And I set up this blog so that I'd have a place to showcase things as I write them. I would like nothing better than to post an essay a week up here, and have the blog slowly grow in popularity until people are checking it out on a regular basis, to see what I'll say next. As annoying as it will be, the first time someone forwards to me one of my own essays which was forwarded to THEM by someone else, and says “This is hysterical, my aunt's friend's cousin's hairdresser's sister sent it to everyone on her list, and I thought you'd like it”, I'll feel like I've made it. And, since my copyright line will almost definitely have long since been lost, I'll also enjoy the pain of knowing lots of people are enjoying my writing, but no one knows it came from me.

But the thing is, for this to happen, I have to post regularly. Once a week at a minimum. And I think in order to truly become popular, most of them are going to have to be of the humorous variety. But I'm finding that HAVING to be funny is a lot harder than being funny off-the-cuff. Writing on a deadline isn't fun, and I find myself dreading having to sit down and do the actual writing. I still have plenty of ideas for things I could flesh out into (hopefully) humorous essays, but I have to be in the right mood for the humor to flow, and the more I feel like I NEED to be writing, the less the humor flows.

Enough complaining for the day. Time to flay off another layer of skin, and then decide if this is a night for bed or couch or closet. Thanks for putting up with me to the end of this rant!

Copyright © February 21/22, 2005 by Liam Johnson. http://www.liamjohnson.net

The Keeper

There's nothing that says everything I post here has to be a RECENT composition. (Of course, there's nothing that says ANYTHING, obviously. I make the rules, along with Janet).

So today, I'm posting something I wrote just about 15 years ago. I went through a short stint of writing short stories. They weren't very good (looking back on them now, I mean) in the sense that my writing skills weren't as developed as I hope they are today. I'm not entirely sure when I wrote it, the last revision was made in 1991, but I'm pretty sure my writing stint was in the 1986-1988 timeframe.

In this one (one of the better ones) I was thinking about the nature of reality, and whether sanity might actually be in the eye of the beholder. I hope you enjoy it. As always, please leave comments if so inclined. If the response is positive (or of course if I feel like it), maybe later I'll post some of the other stories from that timeframe.

--Liam


THE KEEPER

Permit me if you will to introduce myself in the only manner I can. I am the keeper. Some will say 'Why surely you have a REAL name!' No. In fact, there is no need. I have only just invented the title of keeper for your benefit. 'But what is it that you keep?' others will surely ask. I keep you. All of you. Or perhaps you keep me. Can never be sure, can we?

In point of fact I am only interacting with you through this journal because you are getting maddeningly close to the truth anyway. I know you will never comprehend the full truth of it, just as I know you will never comprehend or even acknowledge this journal, but I had to try. I have known the truth for most of always. But then, always is subjective. Reality as you perceive it has only existed for what you would call 30 years, as if time had any meaning at all.

The key to it all is DNA. Some of you have correctly suggested that the DNA strand is a map of your entire body replicated in each and every cell. Actually, it is far more. It is the diagram of your whole life. Every word, every action, every sensation, every single moment is contained millions of times over in your body in the ultimate of redundant systems.

I first became aware of the true nature of man when I was in college. Yes, like you I was once fully human. I would notice...peculiarities. At first they were quite small, the larger ones still quite invisible to me. Things like time references in two ajoining rooms would be off by a small amount and yet each would be correct. People walking alone on city streets talking to themselves. Sure, we've all seen then, but I would notice them. They had been inadequately woven in, I thought.

Later, the discrepancies I saw became larger. Two people would walk by having a conversation, only one would be significantly ahead of the other. Ahead not only in space but in time as well, and yet each was gesturing, indicating empty space where their partner either had been or would be. They called me crazy and placed me in this home where you now house me.

Soon I began to see gaps in the presumed intertwinedness of things. People walking on a calm day as if in a great wind. Two people shaking hands would, on further examination, prove to be two distinct and unrelated events, seeming to be a single one only by virtue of coincidence of location and time. I began to realize that if either party were removed from the scene, the other would nevertheless continue the act, oblivious to the absence.

I began to notice occasions of multiple people in a room all seemingly convinced that they were the sole occupant. One day the orderly came into my room and went through his normal routine of changing the sheets on my bed, but I'd moved the bed to the opposite wall. He never noticed. He simply moved around the area where my bed had been, appearing for all the world to be making an invisible bed. This was my first journey outside my prescribed role. I had successfully done something not provided for by my DNA programming. This led to another startling discovery.

Later that day, successfully back aligned with my program, I was talking with the doctor and I began to tell him what I'd discovered. I could not do so. Any time I would change the subject to this, he would behave as if I had said something else.

My first clue that perhaps I was not entirely outside my program after all was the day I first DID manage to discuss this with my doctor. Of course he told me I was experiencing delusions. This did not bother me nearly so much as the implication: if I was interacting with him on this topic, supposedly outside the program, perhaps I was actually within my program all along and was INTENDED to go outside. I have since determined that this was the result of a hasty re-programming of my doctor to delude me into BELIEVING I was still in-program.

The day after the successful communication, the doctor stopped in my room. The bed had been moved somehow back to it's previous location, although I hadn't consciously registered that fact. The doctor asked me where it was. Actually, he asked me where I THOUGHT it was. So I moved it. The re-programming had been done such that he saw me but did not see the bed move. This was probably just done to confuse me.

Anyway, the doctor insisted on walking through the bed's new location and sitting on the old one. I thus discovered that the program in the DNA was even more complete than I had dreamed. It included all the physical laws which would act and not act upon bodies. The doctor passed directly through my bed and sat floating above the floor where it had been. The next morning I awoke in the bed to discover it was again back where it had been.

The process of my awakening continued for months until I could see every even as distinct and seperate. The choreography in a simple bar fight was amazing. One person would punch and the other would contort violently, and yet each was seperate and there had been no cause and effect between them.

Seen this way, there was a total lack of reason in this incredibly ordered machine that was the world. With no cause and effect, there was no longer any logical reason for the progression of a body (for by this point I ceased considering you people) from one action to the next except to be in the proper alignment for the next apparent interaction. The whole thing was not unlike the huge domino patterns laid out on a floor. Each taken seperately, the dominoes falling over were quite mundane and boring, but together they formed a complex dance of almost magical proportions. If the next domino were not in the line, the whole thing would seem rather pointless, but all together it was beautiful.

So it was with the world. Taken singly each person was behaving in a mad fashion. Put together, timed ever so intricately, each piece interacting with the next in precisely the right order and with the right timing, the whole becomes indistinguishable from a cause and effect world.

I took to searching the world for others who could see as I could. Of course the doctors and interns and all in their programs still saw me in this place, but I was not there. For ages I traveled, leaving signs marking my presence that would not be seen by those in program. Never did I come upon another of my kind.

Which brought me to the logical conclusion that this whole incredible piece of intertwining artistry was built for me. Which led to the next logical conclusion that it was a puzzle, and my task was to find the way out.

This task is one which I have not yet managed to figure out, but I believe I am close, and something compels me to write this adventure down for you. Perhaps in some perverse moment of irony I shall re-program you to percieve it. For even as I am your keeper, I am my own. Part of why I believe I am nearing the end of this puzzle is my recent determination that this great piece of independent yet interdependent artwork was designed by myself.

It seems clear now that when some part of me I can not discern tires of a particular session of this little game, I tire physically within it and go to sleep. During those sleep hours, I am myself again outside, making adjustments to the game to make it more challenging during play sessions and more beautiful overall.

For I am all. I am everything there is. If I do not go to extreme measures to entertain myself, I shall be fully alone and completely bored for all of eternity, as if time had any meaning at all.

Yes, I think I will modify you to be able to perceive this. It will amuse me, and appeal to the vainer parts of me that would like some outside approval for my efforts. You are not truly outside, for you came from me, and you are not truly alive, but as you are as close as I can find, I think I shall alter the DNA to allow this story to pass among you. It should be good for a few years amusement.

And so, as I said, I am the keeper. I keep you. Or perhaps you keep me. Every one of you sees me as a lunatic in an asylum. Every single one of you. Hard to say who's right.

Post Copyright (c) 2005 by Liam Johnson. http://www.liamjohnson.net
Story Copyright (c) circa 1991 by Liam Johnson

Today, something a little different

The plan for this BLOG was to be a place where I could showcase my writing, and I still plan to do that. (Actually, it's a place where Janet and I can showcase our writing, I don't mean to cut out my lovely wife).

However... Tonight, I've been watching a batch of people I think of as friends, people who share a common foe (a common disease), looking for any excuse they can to hate each other, and so I need to vent, and you get to read it.

The thing is, I don't get it. WHY can we not get along? What makes people hate people. What makes some blacks and whites hate each other? What makes some men and women hate each other? What makes some gays and straights hate each other? And what in heaven's name makes Christians and Muslims hate each other?

Because look, it's that hatred that led to our being attacked on 9/11. And it's that hatred that has caused so many people in this country to support an ongoing war against countries who REAL main "crime" is to be predominently muslim, in a time when muslim hatred is de rigueur.

We wonder why these things happen, but who among us hasn't gotten angry at someone for some imagined slight? Smokers take offense because non-smokers would prefer not to breathe their smoke, and try to limit the places where they have to be exposed to it. Non-smokers take offense because smokers don't like having their freedoms curtailed. Is it enough to go to war over?

The homosexual community just wants to live their lives. They didn't ask to be born gay any more than I asked to be born straight, but they are, and it is who they are. And over the years, we have persecuted them to the point that many of them take offense even where none is intended, and where no outsider would see anything to take offense at. But can we blame them, when poll after poll shows that this nation doesn't feel they should have the same rights to declare their commitments to each other that straight people have. All on the basis of defending the "sanctity" of an institution which has risen to the point where more than half of marriages fail? Why should straight folks care if gays can marry? But is it enough to go to war over?

The list goes on. Slavery is over, and yet the rift between black and white is as great as ever. It has certainly changed over time, and is arguably better than it was back then (although as a life long caucasian, perhaps I'm not the most qualified to judge that). But still, there are whites that hate, fear and even attack blacks, and the reverse is just as true. For what? Because our skin color isn't the same? When I was in high school, there were some very racist people in my class... and they would spend their summer time at the beach, TANNING. Removing the ONE difference between themselves and those they despised. There are people who discriminate. It's sick, and it's wrong. But is it enough to go to war over?

Yes, it is. Because if we can't find common ground with those in our own country, our own state, our own COMMUNITY, how can we POSSIBLY find common ground with those of other countries and cultures? And if we can hate those we have so much in common with, how much greater the hatred when we don't? How much greater the fear? How much less the understanding?

It has to stop. Next time you find yourself hating someone for who they are, looking down on someone for an uncontrollable fact of their life, look within yourself and ask yourself if you can't let it go. And if you can't, then it may be time to seriously consider that the events of 9/11 are inevitable, and will happen time and again, as long as human beings inhabit this world.

Thank you for listening to my rant.

Liam.



Copyright (c) February 18, 2005 by Liam Johnson. http://www.liamjohnson.net

What Depression Means To Me

Most essays on this blog will be more light hearted. This is an essay I wrote some months back on depression. -- Liam

"Hi, I'm Will, and I'm a long time depression sufferer."

If my depression were an addiction, I could start meetings in a twelve step program group with these words. But it's not. Depression is not an addiction. Depression is not a choice. Depression isn't "all in my head". Depression is not something I can "just snap out of". Depression is real, it's physical and it can be debilitating.

I first found out that I was a depression sufferer as a child. My parents, realizing that something was wrong with their eldest child, had me evaluated by a child psychologist. Dr. Rosalyn she was called (I couldn't tell you her last name, although I'm pretty sure I knew it once.). At the time, I didn't know what it meant, all I knew was that every week, Mom would pack me into the car and I'd spend time talking with Dr. Rosalyn. I remember the radio station playing in her waiting room ("WVNJ. VN-Joy by day, VN-Jazz by night!"), I remember the games in her office (and being frustrated that she always wanted to talk some BEFORE we were allowed to play any of the games.). The actual name "depression" was never mentioned, at least not within range of my young ears. But clearly none of my friends visited a "Doctor" when they didn’t feel sick, a “Doctor” who never examined them, never gave them a physical and never prescribed any medicine.

In college, I put a name to my condition. In college I put a lot of things together. And in college, I reached the point of fantasizing about my own death. And here's a thing most people who have never been suicidal just don't get: It's not about wanting to die. It's about wanting the pain to stop. I've never WANTED to die. Indeed, my strong self-preservation instinct is what's kept me alive through some pretty horrendous lows. To put it in terms easier for a non-depressive to understand: Most people would never WANT to lose a limb. However, imagine you developed a condition in your ankle which was EXCRUCIATINGLY painful. Imagine the prospect of living with this pain on a more or less constant (or at least frequently recurring) basis. Imagine that the pain relieving drugs of the day simply weren't very effective. Now, can you imagine deciding that living without your leg (but pain free) was a better option than being whole and in agony?

That's what suicide is about. It's a fantasy solution that will end the pain. A way of knowing it's all over and done, never to be faced again. And more, it’s about CONTROL. The fantasies, the suicidal thoughts, in a lot of ways they are about reminding yourself that in some small way, you still have control. If it all gets to be too much, too painful, there is one last, drastic step available. It’s a step you hope never to take, but it makes the rest of the pain just a little bit easier to deal with, knowing that there IS a remedy, however drastic.

The pain of depression comes in various flavors:

o There's the really deep dark depression, which has you in an emotional hole so deep, you don't imagine you'll ever feel happy again. Sometimes your emotions just shut down entirely. And then you're an emotional zombie, unable to feel even the simplest and most straightforward emotions, like love for your spouse or your children or your parents.

o Then there's the more immediately painful variety. If the above version can be thought of as a really intense ache, this version is like a stabbing pain. You find yourself crying, so hard you can't see, so hard you end up with dehydration headaches and an entire box full of tissues empty and used around you.

o There's a variety which just feels overwhelming. There's too much to do, too many things eating at me, I just can't take it all, I can't handle it all, I'm not good enough, I'm going to fail, it's too much. Kind of like a juggler, adding an additional ball to his routine for the first time. He keeps it going, but never feeling entirely in control, and knowing that if ANY MORE balls are added, he's going to lose control and the whole lot will come crashing down around him.

o Finally, there's dysthymia. In some ways, the worst, because it's the most insidious, and also the one you feel the least right to feel. Dysthymia is to the first version I listed as a non-healing paper cut is to a stab wound. The pain is clearly not as intense, but it just eats at you, day in and day out, darkening your day, taking the joy out of life, but never so intense that you feel justified in feeling the way you feel.

Put another way: A major depressive episode is like having the anchor of a cruise ship chained to your ankle and trying to go about your life: You're not going anywhere. Dysthymia is like having a 35 lbs ball on a chain attached to your ankle. You CAN still make it around, but it’s just so much harder. With the anchor, you have an excuse if you fail to get somewhere. With the ball-and-chain, you have less excuse, but it saps your strength, makes every step take 5 times the normal effort. In the end you tire out and give up on things which you COULD get to, because it's just not worth the extra effort. But you always know you still COULD get there, and so you feel guilty letting something that small keep you from what you needed to do. Dysthymia. My own personal more-or-less-constant ball-and-chain companion.

So, we've covered my suicidal thoughts, and we've covered what my depression is like. Did I mention that suicidal thoughts are a regular (if not constant) subtext to my life? Or that even as I write this, a part of me is thinking how much easier it would be to just end my life, and have an end to the pain which is eating at me even now? I'm not writing in the abstract, I'm telling you what I'm experiencing at this moment, what I experience in the majority of my waking moments.

I'll tell you something else: Depression brings rituals to help one cope. In my case, I like to go into a small room (generally a closet) and close the door. It doesn't help much, but in a small way, it feels like I'm locking out the rest of the world. I have enough to deal with right now, so I'm closed for business. Leave me alone world, I'm not up to whatever you have to throw at me today. And the true ironic hell of it is that I'm also mildly claustrophobic, so my little comfort zone is only available to me for comparatively short periods of time before I start feeling trapped and needing to get out, in relatively equal measure to how much I need to keep the door shut and the world at bay. Perhaps this is a blessing in disguise, or some days I might never leave the closet.

Let's return to the things I've been told by people who don't understand. "Just cheer up, it's not that bad!" "Oh, stop being so self centered and snap out of it." "If you'd just smile, you'd feel so much better." What all of these people fail to understand is that depression is a disease. It's a disorder. It is not a choice. We don't tell someone confined to a wheelchair by MS to "Just stand up!" The flu isn't treated with "Stop being so self centered, snap out of it!" Migraine headaches don't elicit cries of "It's all in your head!" If I were missing a leg you would never ask me to run a marathon, but by asking me to "just snap out of it", you're asking me essentially the same thing: Ignore what is wrong with me and the things it prevents me from doing, and just do those things anyway as if there were nothing standing in my way.

Depression is real. I live with it. I deal with it. Sometimes I do a better job than others. Some days, the weight around my ankle makes me so tired, I just can't even get out of bed to face the day. But I'll make you a deal: If you'll recognize that my depression is a real disease and has real consequences on my life, I'll promise not to expect you to ignore your migraines, or your MS, or your amputated limb, or your flu or any of the other real, physical ailments which may plague you. If you don't understand depression, if you've never really suffered it, rather than giving advice on a topic you don't get, just thank your lucky stars that this is one demon whose attention you have fortunately avoided.

Hi, I'm Will, and I'm a depression sufferer. Please understand why I can't get out of bed today.

Copyright © 2005 by Liam Johnson. http://www.liamjohnson.net

Hello and Welcome

This is the blog for Liam and Janet. Our intention is to use this as a space to post essays and columns on aspects of life we feel worthy of comment. Please note that all essays are copywritten material, and may be copied and shared only so long as proper attribution and copyright lines are forwarded with them.

For what it's worth, Liam is a pen name, Will is the "day to day" name. As a result, you may see some postings signed by "Will". Same person, different name. Just to keep you on your toes.

Liam & Janet