Fun with the Elections

Election Poster 3

I’m not on the ballot, but don’t let that stop you from voting for me on May 24.
I’m due to be evicted before that, so I might not even have a say.

It’s also worth keeping in mind the fact that if we have a largely corrupt political system, it’s because we have a largely corrupt electorate.

If you vote for someone based on your own self-interest, rather than who will be good for the community, don’t be surprised, and don’t complain, when their career is governed by their own self-interest.

That said, however you vote, vote

Check the register here.

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Dublin’s Fair City

I read recently that some private company has spent over six hundred million buying up property in Ireland. mostly residential. I can’t help wondering how much of that property will end up being rented by the government for use as social housing. This is something that’s been on my mind since I got my own eviction notice. The house was bought by a company that didn’t exist a few months before they bought the house. There’s a list of companies involved, and it looks like they own each other.

Anyway, because of the housing situation in Dublin, I qualify for a thing called Homeless HAP, basically a higher form of rent subsidy for people at risk of homelessness. Out of curiosity I looked up the cost of a mortgage and discovered that on a one bedroom apartment, the repayments on a mortgage are less than the government currently pay in rent. That’s not to suggest the government should simply buy apartments and hand them over, but if they were to buy apartments, and give people a life interest in them, paying for the upkeep and what-not, it could do a lot of good. Yes, some people would take unfair advantage of the situation, but more would use it as a stepping stone to a better life.

Makes you wonder what’s going on.

I have just over two weeks left, let’s see how it works out.

Wow

flyer compressed

I didn’t realise how long it’s been since I updated this blog. In that time I’ve had some really positive rejections from theatres and magazines. Positive because they asked me to submit again, so I figure I’m doing something right. I’ve also had an acceptance, but they said someone else would be in touch for my details, so who knows.

Anywho, what prompted this post is a flyer I’ve designed for Jelena Demchenkova’s upcoming exhibition. All the details are there, so if you’re in Blanch come along, and if you’re not, you can get there easily enough on the 39 or 39A bus.

Here’s a link to Jelena’s Facebook page.

 

Online Cupid Onstage

After the success of my one act plays, Examine You Zip, and Godot, I’ve written a full length, Online Cupid. It’s based on my novella of the same name

An unnamed man interrogates the online cupid who talked him into buying an upgrade on a dating site, and then dropped him as soon as he made the payment. She insists she knows nothing about this, but if it wasn’t her, then who? And why?

PM me if you’d like to read it with a view to putting it on stage.

Haiku No. 01

There is a Salmon-
pink cloud in the sky tonight,
gently dissolving.

Lost Voices

Lost Voices is a show I was in in 2016, I also did some work on the script. The show is about the children who did during the 1916 Easter Rising  in Dublin. I’m very proud to have been a part of this production. If memory serves we did only three performance at the Ballyfermot Civic and Community Centre. As well as members of the local community theatre, we also brought in local schools. I played three parts, one on film and two on stage. That’s me at the beginning announcing that the republic has been declared.

Me & the Movies

The Company of Thieves book cover

Trying to think of who I could send this to in the hope of getting reviews, because despite getting four stars on Barnes & Nobel and Goodreads, under a different title, I still have no reviews on Amazon, which means, of course that sales are extremely slow.

Last night I realised it is most likely to appeal to fans of Tarantino. Like his early work, at least how it appears to me, I’m of the opinion that character is plot, perhaps because I trained as an actor. You put a character in an environment and if that character is true they can only behave in certain ways. This is true whether they’re heroes or villains. And of course heroes can be villainous, villains can be heroic, everyone has private motivations that we might never suspect, and almost no one is exactly who they appear to be.

I might be mistaken when I say this would appeal to Tarantino fans. I’m not a big fan of his work, I still think Reservoir Dogs is his best movie.

Pulp Fiction is funnier but I must have missed half that movie the first time I saw it because I was laughing and looking forward to seeing it again.

Jackie Brown is a much more mature movie (say that really fast!) but I feel it’s let down by him trying to be clever.

I haven’t seen either of the Kill Bill movies and both Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained bored me, so I haven’t bothered with him since.

I’m still acting and with the movie business being what it is I might be shooting my career in the head writing all of the above, but that’s ok; I’m a stage actor! That shouldn’t be taken as snobbery, by the way, movie acting is much more difficult.