Telling of Tales is back!

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As an actor, there is a lot of downtime. That kind of stuff can get on your tits if you don’t have anything constructive to do with that time. I don’t want to fill my time with something that’s completely useless to me, however, so this is what I’ve done:

I’ve finally started Telling of Tales back up again!

“What’s Telling of Tales,” some may ask!

Telling of Tales is my weekly audiobook podcast where I read the short fiction I find around the web or that gets submitted to me. Some of the stories are classics, like the recent episode The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde. Others are by up-and-coming authors or folk who just enjoy writing and who wrote something that appealed to me in some way.

I’m currently just trying to get the word out, so if you enjoy this sort of thing or know people who might, do check it out. I’m quite proud of some of my most recent recordings and have a really lovely story coming this friday.

Call Myself a Writer, Do I?

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On my professional website and my business cards, I call myself an actor, writer and comedian. However, how much am I actually writing? I feel like in order to call oneself a writer, one has to at least make a concerted effort to write pretty regularly. I haven’t necessarily been doing that. Now, I’m by no means the guy who spends more time talking about being a writer than he spends actually writing anything; I have finished a stageplay (good concept, terribly written) and I’ve written a few film scripts, most recently a sci-fi parody, which I’ve finished twice already and will be doing a massive re-write of quite soon. However, to really become a good writer, I need to keep writing.

No, I don't know why I'm holding a pencil either. Who uses a pencil to write these days?! Hah!

No, I don’t know why I’m holding a pencil either. Who uses a pencil to write these days?! Hah!

I’m not going to put myself on some strict writing schedule or try to write so-and-so-many words a day, because I’ve tried those kinds of projects in various forms, and they rarely work for me. Specifically for writing, I did about ten days of NaNoWriMo (write a book in a month) years ago. I’d love to do that again and finish this time, but next time I want to have an outline ready for it.

So what’ll I do? Read on to find out!

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meh-good

Finding the right headspace

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People who know me would probably agree that my default mood is pretty darn chirpy. Many would say that I’m never down, that I can always see the sunny side of things. Those who know me even better know that every now and then, I get low. Like, really low. Continue reading →

Rageman-debate

A Calm and Rational Debate About Gun control? No way!

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YES WAY!

My dear friend Kerry Bailey posted this on his Facebook a few days ago, in response to the “discussion” going on since the horrific Sandy Hook elementary school shooting:

This is the only thing I’m going to say about those who are engaging in the “gun debate” right now. I’ve lived half my life in Kentucky and experienced first-hand the hunting culture there, but I’ve lived the other half in Los Angeles where guns are mostly used to shoot other people. I think the biggest problem that the opposing sides in this debate have is a lack of empathy with the other side’s point of view. The anti-gun people should concede that some guns are useful (for food and sport) and the pro-gun people should admit that we really don’t need semi-automatic weapons available to every wack job on the street. This “they’re taking our guns!!” vs. “Get rid of all the guns!!” mentality isn’t getting us anywhere.

Most responses were in agreement, except one guy whose first line was “Leave my second amendment alone!” I thought he was joking, but he basically turned out to be exactly the kind of guy Kerry was talking about being annoyed with. That dude kept posting similar things for a while. But then there was Bill*. I was so enamoured with Bill’s ability to argue his side without getting insane about it, that I wanted to share it with the world**. What follows after the break is my discussion with him quoted verbatim*** with no further comment. I would love to hear your opinions on this, but please: Extend Bill the same courtesy he did me and be respectful and rational.

In response to this discussion, and because I’m so smart, I came up with a witty, clever slogan that isn’t stupid at all: Be a debater, not a debaser!

WARNING: It’s really long! Like, longer than my essay about Doctor Who.
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The Butternut squash a filo pie from Proud Italian Cook. Made here with mushrooms and pearl barley for some extra zhoosh.

Dieting on Delicious Food

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It happens in our mid to late twenties these days. We look at ourselves and think “Man, this could use some tuning up,” after which we get a gym membership, try all the machines and don’t return for a long time. We also make a half-arsed attempt at Denying ourselves things we love to eat. For a lot of people, that’s where it stops. For a lot of other people, like myself, it gradually gets better until we achieve our goals. For a select few, this instantly turns into a complete change of lifestyle, sometimes going off in the other extreme and burning people out.

I think part of the problem is that we consider eating healthily to be Denying ourselves something. Here’s the thing: You don’t have to feel like you’re losing out on delicious food just because you’re on a diet.

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Getting To Know The Angels: Steven Moffat’s Biggest Mistake

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Let’s be clear on this: The essay I’m about to link to – and consequently the title of it – was written in 2010, almost a full two years ago now. I didn’t know how terrible the subsequent series of Doctor Who were about to get, so “biggest mistake” is outdated in that sense.

The very last thing I did for my Bachelor in Film and Photography with Napier University was to write the following essay detailing exactly why I thought Blink, a Doctor Who episode – written by Steven Moffat – about a group of murderous “statues” called the Weeping Angels, was brilliant and why the two-parter that brought the Angels back with Moffat as showrunner was a huge mind fart.

For the fifth series of Doctor Who, Steven Moffat – now chief writer and executive producer – brought the Weeping Angels back, triumphantly stating in an interview for the behind-the- scenes featurettes of the show; “Let’s be clear; I’m running the show, and those were my monsters, and they were incredibly popular, so I’m bringing them out for a- a lap of honour.”vii is victory lap may have been the single biggest mistake Moffat has made, turning uncanny stone statues that sneakily displace you in time and space into generic
killing machines.

Without further ado, here’s the essay in full.

I’m linking to the PDF rather than just whacking it all in here, because it’s reasonably lengthy. Of course, in retrospect, I see that the mistake was not the Angels sequel but making Moffat showrunner in the first place. I might have a rant about that at some other point, but then again… MEH. After The Angels Take Manhattan, I lost my capacity to care about the show, to be honest.

Taken using the fisheye side of the Olloclip for the iPhone.

What’s He On About? Crowdfunding

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In this video, I go into a tiny amount of detail about Crowdfunding (Which I manage to call crowdsourcing twice) which is a newish way to fund projects that wouldn’t otherwise get funded. Read on as I go a little more in depth on the topic. Continue reading →