"I'm Not Dead Yet!" or 「いけない！」

I'm not dead, just busy. I left my computer for a whole day and I have 41 unread email conversations. Woooow. In any case, I've had three kanji tests in the last three days, with another tomorrow. I'm glad I have the next week off. I don't really understand why we have it off, but I'm not complaining.

This next bit will have a bunch of hiragana and katakana, but it make it nearly unreadable to romanize it all, so if you don't read the Japanese syllabaries, I apologize.

In other news, all the various phrases you can construct with the てはいけない and such things. It was always kind of a mystery to me, until I somehow managed to discover that いけない really means ダメ. For clarification, here's a formula you can use:

Condition	＋	Result
すると
すれば		ならない （動詞）
して （は）		いけない（名詞）
しなければ		ダメ（名詞）
しないと		あかん （大阪弁）
しなくて（は）

So to construct a "you must (not)" sentence, you simply take a phrase from the first column, and pick one from the second. It's really that simple. The meaning is pretty simple to work out, too: two red words (negatives) together mean that you must do something, while a red and a black mean you must not.

I asked yesterday, and it turns out that the は here doesn't change the meaning, so much as it is somewhat optional - always use it if you're trying to be formal or polite, but only with て. Then again, who are you going to giving strong commands or admonitions to that you can't speak in plain form with? I don't think you use は with ならない because ならない isn't a noun, but the negative non-past of なる.
[Edit: It turns out you can still do this, as what ever is before the は just ends up becoming the agent of ならない, so it's all good. According to my teacher, anyway.]

I can't get these to line up without using tables, and tables with the freaky way Blogger interprets HTML are too much of a pain, so here's a... splotch of examples.

そう　すると　いけない
[that] [if you do] [is wrong]
You must not do that!

そう　しなくては　ダメ
[that] [you don't, so] [no good]
You have to do that!

Further, remember that you can also swap ては for ちゃ if you're speaking informally: そうしなくちゃダメ is just fine.

I've used the word "condition" simply because conditional forms are common, as seen with the ～ば and ～と forms and I didn't have a better way of saying it. The ～て form is used here in the causative sense, so it may have a different connotation than the others. Also keep in mind that と has a strong 当然 connotation, so you probably don't use it with complex things. In other words, I think it may be limited to simple, fairly natural things or things that the speaker thinks are obvious.