The Blork Blog

This whole “My name is John Kerry and I am reporting for duty” thing is embarrassing. It is such a bald-faced photo-op/sound bite that it makes him and his campaign look even more cheesy and contrived than the other guy’s. How about inspiring us with a thoughtful and truthful speech instead? How about being honest [...]

Eating Flowers On Wednesday night of this week, Martine and I had the great pleasure of dining at the table of Martine (la banlieusarde). It was a meal of many spectacular elements, including crab bisque, stuffed grilled calamari, salad plucked from her garden, wild salmon and scallop ceviché, and other tasty delights. The meal was [...]

(From a post in an online travel forum, 2000)) Our plane was sitting on the tarmac in Houston, waiting out the wind, when the lightening struck. Torrential rain and sharp bolts of lightning striking the runway were not what I wanted to see while crammed into that hot metal tube. Finally, after about thirty minutes, [...]

Here’s the 12 Monkeys theme for July: Describe your first impression of Montreal. If you’ve never been to Montreal or have no idea about the city, or if you were born in Montreal and have no sense of a “first impression,” then describe your first impression of another city — preferably one you went to [...]

(From an email dispatch sent to some friends during my first trip to San Francisco, in early 2000.) Union Square is only two blocks away, so I scouted that area out, with its high-end Armani-type shops and all. The middle of the square was an art market, with artists displaying their wares and selling them. [...]

(From an email sent to a few friends in 1998, a year after my father’s death.) My dad lived his whole life in fear that he would drop dead any minute due to the heart condition he acquired in his youth through rheumatic fever. I always felt that his fear severely limited how he lived [...]

It’s hot and I’m lazy and I’d like to try something different. For the next little while, instead of writing new stuff I will recycle some things that I wrote for other online media during the 1990s (primarily email, but also forums and the like). I call it protoblogging — when you blog pre-written stuff [...]