Dazzling Blogger Award!

Here’s an award that I’ve never been nominated for before. I was tagged with The Dazzling Blogger Award by Experience Film! Thank you very much! Experience Film has made great posts involving film reviews, filmmaking, and even features some of his video projects on there.

This award was created by Helen at Crispy Confessions where this particular award was created to recognize bloggers who excel in at least one major facet of blogging. This can be content, writing skills, social media marketing, or engagement.

My Answers to Experience Film’s Questions:


1) What inspired you to start your blog?

It all started with my spoken word project of the same name. I featured my recordings on there and poems, but I then expanded into talking about other subjects and even other blogs with my fiction as well as my reviews on film, anime, and documentaries.

2) Who is your hero / heroine in fiction (and why)?

Good question since I rarely read fiction as much as I used to. I guess Yugo Beppu from Yugo the Negotiator would be one of my favorite heroes in fiction with him being able to use his intelligence in amazing ways and has a crazy amount of willpower. It’s also interesting how he’s forced to not use violence to save the day and can still get the job done with rescuing others.

3) How would you describe your personality? List 5 adjectives. Or if you know your MBTI, Big 5, enneagram, astrology signs, etc. use those!

Innovative, Generous, Encouraging, Autodidactic, and Artsy…I’m doing my best to be positive here. Hahaha!

4) Have you ever made a decision that completely changed the course of your life? What was it?

I could name some positive decisions, but that would be too personal given some current things going on. I guess taking a DNA test to find out my ethnic background (more so on my mom’s side even though I was still surprised with the sample percentages on my dad’s side) had an impact on me because I wanted to learn the history of my heritage especially when I had no clue about which ethnic stock I came from on my maternal side. It allowed me to research the cultures and helped me to have some confidence.

5) What items are closest to you in the room right now?

Well, I’m in my little office space at my place. Besides my computer which I typed this post with, there’s an iPod, a couple of international movie DVDs (currently from Uruguay and Haiti), notebooks, batteries, and a portable camcorder for my film projects.

6) Name something you are good at. And something you wish you were good at, but definitely aren’t.

Saying anything good about myself is difficult. I’m good at geography and learning about world cultures. It’s ridiculous with things I wish I was good at. Maybe sports or cooking?

7) Who inspires you, in your life?

Another tough question since not a lot of people inspire me. Maybe some recent non-fiction authors I’ve been checking out when it comes to opening my eyes to the world a bit?


Questions for my nominees:

1: What makes your blog stand out in some way, shape or form?

2: Which bloggers have inspired your content?

3: You could hang out with three others somewhere. One is an artist (filmmaker/musician/visual art/etc), a fictional character, and an athlete. Who would they be, where, would you go, and what would activities would the 4 of you participate in?

4: What is one interest or hobby that you never thought you would get into?

5: Which creative individual do you think is massively underrated?

6: Where would your dream vacation be?

7: Who is the most famous person that you’ve met in real life?


My nominees:

Giftie Speaks

MIB’s Instant Headache

Matt Doyle Media

The Review Heap

Everything is Bad For You

Reasons to Anime

Blerdy Otome

Some music I’ve been listening to recently: Breakwater, The Whispers, and Morella’s Forest

I discovered Breakwater on a whim. When I heard the first few seconds, I realized that Daft Punk sampled this song to make “Robot Rock”. This was a really fun song with the right mix of guitars, bass, and synths. How did I not know about this band even though they were before my time? This song really slaps and I want to check out their other songs and their albums.

Can’t you tell I’ve been on a bit of an old-school kick? I heard the song Rock Steady a few times a long time ago, but this song came to my attention after seeing it used while synching the Sami Zayn dancing meme. I was unaware that The Whispers have been around since the 60s and I have heard some of their other songs before. One such example is “And the Beat Goes On” which I also recently heard while I was shopping one day. Of course for my generation, we mainly know it because “Miami” by Will Smith used the beat for that one. “Rock Steady” is a really fun song that will certainly get one moving.

Technically, I’ve listened to this song before, but not this version. This is the lost band Morella’s Forest who were a gothic rock/new wave band from the 80s. Two of the members would be none other than Ronnie Martin and Jason Martin of Joy Electric and Starflyer 59 respectively as well as their one-time side project The Brothers Martin. Joy Electric would re-release this song in their typical experimental synth pop sound, but I wasn’t aware the song was older than that. It was surreal hearing that song with guitars, basses, and drums though. I also found out Ronnie and Jason were only 18 and 16 when they recorded this album that was lost until this year. It was very fascinating getting into the musical history of the Martins since I listened to both bands starting out in junior high and Joy Electric was certainly an influence on Ospreyshire as a recording project. No, this is unrelated to that Tooth & Nail band that was there in the 90s and early 00s.

Some Candombe music I’ve discovered: Jhonny Neves and Kimba

So, I did a poem based on candombe music after being exposed to the documentary Tango Negro the other day, so I naturally decided to check out the music. There were some great examples that I discovered so far.

The first example is from Uruguayan percussionist Jhonny Neves. He has done solo works as well as collaborating with other musicians like the Candombe Trio or having various sidemen drummers with him in different jam sessions. I’ve had some of his videos as background music for studying or getting some work done on the computer.

Anyone who knows about my knowledge in anime should know why the 2nd example got my attention. You’re welcome, anibloggers! They’re a candombe collective that has been known to feature several drummers at once. Yes, there is a band that may or may not be named after a certain white lion that Disney ripped off a ton of stuff from. Hahahaha! But for real, they make great music.

All videos are property of their respective owners.

A Belated Post About ZAP Records: RIP ZAP 2015-2020

This post has been a long time coming and I feel bad about delaying it this long.

Some of you may or many not remember when I debuted Dystopian Futures’s latest music video for “Space Junk”, but I mentioned that ZAP Records closed down. This bummed me out since the founder Dave Emmerson was one of the few people left in the DIY music scene that I still respect as well as him being a great friend. I thought it was amazing with how he managed to get bands and singers from multiple countries involved with his record label. I was exposed to great music that no one else was making and I managed to get involved with the label even before “Ospreyshire” (the spoken word project AND the blogger you see today) was a thing. Not sure if I mentioned this, but I was able to help out with press releases, bios, and I even made music videos for some of the bands. Dave himself has a record in my filmography portfolio since I’ve directed three music videos for him between two of his bands. The first music video I ever made in my life was for his old band The Old-Timers (no pun intended) and it was a major international collaboration since Dave at the time was living in South Africa while I was still here in America, yet we were able to make it work. That really gave me confidence and he encouraged me to do some recording of my own.

While Ospreyshire (the spoken word project) was all me with my poems, acousmatics, and instrumentation, I will say that if there was no ZAP Records, there might not have been an Ospreyshire let alone the current blogs I run. It’s strange how life works, but I do have to credit Dave for being a good friend to be encouraging to me even if he was thousands of miles away in South Africa or when he was back in his home country of Scotland. Who ever thought that some random guy like me and someone like him would meet at a music festival in Central Illinois and were able to collaborate with multiple projects for years now.

It is sad to see ZAP Records go. I’m thankful to have been a contributor in multiple ways to the label. I was so disillusioned with the music scene at large, so this was a last bastion of sorts.

RIP, ZAP Records.

In good news, Dave came up with Visions Press where he’s releasing new music and even zines. Definitely check it out!

https://visionspress.bandcamp.com/

Calming down with some Angolan metalcore (Starring Before Crush)

I recently watched a documentary called Death Metal Angola which was really fascinating and I recommend it for those who like heavy music or at least African culture.

One of the bands featured in that doc is Before Crush (pardon the grammatical aspect of their name). They’re from Benguela, Angola and play metalcore music. While I’m not a fan of that type of music, they do a good job and they’re lyrics have more substance than your typical whiny suburban fake tough-guy scenecore band. They have lyrics about African culture, positive messages, and historical elements involving the Angolan Civil War that lasted from the 70s until the early 00s.

I know the irony of relaxing to this kind of music, but I wanted a break from some of the self-loathing posts I’ve made recently while trying to balance between life, work, and NaNoWriMo.

Dystopian Futures: Space Junk Music Video

I have some bad news and good news for you. Bad news is that Dave Emmerson decided to close down his DIY label ZAP Records. It’s quite sad since there were so many good bands associated with that indie label. I’ll be talking about my thoughts on the matter in a separate post. Good news is that his band Dystopian Futures is still going to make music and they just came out with a new song called “Space Junk”! Oh, yeah. I even got to make the music video, too.

Dystopian Futures certainly continue to use their quirky experimental punk rock for this song. It’s a story involving a cosmonaut who has been in stasis in a spaceship for a century while trying to flee from his vice-ridden past. Things don’t go to plan as he’s in the cosmic ocean.

Feel free to buy the song on Visions Press’s Bandcamp!

Shaping New Territory Music Video!

It’s about time there was another Ospreyshire video. I made one on my Debut EP and I did that Katauta 52 series a few years ago. This is also the first time I made something for just a single. I enjoyed creating this video even though there were some difficulties. The stop motion scenes with the go stuff was very arduous. The scene with the dozens of stones took a half hour to shoot for just 10 seconds of footage since I had to make it frame by frame. This video also has some Easter eggs that include references to other bloggers and some of my interests in some way. See if you can figure it out!

Don’t forget to download the single for free or by donation on Bandcamp!

10K+ Views Pt. II: Q&A Answers

Here’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for. I get to answer the questions I got last week for my 10K+ view milestone!

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“What was going through your mind when you wrote all those 455 posts? I mean did you ever run out of ideas or did you always had a topic in your mind(if yes you did run out of ideas, what did you do to bring yourself back up)?”

from Eggsandwich04

Well, I certainly have more than 455 posts at this point in time now. Haha! Okay, in all seriousness, my mind has been at different points when I made certain posts. I mainly focused on the Ospreyshire project for my spoken word stuff with the poems, recordings, and videos. I expanded to talking about news events and my opinions about different things. I ranged from sad, angry, serious, and occasionally comedic if the time calls for it. However, I think most of my poetry tends to lead towards sad or angry in hindsight.

I can’t say I’ve ran out of ideas since new ones pop up. Some of them will affect this blog since I still have more things to do with what Ospreyshire was made for.

“Who would say is or makes your blog audience?”

from Khaya Ronkainen

That’s a question that I legitimately thought about. I guess the people who I know mostly view and comment on my posts are usually other poets, some bloggers that cover serious issues, and anibloggers given my prowess in multiple blogs. Funny how I have that kind of crossover appeal with different types of bloggers.

“Do you have any favorite poets or collections of poetry?”

from Eggheadluna

Some of my favorite poets include Langston Hughes, Buddy Wakefield, The Last Poets, and so much more.

“Do you think you’ll still be blogging in five years and if so, care to guess how many views you’ll reach by then?”

from Lynn Sheridan

I believe I’ll still be blogging in the next 5 years. I don’t know if I’d be working on multiple blogs at once, but I could see myself managing at least one of them that far in the future. If I were to gauge how many views I could get then, I’d say 20-30K by then. It took 4 years to get 10K here, so I don’t know.

“What do you think is the best story you’ve written?”

from Scott of Mechanical Anime Reviews

Hooray! I’m glad there are people who know about my fiction/author exploits! That is a really tough question. Hollandus Landing was a very important book for me since it was the first time I showed off my cell phone novel projects let alone a full story to everyone as I serialized it live back in 2017. Another important story I wrote would have to be in the Revezia series like Praxis of the Disenchanted or the Electrum Trilogy. By the way, you can get Hollandus Landing for free or donation!

“It seems that you still have some hangups about yourself as it pertains to anger about self-worth based on what others have done to your self-esteem, so having said that, has this blog done more to aid you in self reflection and instilled in you a true sense of self worth or are you letting others get into your head and instill their thoughts, their prejudices, their biases as it pertains to you being bi-racial?”

from Shelby Courtland

Yeah, I still struggle with these issues, but I do appreciate you checking up on me. It definitely shows with some of my poems and some of the news stories that touched a nerve with me whether it’s racial issues or when I did that infamous rant against a certain movie last year. One of my weaknesses is that I can care too much about what others think of me. It’s NOWHERE near as bad as when I was younger, but it still slips in from time to time.

This blog has certainly helped with self-reflection and catharsis. I am slowly rebuilding that self-worth that was diminished after dealing with bullies and people getting away with their abusive behaviors even when I would call them out. There are times where I wished I was more aware about subtle forms of derogation like projection, dog whistles, or low-key insults when I was much younger (I guess taking a psych class might have helped for some of that in hindsight). Speaking as someone who is biracial, I did get my wake-up call years ago about how those who are mixed tend to be treated whether they have a white parent or not. Knowing about that reality certainly allowed me to do my own research about things I wasn’t taught (various historical events mainly like Black Wall Street being a major one for me then). At the same time, I’ve had a bad habit of having to prove my humanity, competency, and authenticity to anyone regardless of my ethnic background whether online or offline. I’m not singling anyone out because I’ve sadly had that mindset with anyone I communicate with. Getting rid of these prejudices, biases, or even assumptions out of my head has been quite the task. Hopefully, this answers your question.

“If you could witness the writing of a poetry collection (or novel), whose would it be, and why?”

from Ashley Capes

If I had to witness the creation of such books, I would’ve liked to have been there to have seen the process of the Circle trilogy from Ted Dekker (I read all the books years ago) or if I were to cheat with manga, I’d say Hikaru no Go. Wow, I sound like such a stan with the second example.

Thank you so much for your questions. I still have something else planned for this milestone!

I got the Vincent Ehindero Award!

Sorry for the nearly 2 month wait, but I was nominated for the Vincent Ehindero Blogger Award from Dr. Y! Thank you so much! You have an amazing blog and I’m honored to receive this award. This is a new award I’ve never seen or been nominated for, so this was very cool.

Here are the rules:

-Thank the blogger who nominated you and provide a link to their blog.

-Post the award logo.

-Post the rules.

-Nominate up to 20-30 other bloggers and notify them.

-Notify Vincent of your nomination, via comment.

-After notifying Vincent, he’ll check out your blog, follow and give you your unique award for the good work on your blog.

-I’m not sure if we are supposed to have some questions for the nominees, but I’ll make some for them.

1. Do you have long or short hair?
Long hair, currently. Weirdly enough, my hair was short this time last year after donating 13 inches to Wigs For Kids.

2. Fantasy or Historic Fiction?
Fantasy. I certainly write a lot of it with my Revezia series and [spoilers minimized] some parts of the Hollanduscosm.

3. What book do you like a lot, but you dislike the author, because of background, etc.
I really can’t think of any at the moment.

4. Have you ever watched a movie that was better than the story that it was based on?
I guess Persepolis was slightly better as a movie, but the original graphic novels are totally worth reading, too. To be fair, Marjane Satrapi worked on both versions.

5. If you could visit one place in the world right now where would it be?
As a geography nerd, I find this to be a very difficult question. Hahaha! The only place I’ve visited outside of America is Ecuador so far. I guess one place among several that I would really like to visit is Rwanda. I’ve been seeing how beautiful and amazingly clean Kigali is, it’s very modern, stable, and there’s a lot of tourist attractions I never expected in that country.

Here are my questions for my nominees:

1. If you could get one singer, band, or composer to score a movie based on your life, who would it be?

2. Which three countries would you like to visit that you have never been to before?

3. What is one thing you wish you could do right now if COVID-19 didn’t happen?

4. Describe how you feel at the moment when you post this award post in a haiku form.

5. Which fictional character would you want to hang out with for an entire day? What things would you do? What conversations would you have?

Here are my nominees:

1. Irina
2. Merlin
3. Scarlettiger
4. Never Argue With a Fish
5. Angela Grant
6. K At the Movies
7. T Crow
8. Another Anime Review
9. Kielder Ospreys
10. H. M. Gautsch

 

Mystery Blogger Award! Oooooohhh!

Guess what? I got nominated for the Mystery Blogger Award! I was nominated by Lynn Sheridan. Thank you so much, Lynn! This has been great being nominated with two of my blogs quite recently. Without further ado, here are the rules.

1. Put the award logo/image on your blog

2. List the rules

3. Thank whoever nominated you and provide a link to their blog

4. Mention Okoto Enigma, the creator of the award and provide a link as well

5. Tell your readers 3 things about yourself

6. You have to nominate 10 – 20 people

7. Notify your nominees by commenting on their blog

8. Ask your nominees any 5 questions of your choice; with one weird or funny question (specify)

9. Share a link to your best post(s)

Now to answer the questions from Lynn…

1. What weird thing do you have nostalgia for?

Maybe new jack swing music since I’ve been listening to a bunch of it lately. Okay, I was very little when that was a thing, but I do remember that sound. Besides that, I’ve been nostalgic for a certain anime/manga series that I’ve been secretive about because of a goal I’m trying to accomplish.

2. How good are you at drawing? (An example would be amazing.)

I am absolutely TERRIBAD at drawing. Sorry.

3. What recent trend are you totally on board with?

Weird, since I’m not into trends. Maybe inventing new awards/tags or to much lesser extent (whether this is a trend is yet to be seen) AEW? I guess after that Everything Patterned post I did a while ago, I can’t hide that recent interest anymore, right?

4. What are you hilariously bad at?

See question number 2.

5. If you were so wealthy you didn’t need to work, what would you do with your time?

Travel to multiple countries all over the world, write all the books I want at my own pace, record tons of Ospreyshire albums (and maybe side projects as well), and to volunteer my time to different legitimate charities or to help out others.

Facts about me:

1. Outside of the Midwest, I’ve lived in Maryland when I was a baby.

2. I wrote my first book back in 2014, but I never released it until 2018. That book is Revezia: Terminal Rescue, by the way.

3. When I was in choir, I sang 1st tenor, 2nd tenor, and baritone when I was in college. It was fun using some of my vocal skills in some of my songs especially “The Uncrowned King of Johannesburg”.

Here are my favorite posts:

Representation Matters: I think this was a great series that I did. The first post is certainly a great intro and I then go into fiction, anime, and even the aforementioned Everything Patterned post. Definitely check those posts out.

Ospreyshire Origins Art Theft: Here’s a post involving multiple songs from my recent album.

Defensive For What: This was a very powerful and personal poem I wrote.

Do You (Or Should You) Separate the Artist From the Art?: I was so thankful with everyone who commented regardless if I agreed with them or not.

How I Learned to Utterly Despise that Expensive Ripoff, Overrated, and Bigoted Movie Called The Lion King (And the Existence of Kimba the White Lion Isn’t the Only Reason): Be prepared because I’m going to ruin The Lion King for you!

I hereby nominate:

Red Metal
H. M. Gautsch
Never Argue with a Fish
Ashley Capes
Traditional Catholic Weeb
Bill Ziegler
Three Worlds One Vision
The Great Kahn
AniB Productions
The Old Testament Made New

My questions for you!

1. Where would you like to visit that you’ve never been to before?

2. What is one movie, TV show, and/or book that you can’t stand, but everyone else likes?

3. If you could invent a language, what would you call it and how would you teach it to the world?

4. What is one interest or hobby that you never thought you would get into?

5. How do you want to improve as a person?