Wode Maya visits Somaliland

Wode Maya makes such great travel vlogs and he has really opened my eyes when it comes to showing Africa. Not too long ago, he went to Somaliland of all places. Not Somalia (despite this area being inside the mainland), but Somaliland. This non-recognized country is apparently very stable and safe to visit. I’ve heard of the name before in passing from different videos I’ve watched, but I was unaware of what it looked like. Not going to lie, I thought it would be super chaotic and dangerous given the grave issues with pirates, crime, and terrorism like mainland Somalia, but apparently this piece of land doesn’t have those problems. Seeing the money exchange guy leaving to go pray and coming back to see his wares untouched was mind blowing. You couldn’t even do that in an American suburb, for crying out loud (relax, I would never try to steal someone’s stuff). It was fascinating seeing this part of Africa that you never see in the media and Wode Maya’s adventures really show. He has other videos with him talking to locals and businessmen which I also recommend seeing.

I just needed to see something positive for my own mental health and I hope you enjoy this video, too.

Been a while since I did one of these tags: The Geeky Childhood Tag

So, I got hit with various awards and tags across two of my blogs. I’ll interrupt the usual Ospreyshire Origins posts, and give you something more fun. This is the Geeky Childhood Tag, and I was tagged by Merlin. He’s a blogger I’ve contacted with various posts and we’ve had interesting conversations for some topics. Merlin, I do apologize if I came off as some pessimistic person when it came to some of your Sunday Wisdom posts. There are no hard feelings here and I do like reading certain posts of yours. This does feel kind of weird doing this kind of post since my tastes in media is drastically different more often than not when I was a kid, but I think some of you might find this mildly entertaining. Here we go…

Where did your geek come from? Parents? Siblings? Destiny?

Good question. I’ll jokingly say destiny with the things I watched and read. Then again, I was geeky about multiple things. Not just nerdy things like animation or comics, but books, history, and geography (we’ll be going back to that subject later) came naturally since my parents encouraged me to read when I wasn’t watching cartoons or movies.

The First Geeky Thing You Got Into

I guess Marvel. I was a huge fan of the 90s X-Men cartoon and I had a collection of action figures of various superheroes. I did pay attention to some of the DC stuff since the Batman cartoon was there as well.

Favorite TV Show as a Kid

Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego, all the way! Not the cartoon version, but the game show. That show is responsible for getting me into geography in addition to finding an interest in so many cultures which continues to this day. I learned a ton about countries, flags, landmarks, etc. Not to mention this has one of the best theme songs in 90s TV bar none. It was a dream of mine to be a contestant on the show, winning the whole thing, and saying “DO IT, ROCKAPELLA!” when I was a child.

Favorite Movie as a Kid

This is a tough question because I did like a bunch of different films, but I hate or are apathetic to a bunch of them that I like. Granted, I’m ashamed to admit that I used to like a certain rip-off movie that came out during my childhood, but we’re not going to talk about it. Maybe as some placeholder, I’ll say Tiny Toons: How I Spent My Summer Vacation. I used to know most of the lines of that film after seeing it so much.

Favorite Video Game as a Kid

I was big into fighting games and a lot of old-school Sonic the Hedgehog games. For me, it was Marvel Vs. Capcom 2. Yes, I know that game is broken as heck, but that crossover series was nerd heaven for me. As a kid, I was like…”Wait, Megaman and Wolverine are in the same game? I NEED TO PLAY THIS!”. The tag team fighting was really fun and I remember beating so many people at that game including getting high scores in the local arcade. Not to mention I felt like getting hipster points because I knew who most of these characters were before the MCU existed. Just saying.

Favorite Book as a Kid

I was really big into the Animorphs series when I was a kid. I thought the concept and cover art in each volume was so fascinating. There was that TV adaptation, but I want to pretend it never existed. If we’re talking about poetry books, then it would be Shel Silverstein’s works.

Favorite Memory as a Kid

Definitely my 6th birthday party. My birthday is in late October and we had a Halloween-themed party where my friends and family were in costume. I remember getting cool presents, there were multiple activities going on, and everyone had so much fun. My party had people of all ethnic groups, class, and creed which was amazing in hindsight. One funny thing that happened was the pinata wouldn’t break, so my granddad got out a chainsaw to open it, so we could have the candy!

A Character You Looked Up To as a Kid

In a weird way, I would say Bishop from X-Men. Okay, he was only in a few episodes throughout the entire series, but he was the first black male superhero I had ever seen in my life, so (interracial parentage aside) this was the first hero who was like me. Bishop was tough, had cool powers in the cartoon and the comics, and he’s someone you can take seriously. I wish he had his own series of sorts and X-Men: Days of Future Past (the movie) REALLY didn’t do him any favors.

A Character That Scared You as a Kid

Ursula from The Little Mermaid absolutely terrified me as a kid. I didn’t know all the reasons why. I wasn’t sure if it was the whole octopus/human hybrid design, her just being nasty in general, and/or having multiple nightmare fuel scenes for me at the time.

A Movie That Scared You as a Kid

I certainly wasn’t allowed to watch a lot of objectively scary movies as a kid. Keep in mind, I didn’t watch my first PG-13 movie until I was 13, by the way. I guess the scariest movie I was allowed to watch then might have been Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom which I saw at school of all places when I was in 6th grade. That scene with the guy getting his heart ripped out legit disturbed me. How was this ONLY PG?!?

Now I get to tag others for this thing…

Inskidee
Karandi
Scott from Mechanical Anime Reviews
Irina
Ameithyst

My Reasons Why

This was a huge delay, but I need to make this post.

The wonderful Kimchisama created this award tag called My Reasons Why. This was innovative and something that can spread positivity around. I can certainly use some more substantive positivity, to be honest. Thanks, Kimchisama! I was honored when you nominated me and when you specifically mentioned how we had great conversations about different things on her blog.

Here are the rules for My Reasons Why:

1. Mention the person who nominated you

2. List 13 reasons why you keep going/living (This is borrowed from the book but I’m taking it the opposite direction).

3. Nominate 10 or more people to give their reasons why.

4. Use the picture that Kimchisama created as seen in this article.

Here we go!

1. My literary projects: When I got into writing stories 4 years ago, I realized that I had so much untapped creative potential. I finally got to release some of my books.

2. The Ospreyshire Project: This current spoken word/avant-garde music project I’ve been working on for 2 years has been a great creative progression.

3. My family: I’m glad that they support me and have helped me out.

4. My friends I still talk with: I’m glad to have some good friends who still want to reach out. Since I don’t have social media, this is huge and it lets me know who my real pals are.

5. Independent and foreign cinema: I’m glad there’s quality movies outside of Hollywood. That and I get to review them. Hee hee hee…

6. Books: I’m able to read things even if it’s mainly non-fiction.

7. Learning: Despite having a degree, I had to know that learning doesn’t end. That and I want to teach others about what I know.

8. Open-minded people: It’s amazing seeing people who actually care about others.

9. Miso soup: Okay, this is a superficial one, but I can’t say no to that soup especially on the rare occasions where I have Japanese food. Hahaha!

10. Being certified to teach adults: This was very unexpected, but I was able to get certified last December.

11. Geography: I enjoy learning about other countries and cultures.

12: The blogging community: I tackle tons of topics with all of my pages. It’s a miracle there are people actually interested in what I have to say.

13: My newfound assertiveness: I was always an internalizer, but blogging helped me express my feelings with people online and real life more often.

I hereby nominate the following:

The Zone of Nerders
Jenn
Xena
AfroSapiophile
Brandon Knoll
Elleguyence
Joshua Stamper
Madekesiworld
Mechanical Anime Reviews
Joshua Hedlund

Hold up! Wait a minute! Put a little liebe in it! (A Liebster Award post)

Bonus points to anyone who got the reference in the blog title! Anyways, I received another award and it’s the Liebster Award. It’s awesome. I would like to thank Bloom Reviews for nominating me. Bloom Reviews covers anime, manga, and comic reviews that deal with romantic elements. I first discovered Bloom after finding out they reviewed The Place Promised In Our Early Days (which is a movie you all should check out). Feel free to check out this blog and my other ones at Autumn Peal Media (photography/videography), C. M. B. Bell (fiction), and Iridium Eye Reviews (indie movies/documentaries/anime/world cinema/short film reviews).

Here are the rules for this award:

-Share the link of the blogger who has shown love to you by nominating you
-Answer the 11 questions they ask
-Nominate 11 bloggers for the same award in the spirit of sharing love and solidarity with our blogging family.
-Ask them 11 questions that you are dying for the answers to!

Alright. Now I’m going to answer Bloom’s questions related to this nomination. I know the stuff in the questions pertain more to one of my other blogs, but I’ll still answer them here.

1. What was your most overhyped anime of 2017?

It’s tough for me since I haven’t been watching a lot of anime in 2017, let alone this decade so far. One 2017 anime that I recently finished was ID-0.

2. If you had to recommend one manga or comic what would it be?

I haven’t been as big of a comic or manga reader as I used to, but I’d say Persepolis. Yup. I read both the comics and saw the movie.

3. What’s your favorite animated film so far?

This choice will make me look like a more depressed person than I am, but my favorite animated film is Grave of the Fireflies. There aren’t many animated or even live-action films with as much emotional gravitas, strong writing, and great characterization. It’s one of those movies that really stands out in animation as a pure art form and something you can take seriously. I’ve yet to see any mainstream animated film have this much depth, substance, and great writing even though Grave of the Fireflies is VERY tragic.

4. What’s the longest running manga you’ve ever kept up with?

Here comes my old-school anime fan self here. The longest manga I’ve read from beginning to end was Whistle!. Yes, I’m talking about the soccer manga that’s 24 volumes long. It was actually the first manga I bought when I was in my teens and I’m not even that much into soccer.

5. Who’s your least favorite anime character?

This question was a tough one because I kind of wanted to forget any characters that I hate. Haha! It’s too easy mentioning villains, but people are supposed to dislike them. After thinking about it, I’d say Kimiko from Debutante Detective Corps. She’s no hero at all. What kind of a heroine goes around exploiting cops, act lazy, faking a kidnapping plot, allows innocent people to be killed, manipulates her friends, doesn’t take responsibility for her actions, and is able to buy her way out of not going to jail? This is hardcore Protagonist Centered Morality to the highest degree.

6. If you had to pick one guilty pleasure anime, what would it be?

Guilty pleasures are so hard for me to think about. Well, after referencing Family Force 5 in the title, I guess I have to have some kind of answer. From the top of my head, I’d say Night Warriors: Darkstalker’s Revenge. For an anime series based on a video game, I didn’t think it was that bad.

7. What are you most excited for this year (anime or otherwise)?

I am so out of the loop when it comes to all the newest and latest things to be brutally honest.

The selfish answer could be me doing something new musically and of the literary persuasion.

8. What’s one recommendation you would give to new bloggers?

Good question. I’m going to cheat and mention one recommendation per media since I cover so many topics across several blogs.

Music: The Old-Timers

Live-Action Movies: Mother of Mine

Anime: Haibane Renmei

Western Animation: Wrinkles

Documentary: Hate Crimes In The Heartland

Books: The Third Reconstruction by William J. Barber II

9. What was the toughest thing you had to deal with in starting your blog?

In any and all my blogs, it would be finding some kind of audience. I had a fear of failure that no one would like or care about my stuff.

10. Who’s one blogger or writer you would recommend everyone read or follow?

It would be my friend Jeannette Jonic. She’s a very talented writer, reviewer, and a very supportive person.

11. What do you enjoy doing when you’re not blogging?

I enjoy coming up with new story and character concepts for my fiction projects. I also like reading, a tiny bit of graphic design (I’m such a neophyte though), video editing, creating acousmatic soundscapes, playing the ukulele, and learning about several cultures.

Thanks for reading! I hereby nominate the following…

1. Haiku out of Africa
2. Hikeminded
3. Little Fears
4. Chizurue
5. James Edgar Skye
6. Madekesiworld
7. Keiko’s Anime Blog
8. Rebel Guy
9. Harotian Essentials
10. Fueled by Smiling
11. African Book Addict

I have 11 questions for those who I nominated.

1. What was the watershed moment that made you enjoy blogging?
2. What are your fears as a blogger/content creator?
3. Which languages would you like to learn the most that you don’t already know?
4. How would you best describe your blog’s identity?
5. Who inspired you to blog?
6. What are your strengths as a blogger?
7. What are your weaknesses as a blogger?
8. Where do you see yourself 5 years from now?
9. If you can have one wish to improve the world, what would it be and why?
10. Which movie, musician, series or book that’s unknown to most that you like and wish more people knew it?
11. Has blogging been therapeutic for you? How so and why?

I guess versatility pays off? I’m a recipient of the Versatile Blogger Award!

This has been a positive few days for me. Just recently, I was awarded the Versatile Blogger Award from Raistlin0903. Thank you so much, Raistlin! It’s good to know that I’m a quality blogger and versatile in different subjects whether on this blog or my other ones.

Here are the rules for this particular award:

-Display award
-Thank the person who gave this award (and include a link to their blog)
-Share seven things about yourself
-Nominate bloggers of your choice

Without further ado, let’s get this started!

1. Poetry/Lyrics: Since I’m on the main Ospreyshire blog, I might as well talk about it. I’ve been writing poems and lyrics since I was 11. I didn’t actually write “real” songs until I was older. With my current project, I thought it would be an awesome vehicle to get this artform out there but with an avant-garde edge.

2. Multi-Instrumentalist, but what instrument is missing? I’ve been training to be adept at multiple instruments when it comes to songwriting and performing. Interestingly enough, I have never used a guitar for Ospreyshire. This was on purpose. I don’t hate guitars since it’s one of my better instruments, but I wanted to see what I can create without one of the most common instruments out there.

3. Cinema in multiple languages. Yes, some of you know about my film review blog Iridium Eye. I’ve covered movies from six different continents and dozens of countries around the world. It is a fusion of my love for geography and movies as I wanted to escape the Hollywood doldrums. I’ll spare you a list of every country that’s been covered by Iridium Eye so far, but here’s a list of languages that have been spoken in the movies I’ve reviewed so far. English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, Mandarin, Persian/Farsi, German, Dutch, Amharic, Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic, Serbian, Afrikaans, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Hindi, Hebrew, Italian, Gaelic, Korean, and Danish. That’s not even counting stuff I haven’t reviewed.

4. Reading (whenever I can). I do enjoy a good book. Interesting fact, I’ve been able to read since I was 1 1/2 years old and I’ve enjoyed reading whenever I could. Granted with work, I haven’t been able to as much. Over the past couple of years, I’ve been reading a ton of non-fiction especially in regards to social issues, geography, lesser-known parts about history, and race relations especially with the African-American and Native American experience. It was fascinating learning about all these subjects and I certainly become more “woke” as the cool people say these days.

5. People think I’m extroverted. That couldn’t be further from the truth. The thing is I do work with a lot of people and I’ve had previous experience with public relations and customer service. I do like being around my friends whenever I can, but I’m really introverted. After dealing with a lot of people, I have to decompress whenever I go home. Even then, I just get on my grind by working on various creative projects like music or fiction or coming up with new content for any of my 4 blogs.

6. My first (real) start at fiction was microfiction. I tried writing stories when I was younger, but I am quite disappointed in the concepts I came up with. When I heard about microfiction (stories under 1000 words) a few years ago, I gave it a try. Some of them are on my writing blog such as this one about an invincible superhero having a bad day, a futuristic story involving people looking at social media accounts from the present, or a story involving a snarky dragoness dealing with a delusional knight. It’s a fun form of writing, and I encourage people to give it a try. If you have the TaleHunt app, you can find me @tocsinchronicle. Just sayin’.

7. I used to be a hardcore gamer, especially fighting games. This was actually a thing going on in my life. To be honest, I haven’t been into current games due to other interests taking precedence, but there was a time I was big into video games. Shoot, I still own a Dreamcast to this day. I was into different genres, but my favorite genre was fighting games. Back in my younger days, I could beat people in games like the first two Marvel Vs. Capcom games, Virtua Fighter, some of the Tekken games, King of Fighters, Power Stone, Project Justice (AKA Rival Schools 2), and various Street Fighter games (SFIII: Third Strike was my favorite and the most underrated game in the franchise). That was my jam back then.

Now that I got this out of the way, I hereby nominate the following bloggers…

Moyatorium
Travel Itineraries
The Drabble
Anime Q & A
Bipolar Online Blog
Medieval Otaku
Karandi
AfroSapiophile
Irina
Lunarian Thoughts

Thank you!

Oh, wow! I got the One Lovely Blog Award!

So recently, I received my 2nd award as a blogger on this platform with the Ospreyshire page. Thanks to Scott from Mechanical Anime Reviews for nominating me! I didn’t see that nomination coming. Even though I cover so many topics with anime being one of them with Iridium Eye, I’m glad people still appreciate what I blog about across all my pages.

Here’s how the award works:

1) Thank the person who nominated you and link their blog
2) Add the One Lovely Blog Award to your post
3) Share 7 things about yourself
4) Pass this on to as many people as you like (max 15)
5) Include this set of rules
6) Inform your nominees

Alright then. Without further ado, let me tell you seven things about myself.

1: I have written bios for various musicians.

As you may or may not know about me, I enjoy writing. You know that I write fiction and that I do film reviews on my other blogs. However, I have done some commissioned public relations work for various musicians in different countries. Granted, these are independent artists, but I’ve enjoyed being able to write pieces on various singers and bands. I’ve helped out some of my labelmates on ZAP Records and then some.

2: I have been training to become a multi-instrumentalist.

Okay, not as much now since I’m not into the music scene as much as I used to be, but this was a huge goal of mine for years. I’m not a maestro by any stretch of the imagination. The instruments I have the most competency in would be ukulele, guitar, turntables/DJ-ing, Omnichord, hand percussion, bass and some keyboards. Don’t expect me to shred like crazy, but I can at least jam with other musicians and do my best to hang with them.

3: I’m a three-time NaNoWriMo winner and a six-time Camp NaNoWriMo winner.

This goes out to all my followers who know I do fiction. I’ve been getting into storytelling over the past three and a half years. 2014 was my first year where I wrote books and where I tried National Novel Writing Month for the first time. It was shocking that I was able to write a 50,000 word novel (roughly 100-110 pages) over the span of thirty days on those Novembers. I tried out Camp NaNoWriMo, which is National Novel Writing Month’s off season challenges that happen twice a year (April and July). It does feel invigorating trying to write a book in a month’s time. Now, I have to publish my bibliography…

4: I’m a geography nerd.

I love learning about other cultures and countries. It was amazing visiting outside of America for the first time of my life when I was on vacation to Ecuador earlier this year. This international affinity started when I first watched Where In the World Is Carmen Sandiego (the game show) when I was a child. That was my favorite show growing up. My love for geography shows since I write multi-ethnic casts for many of my fiction projects and world cinema is one of my specialties when I review movies on Iridium Eye.

5: Speaking of stuff from other countries…Wanna know the first anime I’ve watched?

This one goes out to the anime reviewers that know my blogs. The first anime I’ve ever watched in my life is Teknoman AKA Tekkaman Blade. Yes, this was the edited English dub version, but that was my first exposure to Japanese animation despite me not knowing anything about it when I was in elementary school. This was on UPN Kids back in the day which is a defunct channel as it merged with My Power and Warner to make the CW. I thought it was cool seeing superheroes in metallic suits fighting aliens and stuff.

6: I’ve wanted to be a voice actor, but never got around to it.

Part of it involved me watching a ton of anime during my teen years, but I’ve been good at using different kinds of voices. I’ve been known to do impressions of various movie characters, cartoons, and some random celebrities in front of some of my friends and co-workers as a joke. If you know me, I can come across as dry in my humor, but I can make people laugh whenever I do these imitations of random voices. I’ve had others tell me that I should be hired as a voice actor, do TV announcements, or a radio DJ.

7: What’s in a name?

I’ve always wanted to name either a band or a creative project after a bird (insert Portlandia joke here). The word Osprey came to mind, but I wanted to go beyond that once I started coming up with this current spoken word/anti-pop project on this blog. Suddenly, “-shire” came up in my mind as the definition of a place. Thus, I fused the two words and came up with Ospreyshire as my stage name.

Now that you know a little bit more about me, I want to hear from the following people. Enjoy the nominations!

1: KimchiSama
2: Travel Itineraries
3: Adventures of A New Floridian
4: Tim and Joanne Joseph
5: Girl Goblin
6: Remy Fool
7: Auri
8: Irina
9: Bel
10: Joshua Stamper

-Curtis