A CALL TO ARMS: YOU HAVE SOMETHING OF MINE JANAUL

A former friend of mine has stolen property of mine and has had it for two quarters.

Janaul Blount, the friend in question, has his claims and disputes but this is what happened:

I had a Dreamcast (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreamcast). I carried it with me wherever I went. Causing many a turmoil but never worse for the wear. I snuck it into my college dorm hiding it from my anti-video game parents ("Is that a Game-Boy!?" "Mom, it's a cellphone" "How come there's games on it?" "Phones can have games on them." "No they can't. They are meant to call people ONLY" "SIGH...").
I would play it, not in my room as it was prestinely devoid of a tv, in a friends room (we'll call this friend: Jamil). So much so, that I ended up asking him to keep it there instead of lugging it with me whenever someone got the itch to play "Marvel Vs. Capcom 2". What surprised me, and should have been a red flag, is that he said he would allow it in his room but promised that he held to responsibilty if anything happened to my system. I balked at the idea of him allowing something to happened without telling me and proceeded to not have it with me in my room.

Next quarter, I come straight to Jamil and ask for my Dreamcast back from his room.
He resoundly says he disavows knowledge of ever keeping the Dreamcast in his room (Def Con 2). He allows me to search the room feeling sorry for me and keeps telling me that my proposition never was... propositioned.
I freak for a week.
No leads.
No witnesses.
Nothing.
(I realized I'm putting a lot of theatre into this But it means a lot to me to get this back in my hands. I won't be able to be transported back to when I was 15 by plugging in my Dreamcast if I have no Dreamcast. There is a strong feeling there and I would rather lose it through the thought of me doing something wrong to my system then someone else keeping it and thinking it's theirs when it isn't.)

Janaul has my SCAD card. I'm a big pushover when it comes to wanting to help people with their money problems and Janaul convinces me to use my card to pay for his laundry that he can't seem to afford card-wise.
It begins to get late and he isn't answering his phone or appearing where he said he would to give me back my SCAD card (I get it back but this leads to the Dreamcast so hang on). I ask around and I find his begotten room. He's in there. Why won't he answer my calls then? I see people I know in his room (there not in SCAD anymore so I don't feel the need to include their pseudonyms) so I call one of them and look in at the reaction. He/She ignores my call!
I start to become very paranoid then I see something that looks like Son Son fighting something that looks like Cyclops on Janaul's television screen. "Marvel vs Capcom 2". He has it. Why wouldn't he let me in on it if he had a console that played the game I used to play? After all, he and I were friends who mostly battled each other in fighting games such as MvC2 on my Dreamcast. What if the reason they won't pick up the call so that I can come and get my SCAD card is so that I don't come into the room? And what if they don't want me in the room playing MvC2 because they are doing it on a Dreamcast they stole from me?
I knock.
I rudely ask to come in and see what they're doing and accuse Janaul of theivery (Not the move I would have done in hindsight)
Janaul pushes the door close on my footgiving me my card back while he does.
I threaten to call security if I'm not let in, I scream.
"Go ahead" is Janaul's retort. (This puzzled me. Wouldn't he just want to avoid getting kicked off campus in favor of swallowing his pride?)
Long story short; I didn't stay by the door to keep watch of who comes out. Security comes along with two RAs and search his room and find two Dreamcast controllers that are not mine but his. I have a meltdown, having felt as if I destroyed a friendship and wondered why Janaul just didn't let me in and prove me wrong instead of going through a two and a half hour ordeal.

This happened last quarter.
I trust what I saw. That was my game in that room. Janaul kept me out so I wouldn't catch him red handed. There were Dreamcast controllers in his room for what oher purpose? Why would I keep this up if this all didn't happen?

I would like to have a meeting with Janaul and a RD moderator before Friday.
He thinks it's his I hear. Well, if he can hold up a decent argument without closing a door I may think differently. For now, the man is a cheat, a liar, and a manipulator.

Anticipation makes me write lazy

Going back to the boy who meets me at the arcade side of the recreation palace, it occurs to me that reaching out to someone of a different race (or just under the blanket of looking 'different') means your mind becoming accustomed to new reactions. What are those reactions? Irrational fear that you put away for the moment to meet with the person, an idea of what type of reaction the other subject will get from meeting you and trying to connect via some sort of commonality.
"Do you like Chris Rock?"
"I guess so..."
"Yeah, he's funny."
An honest effort, but under the pretense that all black people will respond well to other black people being referenced, or respond well to a part of their culture being shown through you.

If only I had a sociology major, I could have been more equipped to help out my white-skinned brethen.

Oh brother. Andre is going to write something philosophical.

(The Language connection to identity)
I need to define identity for myself before I start.

"Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" (Luke 6:45)

"He who is ignorant of other languages is ignorant of his own." --Goethe
America does not want to learn Spanish. That is a searing fact in this present day culture.Despite what boons could come from learning a language that is a-first-language to 332 million people around the world (English is first to 322 million), many citizens do not want to learn Spanish or have it taught to children for fear that English will bumped down to second language in the coming generation. The country's fear rings of xenophobia and seems to not change if the language being offered was French, Portuguese, or Russian. Americans, for the most part, don't like change (despite what an Obama poster might try to explicitly sell you) They would much rather not worry about their way of life being altered in a way that appears to be a slippery slope.
Cherokee was America's main language at one point in time, or one of many along with Chickasaw, Choctaw, Apache, and Navajo. If France won the French and Indian War, we would certainly have been speaking French at the new millennium. History was such fickle mistress. English was a luck of the draw when you look back and see that the right king was in place to pursue North American colonies even after the first attempt yielded nothing but death and famine in what is now South Carolina. How else would we have learned English? It is not an easy language. Would everyone spontaneously decide one year, one decade, that we should change all our books and speech because English is a way past cool language that would make us complete as a people? Doubt it.


"The language of friendship is not words but meanings." --Henry David Thoreau

I lead with some quotes and make with the pontifacation

(The Language connection to identity)
I need to define identity for myself before I start.

"Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks" (Luke 6:45)

"He who is ignorant of other languages is ignorant of his own." --Goethe

"The language of friendship is not words but meanings." --Henry David Thoreau

Keeping Watch

I'm the Hero.
I'm keeping watch over Michael right as I type.
Hoping he'll be alright...soon.
(BARF)
DAMMIT!
I got it. I got it. I got it. Don't worry Ms. Thing (Miss Thang if you're nasty) I can deal with guys being sick. I'm a sick person by nature so the two go together like steak and potatoes.
Dammit I feel so helpless.
But I'm doing my best for right now to make him the most comfortable for now.
He's wrapped up like a cocoon.
The lady the room belongs to longs to work on her fashion paper.
I refuse to work on my if only to create mental buildup for later to expel onto the paper.
Dolce and Gabbana ideas on my right, a downtrodden mate on my left.

I will not leave him behind.
"Leave a mate behind, and you might as well leave ALL your mates behind" so says Proinsias Cassidy, from the Garth Ennis Preacher comicbooks, inside my head.
Good advice, but I don't think you followed you advice as well as ya should.


It's a cool day.
I made the world a better place. Just my piece of it, but you gotta start somewhere.

Something wicked this way C-RRRRAAAALPH!

There is two different worlds swirling about me now.
Michael Hicks is trying to describe his. And Four girls are trying to live in theirs and I am caught on the outside.
Girl shit.
Mike Hicks falling on some girls bed.
(Oh yeah we are in her room)
Girls deciding to order food.
Michael crushing his confidence building shades.

When I see the two try to communicate, there is a silent break that can be sensed in the same fashion as a snapped dry wood feels when two hands want to feel strong.

Idle chit-chat, and enabling ("Do you fancy another drank, Michael?") are bouncing off the walls.
What have we (AKA me) done to deserve this?
Oh and Usher is on the Speakers...think of that what you will.

Written all in one day. Imagine that.

I need to create something about identity and what it's relationship is to language in the next eleven minutes. What to do what to do.