Jun
28
Return of The Furious Romantic
Filed Under Announcements, Life | 3 Comments
Hello. I have returned.
Big Project, while not near to finished, is currently idle, waiting for me, somewhere at the end of a transitional period. For now it has to keep waiting. Eventually I’ll spill the beans (or lay the fart, if I have eaten the beans) on what exactly the damn thing is. Not that you, my four or five readers, don’t already know. Whatever (I’ll do what I want). Just humor the fatalist.
Also, maybe this is just a byproduct of having had the luxury (not that I didn’t pay for it!) of having been able to devote myself full-time to an artistic endeavor for an extended period of time - but for the last few days I have found myself treating my old raw material stomping grounds (real life, and The New York Times) with a mixture of suspicion and caution. Why was I spending so much time reading about shit…watching shit go down? I wonder if I went a little too far in my explorations of y(our) sick little meta-culture…when I could have been…actually doing something.
And now I’ve used the word meta as a prefix. God help us all, if you can spare the time and/or the lost advertising dollars.
May
30
Another Furious Update: Mailbag Edition
Filed Under Announcements | 1 Comment
An email from one of our (my) international readers:
Dear Mr. Furious,
As a loyal reader of the website/blog, I feel very unsatisfied recently. Every time I go in search of my daily anger catalyst I come out empty. I, and all your readers deserve more posts! We need more reasons to shake our heads at the world and its absurd idiosyncrasies. Start writing more!
Yours truely,
Vadim the Avshalumov Dream
To which I respond…
Thank you, Mr. Dream, for your letter. I have sent you a “The Furious Romantic” T-shirt in the mail as a peace offering. I don’t have your address, though, so I sent it to your cousin Hakeem Olajuwon. I hope that he’ll be able to get it to you sometime soon.
I assure you that I am still angered, everyday, by the idiosyncrasies of the world (particularly the Western World). But Big Project continues to dominate my life and I do not have much time to stew and/or boil over - even in the face of so much silliness. Soon I will return full force, to catalyze and to entertain, but for now…
…just do what I do when you find your temperature rising. Drink and pursue beautiful things.
Until the next time,
The Furious Romantic
Boom.
Mar
29
How To Press Forward and Keep Yelling (Site Update)
Filed Under Announcements, Film, Writing | 3 Comments
Those few readers who have been frequenting thefuriousromantic.com since its launch in early January might remember that the site tagline wasn’t always “Press Forward and Keep Yelling.” I decided to replace the previous line (”Get Mad”) with this phrase (imperative?) the day after engaging in a short nighttime conversation with my lady love about the options that we as a couple had available to us while trying to “make it” as both artists and young Americans of the non-head-up-ass variety. I will of course welcome any additional suggestions from anyone who thinks he or she might have one, but let it be known that, for us, all we could really come up with was “Press Forward and Keep Yelling.” So there that is.
I bring this up in order to introduce, in a general way, some more specific updates regarding a few things that have been promised in earlier posts on the site but have not yet appeared. That is to say: as backwards as this may at first seem…much of the actual stuff that I had hoped to share with everyone on this site hasn’t yet arrived because…I’ve been busy pressing forward. I am also storing up for a big yell.
In more specific terms: I have been working on another project apart from this blog. This may not seem like surprising news to some of you. To others, it may not seem like something that you, as a furious reader, need to know. But there are a few important reasons, relating to what you have read so far on the site, that have left me feeling that a site update may at this time be a good idea.
The first reason is that I am truly dedicated to differentiating this site from it’s main sources of information: the media and me. I don’t want this to be a place filled only with criticisms and complaints. Complainers and critics, in my opinion, deserve only a small percentage of any one person’s attention and/or consideration - and even then, this only holds true when they are either very smart or very good (if they were both, they wouldn’t be a critic or complainer). Anyway, I want more than a small amount of attention from you. In order to earn it, I feel like I should be contributing towards “change” in addition to simply calling for it to happen.
So…yeah…I’ve been working on another project. A big one. I will provide more information on this project when the time is right, but for now I only mention it as a means of providing an explanation for the following “broken promises.”
The Fiction Section - As mentioned in my post about the literary criminality of cell phone novels, I am currently in the middle of a long, indefinite break from fiction writing. The idea, when I first started the site in January, had been to populate this section of the site with those few polished short stories that I “completed” in 2006 and 2007, as well as to possibly start developing one or two new pieces as time progressed (and depending on your reaction to the older pieces). My failure to implement these steps has occurred as a result of:
- The monopoly that my current project has held and continues to hold on my time (and life),
- The nature of my current opinions regarding the value of traditional fiction to “the audience” at large,
- And, finally, fear.
Regardless, I still do plan on releasing some of my work to the public…so…please be patient.All of these reasons - as far as I can tell - are both significant and legitimate. All will also, however, be dealt with in due time. The amount of traffic to the fiction section of the site has been very flattering. Despite the fact that it contains absolutely no content, it is the sixth-most visited page out of the 40+ that currently exist. I know that much of this traffic is due to the fact that many of my readers are friends - and friends that know me as more of a fiction writer than a blogger - but the interest is appreciated nonetheless. Thank you, and I promise that eventually, there will be fiction in the fiction section. Just go easy on me when that day comes.
The Video Section - This section of the site, for all offensive porpoises, is also empty. According to the last email that some of you received, as well as the inaugural video post, this should not be. There is, however, a good reason for the delay. The first webisode that was supposed to come-atcha came out well…but for certain reasons it can’t be finished until the next several webisodes are also finished. The next several webisodes can’t be started - never mind finished - because of the “big project.” Please understand that this is not due to a lack of initiative or desire. The video, like the fiction, will eventually arrive. But it won’t arrive until I can make sure that it’s up to par with both what I can do and what you deserve as an audience.
Feature Length Articles - Same old song and dance. A few longer posts have appeared on the site from its inception until now. But while these have (hopefully) offered a little more depth and insight than some of the quicker, shorter entries that I’ve been able to sneak in from time to time…they don’t quite represent what I’m envisioning in terms of the more substantive posts that you’ll eventually see once the “big project” is out of the way. Sadly enough, the list of yet-be-completed feature articles begins with the article that was previously going to be the introduction to this site. So….with that in mind…you can be decently sure that I’m going to get around to writing these sooner or later. If I don’t…then that means the whole endeavor has either failed or been derailed. Ain’t going to happen.
That’s really it. Once I am no longer under the heel of the “big project,” you’ll start seeing some of the material that you’ve been promised. In the meantime, please continue to visit the site for bits and pieces of fury and love.
Awwwww….
…grumble.