alanjohnstone.com

John: The Carney

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 07:42:49 -0700

I bought this old car at auction. It's a '77 Plymouth Volare coupe with a manual trans, V8, and no AC. It prob'ly used to be brown, but the tone has reddened a little since the rust kicked in. She's not pretty, but she taught me to drive. Lost a clutch and loosened the gears pretty good in the beginning, but she's smooth shifting now. I used to like to take her up 189 from Lawrenceville to Suffolk and then through that swamp where the sulfur smell would seep through every crack in her frame, no matter how tightly the windows were rolled. (...more to come)

Self Pity

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 20:31:16 -0700

I'm starting to feel like the only people who truly care are two dead guys. One is a Renaissance King with whom I have acquired a questionably healthy fascination. The other is a dead friend who my sister, the psychic, is relaying cryptic messages from. Other than these two abstract shadows, my life has resigned to a series of nervous tasks and hushed whispers. Even the dog looks at me with a since of entitlement these days. The noise in my head that once created this stuff on this page is no match for the noise of the living room. Children fighting and playing, spouses shouting and demanding, dogs barking, television vomiting homogenized sound into this room that has long ago reached audible capacity. And there I sit... this 40 something man with this stupid guitar trying to create something that no one will ever hear. The unfortunately cruel puppeteer who pulls the strings won't let me stop no matter how badly I want to, and he obviously has no regard for the ridiculous anonymity of the 40-plus newcomer. So hash - hash - hash and create without will or without cause. Just because the man with the strings says you have to.

Country Lake

Sun, 7 Aug 2011 08:42:15 -0600

I wrote this on Sunday morning before everyone was awake, and before I had any coffee or located a hairbrush

Charles Remembers a Pizza

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 05:47:42 -0600

This is somthing I did for fun a few years back with Charles Wyrick who owns Lucky Dog Studio. Once again, a combination of Flash and Vegas.

Montage for CELA / PHS

Wed, 16 Mar 2011 05:20:37 -0600

This is a still image montage I put together to showcase my workplace. I created this using Vegas Video and Flash.

The Wages of Sin

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 09:25:16 -0700

Divine intervention, Please?
Near my parents home in rural Cottontown Tennessee, there is a small Country Church that rests in a thick grove of trees off a narrow winding road. Easily, this church could have been depicted in any number of stoic Norman Rockwell paintings: A white, wooden rectangle with an economical steeple bearing a plain metal cross. Stained glass windows fill the barren void with sparse splashes of color and images of Jesus on the cross and Mary looking down at her newly-born infant. Nearer the road there is a painted metal sign that has been there as long as I can remember. On the sign, a painted message intended to inspire and motivate passers-by with it's holy God-granted words.
The message is this:

"The Wages of Sin is Death"

This single sentence has driven me crazy for years. It just doesn't sound right.
Shouldn't this be written, "The Wages of Sin ARE Death?" ... or even better, The WAGE of Sin is Death?
Yet, when I type this sentence into Word, I get no annoying squiggly red lines. No personified paper clips or happy little doggies creep onto my screen to tell me I'm doing it wrong.
...So what's the deal?
Perhaps it's because this is a direct quote from the King James translation of the scripture, and no one with such divine guidance could ever make a grammatical error.

Can anyone with exceptional sentence diagramming skills give me a hand with this?

I know that the prepositional phrase, "of sin" can be removed with no structural recourse. We end up with, "Wages is Death". Death must be the subject, so we can turn this around and make it "Death is Wages", but there's only one "Death" so shouldn't there be only one "Wage"? Either that or plural deaths (which makes sense since there are definitely more sinners than just one out there). Perhaps it should have been phrased,
"Multiple Deaths are the Wages of Sin"
or "If You Sin, Your Gonna Pay by way of Death"
or "Sin?, Your credit's no good here... NOW DIE!"
or simply, "You Sin, You're Dead!".

No matter how it's phrased, it's pretty harsh ...
Point taken.

Haunted: Why I Sleep With the Light On

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 08:35:14 -0700

Haunted (or Why I Sleep with the Light On)
I guess it started when I was about four years old.
Was it a dream? ... I'm still not sure.
All I have now is a shadow-gray memory of an event� a sketch from an instance of sleep that was abruptly interrupted. On the night in reminiscence, I awakened with a start and stared into the darkness wide-eyed, attempting to absorb any bit of light that crept into my room from under doorways or beyond window shades. The effort was futile and only the swirling images of darkness filled gaping pupils. I can recall a sick feeling of exposure... or maybe vulnerability is a better term. It became consuming in the darkest moment of night and no amount of covers pulled overhead could diminish its power. On this particular night, the feeling was overwhelming. All senses, with the exception of sight, were heightened to superhuman levels. I was frozen in position: straight-skyward, white knuckled, covers bellowing from flared nostrils, invisible in the darkness. Short panicked breaths escaped my body and enveloped the room with sound. Something was about to happen and I new it. I could sense it.
That was when I felt something�
Something physical this time.
There was no alienesque monster, no maniacal disembodied laughter, no tunnel of light, just a simple and deliberate tug� then another � and another.
Slowly and methodically the pillow that occupied the space between my head and mattress was being pulled from its comfortable residence. I was terrified and unable to move, speak, or scream as the tugs became a steady pull and my head came to rest on the harder surface of the bed. I watched with wide eyes... The pillow drifted overhead and the contrast of its white surface became consumed by the blackness as it disappeared into the abyss.
I laid there quietly on my back for a long time and waited for the next thing to happen, but the next thing never came. Eventually, exhaustion overcame fear, eyelids closed over dry eyes and I drifted back into sleep. By mid-morning the next day, I had successfully convinced myself that this had only been a dream. The one disparity in my theory was the pillow that was still absent from the head of my bed. I remember asking my mom if she had seen it, to which she replied, �No� but I�m sure it�s around here somewhere�. To my recollection it was never found.

This could easily be called my �haunted house� story, or it could be put off to some hazy memory of a childhood overactive imagination, but the most unusual and eerie part of this story is not what occurred on this night, but the events that have followed ever since. I have had at least one such occurrence in almost every house I have lived in:

Homedale Dr.- Told my parents I heard �footprints� around my bed at night.
Wilmington Ct. - Had a dream that someone was calling my name. Opened my eyes to hear it called out one last time. Everyone else in the house was asleep.
Lischey Dr. - Everyone agreed that this was an exceptionally creepy house. It was built in 1803 and came complete with the original family plot next to the driveway. One night while sleeping in this house, I had the same sense of vulnerability I had had as a child. It became equally as overwhelming, and when it had reached the pinnacle of sensation, I knew that something was about to happen. Suddenly, the bedroom light overhead came on by itself causing me to scream and, subsequently, Kristy to almost go into cardiac arrest.
Fairwin Ave. � Kristy�s brother, Steven, helped us move into this house. We had unpacked, plugged a few things in, and were calling it a night over a couple of beers. Steven looked at me and said, �You know, this house has a much better vibe than the last one (Lischey).� Just then the answering machine that was six feet away came on and played-back our outgoing message. Our phone service was not yet turned on, so it couldn't have been caused by an incoming call.
Brookmeadow Ct. � This was a brand new house, but the strangest things happened here. The smoke alarms would go off in each room, one after the other, but only for about one second each. The doorbell would ring randomly. We would go to answer the door and there would be no one. We assumed this was a practical joker so we left the door opened and watched through the glass storm-door. It was only a matter of minutes before the doorbell rang again. We were both watching (Kristy and I)� and still � not a visible soul.

We haven�t had too many strange occurrences in the new house, or really any since the kids have come along.

�Last night I woke up in the middle of the night and heard Lucas crying. I dragged myself out of bed, went up to his room, and stuck my head in the door to see what was the matter. �I think I had a bad dream,� He said. I sat next to him on the bed, gathered him up, and reassured him that everything would be ok. �Daddy?� he said quietly as he pulled himself up close to my ear. He whispered, �Have you seen my pillow?�

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 11:09:38 -0700

My Resume

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 10:44:06 -0700

http://alanjohnstone.com/Resume

Web Pages

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 10:07:42 -0700

http://alanjohnstone.com/whosleft
http://alanjohnstone.com/Recycle
http://alanjohnstone.com/actorbios
http://alanjohnstone.com/bookclub