I’m only asking questions here.

I am legitimately curious about different things in life and how to better one’s self, but I am doing it from the perspective of someone who has internalized a lot of anger and sadness from being mistreated.

Have you ever wanted to learn and master a skill out of spite?

Did you ever have those moments where you felt foolish and learned as much as you can so you could shame others who made you feel stupid?

Should you humiliate people who have humiliated you in the past?

How do you feel about the quote “turnabout is fair play”?

How about being so knowledgeable about a subject that people are forced not to question you because you’re right?

Should someone make an effort to personally see or contact someone who has hurt you, and when you succeed or get good at something, you can just rub it in their face (metaphorically speaking, of course)?

How do you feel about the phrase “no good deed goes unpunished?” That seems to apply to me which is why I am more vocal about serious issues online than I am offline because everything is always a double standard against me no matter what like I’m not “allowed” to have an opinion on serious matters.

I’m genuinely shocked that there’s hatred toward Disney Adults. I never saw any backlash against that fandom offline.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/how-disney-adults-became-the-most-hated-group-on-the-internet?utm_source=pocket-newtab

I just read this article, and I was genuinely shocked. There were some legitimate acts of immaturity coming from people in their 20s and 30s. Not just watching or liking the movies, but getting the big weddings, memorizing various facts, or having pilgrimages to any of the Disney parks. I never saw Disney fans get made fun of online or real life, but I guess I’m not on the internet enough because I’m busy in my offline life, I study other things, and I actually touch grass. Not going to lie, I did laugh about those quotes involving millennials not having the spirit of Cinderella when you’re 30 or people trying not to “profess horniness” for Disney’s fox iteration of Robin Hood. However, I’m not surprised of the statistic how you have lots of middle-class and richer white women being in this fandom or how that fandom doesn’t care about legitimately horrible things that the company is done such as legal bullying, child exploitation, racism, cultural appropriation, plagiarism, giving some predators/sex offenders a pass, etc, but I’d be ranting all day.

Has anyone seen this cringiness from Disney adults online and real life? Am I legitimately blind to that fandom being bashed and pathologized?

As someone who was lambasted for being a fan of independent music and anime even in my adulthood, I find this amusing like it’s some indirect way of me saying “Serves you right, Disney fans!”

Frustrations with the perception of Swahili from others (Mostly the Western Hemisphere)

Swahili can be a bit frustrating to learn. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy learning it even if I struggle with some of the grammar and sentence structures which are nothing like English or Japanese. It’s not easy, but I’m doing my best in being fluent in multiple languages, especially since I have a heritage incentive to learn Swahili. However, I get annoyed with so many people with how ignorant they can be. I can only last so long and not rant given how many years worth of internalized anger in me. Oh heck, I always see clouds in every silver lining.

1: “So why don’t you learn Spanish?”

This is a big one in America. I have no issue with Spanish or anyone who speaks it. I know some words and phrases, but the way people ask it is that Swahili barely has any speakers or is impractical. Sorry, but there are 50 million speakers of Swahili and multiple countries have it as an official status. I get that Spanish is spoken in several nations and I live in a region with a sizable Latinx population, but I want to be better at other languages. I almost put up a reason being the whole “This is ‘Murica, and we speak English, ya’ll!” mentality, but that’s too easy to critique. Oh, wait. Spanish is a European language, so it doesn’t get that kind of questioning.

2: People thinking I’m going to speak it all over Africa.

If I visit most of East Africa, that could work, but that’s not going to work in the whole continent. Speaking Swahili would be counterproductive if one was in Nigeria, Egypt, or even Sierra Leone. It also annoys me how people call that language “African” like how some idiots think that people in Mexico speak “Mexican”. Swahili is an African language, but it’s mainly in one area and there are hundreds of indigenous languages in the continent. Not everyone speaks that language on the Motherland. you wouldn’t say that about European or Asian languages, so why is it cool to oversimplify everything that’s spoken in Africa?

3: People saying “Jambo” as a way to say hello.

I used to think that was the right way to greet someone, but that’s not the case. I noticed it with Duolingo and when I had my first online class with my teacher, she said that it’s one phrase you should NEVER say in the Swahili-phone parts of Africa. Don’t worry, will get to another well-known phrase you shouldn’t say in Africa later, and I think you all can guess what it is. It’s “hujambo” if you’re talking to one person or “hamjambo” if you’re talking to multiple people. Man alive, even saying “mambo” would actually be putting in more effort in speaking it and that’s a regional dialectal example! If you’re going to say hello to someone in another language, then get it right, everyone.

4: The assumption that people think I’m only using this for mission trips.

I don’t know if I’ll do a mission trip, and if I take part in one to help others, I will make sure it’s legit. No one has said it to me, but I know they’re thinking it because people are stupid to assume that the African continent is nothing but poverty. I know people directly from the continent who will definitely tell you otherwise. Yeah, because poverty never happens in America, right? Go ahead and search videos from Wode Maya, Miss Trudy or even Phillip Scott’s videos about traveling to Ethiopia, South Africa, and Kenya and you will find cities that are on par with most Western cities and some are cleaner than here in the States. I don’t think you can eat lunch while sitting in a gutter in Portland, OR (take that, hipster jerks!) like you could in Kigali, Rwanda with how clean it is, for example. Don’t believe me, look up Kigali and how clean it is like Wode Maya’s videos or even some cityscape pictures! If you think African countries are nothing but mud huts, warzones, and rampant starvation, then you’re a racist POS. Don’t gaslight me about that!

5: Some people act like Kenya and maybe Tanzania are the only places you can speak Swahili.

Are they countries where Swahili is the #1 language? Yes, and I don’t deny that. But what ticks me off is when I see people say only Kenya or only that country and Tanzania know those languages. That is insulting and even I knew they weren’t the only ones years ago. The DRC has millions of people who know the language and it has official status there like Uganda and Rwanda even if they aren’t the most-spoken languages there. It’s even used as a lingua franca in East Africa much like English or French depending on the country. Then again, a lot of people treat Africa like it’s a country in America, so I’m not surprised they would have such ignorance about as statement like that.

6: Can we please stop the bloody Lion King references in these language sites? Also, I hate that movie franchise even more with the more I learn that language.

Raise your hand if you think I wouldn’t make any potshots against everyone’s favorite 90s Disney movie for this list. PUT YOUR HAND DOWN! Before I really rip apart Disney and their fanbase, let me preface by saying not all Lion King fans are like this, so I’m not talking about specific individuals, but I have noticed this about the collective.

We get it. We know what “Simba” and “Hakuna Matata” means in English. You can use other examples in pop culture. Also, not all the names are real Swahili (I’m not talking about Scar or Ed) or mean what you think they mean. The word for king in Swahili is “Mfalme” and NOT “Mufasa”! If you know about those prequel books in the 90s which also involve the potential real name of a certain character, the word for garbage is “Takataka” and not “Taka”. Oh, and the word for want is “Kutaka” and the “Ku” changes with the pronoun, so nice try! Shenzi should be “Mshenzi” which means savage. Wow, I guess that’s how the Lion King creators and certain groups of their fans see most, if not all melanated people, but won’t admit it. I’ll even go this far to use a variation on a meme: “I want to learn Swahili because I like The Lion King!” #SaidNoOneEver! Disney and most Lion King fans have minuscule knowledge about Swahili or African cultures like how they barely know anything about Hamlet (BURN!). If they were so respectful of these cultures, they would drop the “Hakuna Matata” trademark and finally credit Solomon Linda for “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”. Oh wait, none of those things have happened. I’m sure Lion King fans would love to see African cultures or at the very least someone like me derogated and exploited. Tell me when I’m telling lies! Remember how I said my Swahili teacher talked about what not to say in that language? “Hakuna Matata” is the other big one since you will legitimately offend people because there have been too many ignorant tourists (read: white people who don’t care about the culture) saying that phrase flippantly to the locals without trying to use other Swahili phrases and people know about the trademark in multiple African countries while being righteously angry about it. It’s a shame how no one gets questioned in that fanbase when they pretend to know something or blindly obey their mouse overlord. As I get older, I’m getting weary of this massive ignorance for those that aren’t called out on it because Disney always gives them a free pass to do whenever and think whatever they want with no consequences.

Some benefits of me learning Swahili

Hamjambo! Unaendeleaje!
Mimi ni Ospreyshire.
Nimefurahi kukutana na wewe!

Some of you know I’m doing my best to learn other languages. I have been using Duolingo for over a year now, and I hired an online tutor months ago. I felt compelled to learn this given how many people speak in the world. I got a chance to use some of it when I met a Congolese person earlier this year at an off-site event involving my job. I wish I learned that language when I was younger. This language needs to be respected a lot more and it’s not because of the low-hanging fruit of a certain mouse “owning” a specific phrase everyone knows. If you’ve known me long enough, you know exactly what I’m talking about. However, I want to be positive with this post because I swear I’m not an angry person all the time on here.

1: It allows me to see roots in other languages.

I still think it’s interesting how words like “safari”, “Uhura” (Yes, the Star Trek character), and “Jenga” are originally Swahili words. I’ve noticed other words that are from English, Portuguese, and Arabic origins mixed in even though it is a Bantu-based language. Learning about some of the vocabularies, I noticed some connections to Lingala, Kinyarwanda, and Kirundi which was very fascinating.

2: There are multiple countries and communities where I can speak to them.

There are currently 5 countries where it has official status: Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, and the DRC (this country will come up again!). That’s not even counting countries where it has minority status or at least have pockets of people who know it like Burundi, Mozambique, and Zambia, for example. Even in Comoros, their language of Comorian has multiple intelligible similarities. Interestingly enough, Burundi has more Swahili speakers than Rwanda despite not having it as an official language. Learning another language can really open up a new world.

3: I feel (somewhat) smarter learning.

I don’t want to call myself a genius and I hesitate calling myself intelligent at times, but I do feel like I’ve been gaining brainpower as I get immersed in learning Swahili. It does get difficult with the grammar system and sentence structure, but it helps me do problem-solving. My tutor said my listening skills have improved in understanding what is spoken of me even if I don’t always know the right word to respond. Yes, I’ve resorted to Swahin-glish at times with English words I said to replace words I didn’t know, but at least the tutor said I knew what I she said and saw I’m trying. I then learn new words after the fact and use them in future classes.

4: It forces me to learn cultural nuances I never thought about.

If you learn a new language, you low-key learn about the culture. This can be why certain words have specific meanings or you can’t find words that you can directly translate into English. I asked why certain words worked in certain ways, but what really threw me off were the times. East African nations operate under a different clock that revolves around the sunrise and not just an AM/PM system which really forced me to use math with timezone differences and comparing AM/PM to “Swahili time”.

5: It’s part of my culture.

Some of you know this, but I’m part Congolese which I found out via DNA test through my Mom’s side of the family. It was one of the biggest ethnic samples I got and tied with being Cameroonian as far as African ethnic groups are concerned. Yes, I have various smaller samples of West African nations, but most of the stuff from the motherland came from Central Africa. Swahili is one of 5 official languages in the DRC with millions of speakers. Many of them are multilingual since they also know either Lingala, French, Tshiluba, Kikongo, and/or regional langauges in that nation (over 200 in the DRC alone!). This gave me an incentive to find out more about the heritage I didn’t know about for most of my life. Anyone who’s African-American realizes how tough it is to find ancestry without legit documents and/or DNA tests given how those who were enslaved where metaphorically and literally programmed to forget their ethnic groups, cultural practices, and languages. It’s my way of honoring my ancestors as I learn a language they could’ve spoken back on the continent. Heck, I might have unknown relatives in the Motherland right now!

Those are some reasons why Swahili has helped me. So what do you think?

Anyways, Tutaonana Baadaye!

Another Brief Untitled Rambling Rant

I feel like I’m one of the few people who actually care about specific issues.

It’s tough for me not to think that so many people are shallow on this planet.

Why is it so tough to actually like things or want to be a part of a fandom when you have so many ignorant and toxic people around?

I still hate how people cheapen and steal from other cultures

I also still hate how I have to prove I have any intelligence or competence, especially when I’m learning new skills. No wonder I assume so many think I’m untalented.

No English Language Songs for a Week.

I’m giving myself a little challenge for this week. Hey, it sure beats my rants that you’re probably sick of, even if I talk about important issues. Not that too many people care what I have to say, but I’ll do something different.

For this week, I’m not going to listen to English language songs. I remembered Ian Brennan’s book How Music Dies (Or Lives), and I thought about some passages about how people in the Anglophone parts of the West don’t venture that much into listening to music outside of the English language. Maybe this could also be some indirect revenge against the people who made fun of me for being a music fan in my college years, but that’s a conversation for another day. It annoys me how close-minded and ignorant people are in general with other cultures and languages. I’m from America, so I see this firsthand about people being very monolingual and not trying to learn other languages. I’m no polyglot, but at least I’m learning and putting effort to using it in different contexts whenever I can.

Here are my guidelines:

-I will not listen to English language songs, but if one happens to play at a place where I have no control over the music, such as grocery stores, restaurants, or various businesses, then that is an exception. Even then, I’m going to do my best not to pay attention to the background music.

-I have to listen to music from three different languages at a minimum. Nice try, K-pop fans and otaku!

-If there is a multilingual song, the English lyrics must be no more than 50% of the song. For example: “Telepatia” by Kali Uchis and “Life is Like a Boat” by Rie Fu are safe to listen to.

-I have to listen to at least one song from a language I’ve never heard sung before.

-Next week, I will point out examples of songs I listened to during that time period.


Feel free to join this challenge if you want. Who knows? You might like something even if you can’t understand what’s being sung.

Accusations Towards My (Small) Ego

Pretentious! Egotist! Arrogant!

Could you be more untrue?

If I was any of those things, I’d be making more money and more respected by everyone.

When was the last time you heard me compliment myself?

I can’t do that unless I earned the right to do so.

However, everyone else seems to brag a lot, and they don’t face any consequences or accusations.

Let me guess: “It’s bragging, but they can back it up!”

“What’s wrong with having self-confidence?”

I guess that doesn’t apply to me, as my self-esteem has been covertly and overtly raped for most of my life.

Superiority complexes are those who hide their inferiority complexes even if I don’t know how they feel inferior.

I’m upfront about my low self-esteem and self-loathing, so that doesn’t apply to me.

I loathe these accusations about me having such a giant ego when I’m too broken to have one.

Are you ready for the accusations I have against any of you who dare to paint me as something I’m not?

Downplay and Demonize

It’s not your reality

Don’t tell me why I should ignore it

Generational trauma unknown

Fueling toxins and flames

Compounding caustic chi

As everything becomes more of a lie

Yet you all keep on saying:

“I don’t care as long as it doesn’t happen to me” (You [Karen]…)

“It was a long time ago”

“It doesn’t count, and let it go”

“They didn’t mean it”

Shut it

The petrol pouring over my brain must stop

As several echoes of people I haven’t seen in years continue to tell me my opinion only matters 3/5th as much as yours

Even if I know I’m right despite being told I was wrong my whole life

Some books I read recently and my current reading preferences

Yes, I actually read books. What? Did some of you only think I watched movies or anime series? Please slap yourself if you ever thought that about me. No, I’m not talking about manga or comics. I mean actual books. I haven’t read a fictional book in over a year. I’ve been reading a lot of history and non-fiction books. While I don’t consider myself a genius, I’m not an idiot, and I actually know things or, at the very least, am willing to learn something new.

Here are some books I read over the past several months or so.

Black and British and The Kaiser’s Holocaust by David Olusoga: I thought I would talk about two separate books by the same author. I was more familiar with David Olusoga’s documentary work, but I didn’t know he wrote books. Black and British was a fascinating history of Black British culture for centuries. It covered not only Windrush, but slavery, one of the first Black British communities in Liverpool (some families can trace their family back to the early 18th century), and notable people with various contributions. The Kaiser’s Holocaust is about the Namibian Genocide by the German government, which was the first genocide of the 20th century. David Olusoga directed the Namibian Genocide & The 2nd Reich BBC documentary, which I strongly recommend and is has a lot of the exact facts of German colonization, severed skulls being sent to Germany, the first usage of concentration camps in Shark Island, and the direct and indirect Nazi connections with both the 2nd and 3rd Reichs such as General Franz Ritter von Epp being the most damning example since he hired and inspired a then-unknown Adolf Hitler not long after his malicious tour of that part of Africa.

The Iceman Inheritance by Michael Bradley: This was a recent read that I found out about on a podcast. It was a shocking history book that goes back to prehistoric times about the roots of racism in Europe, whether it was the harsh climate they lived in during the ice ages or millennia after the fact. Also, this was written by a white guy from Canada, so don’t freak out at me about that. There were so many implications with cited sources how it permeated from a cultural and educational standpoint that led to racism, sexism, colonization, etc.

MFIT Magazines (Many Faces In Teaching) and Decolonizing the Curriculum by Dr. Marie Charles: These publications have been quite eye-opening. Dr. Charles is a very talented educator and historian from England, and she’s been doing a fantastic job with her research. The MFIT series is an ongoing history project that shows the African antecedence connecting that continent to ancient Europe from millennia ago using comparative linguistics, archaeology, and artifacts, to name a few, and it’s been peer-reviewed. After discovering about the Cheddar Man in Somerset, I became intrigued to learn more about this ancient history that doesn’t get talked about since you had Pangaea, for example. It has been absolutely mind-blowing such as seeing Black royalty on old coins or seeing comparisons between an Irish artifact with a white mask on the eyes with the Nzu mask in the Igbo culture. Decolonizing the Curriculum should be canon in the educational field as it uses strategies for teaching multi-ethnic populations while also bringing up so many good points about why it’s essential.

Caliban’s Reason by Paget Henry: This was the last complete book I read, and it was an excellent deconstruction of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Paget Henry is an Antiguan historian and professor who calls out the play’s pro-colonial and pro-slavery implications while making parallels to eurocentric education with how melanated voices are silenced or questioned at all times. Even the etymology of Caliban was disturbing because it’s an anagram of the Spanish word for the Indigenous Carib tribe: Canibal! Yes, that’s literally where the word “Cannibal” comes from, and it added to this imagery of thinking that Black and Native people are automatically “savages” in the European eyes, and they see them as beats that need to be killed or tamed at all costs. It’s also interesting how Shakespeare seems to get a pass for implications like that or how Othello had blackface even centuries after the bard existed, but that’s a story for another day…

How Music Dies (Or Lives) by Ian Brennan: I hate the music scene sometimes. Ian Brennan gave me more reasons to do so, but in a good way. This author is actually a music producer who has gone to several countries to record various bands and musicians authentically. He brings up how the term “world music” has problematic implications, how pop music has taken over the world, how people in the West (especially Americans) fear listening to music that isn’t in English, or how there’s audio colonization of sorts. It has exposed me to several musicians around the world, and he had good intentions instead of acting like some white savior since even he admits that he’s still learning and isn’t trying to be some hero. I was sick of all these first-world problem bands, not just in pop, but pop punk and metalcore, for example. A lot of the people Ian Brennan recorded come from poverty, war, genocide, and other atrocities, and it makes those bands look like the spoiled brats they are!

So what have you all read lately?

Delayed Venting Wishes For This Year

I’m busy working hard in my personal life, but I’m tired of all the times people put me down over the years or seeing people getting away with things they really should have no business having carte blanche for. It sucks having to bottle up everything while others have tantrums and don’t get called out for their attitudes. Here we go…

It would be nice if my successes would outweigh the suffering I’ve been through and would shut up those who doubted me.

It would be great if the hypocrisy of the fandoms I’ve seen backfires against them. Especially certain issues involving intellectual property, cultural appropriation, and citing sources to name a few.

If karma exists, it would be good if a blogger who gaslighted me and claimed that they don’t care about anything or anyone unless it affects them or someone like them gets a dose of reality, and their narcissism will be exposed.

I hope a specific seasonal program will burn out in a way where they will have no one but themselves to blame or that there’s a scandal that destroys the managers’ reputations because of something they did.

It would be amazing if some bands and singers I knew would fail in their craft and their negative aspects will be made clear to the world.

I want to live better than those who bullied me, and I want my doubters to admit that I was right about particular things despite them questioning me.

I hope aspects of real history like ancient histories unspoken and various atrocities will come to the light where people are forced to acknowledge these events.

Those are a few thoughts I had.