May 27 2007
Blork is hard to explain
Steve Faguy’s been writing profiles of Montreal bloggers for the past five or six months. They show up in the “Saturday Extra” section of the Saturday edition of the Montreal Gazette.
Steve interviewed me back in January (face-to-face and via email) and his profile of my blog showed up this weekend. Because it’s in the Gazette, which is part of the ghastly CanWest “Canada.com” Web experience, you might be able to read it, or you might not. It seems kind of random whether or not you need to log in to read the stories. But here it is if you want to give it a shot.
It’s a short piece – about 400 words – so its scope is pretty limited. But I’m pleased and flattered to be the subject of one of Steve’s profiles, although it’s too bad the Gaz puts such strict limits on their length. There are a few comments over on Steve’s own blog to that effect, where the consensus seems to be that “blork is hard to explain.”
I’m not sure if that means my blog is hard to explain, if the word “blork” is hard to explain, or if I personally am hard to explain. But then, if those things were easy to explain I wouldn’t have anything to write about.
(Update: if you can’t get through to the article you can see a screenshot of it after the jump. But I recommend not going there unless the link above gives you problems.)
13 Comments on “Blork is hard to explain”
Well the best way to explain what blork is would be to read blork blog, right? “The map is not the territory” — Korzybski
Hello,Blork,nice to know you here by Don’s comment of blog.Feeling you are a kindhearted and talktive person! I am Sunshine ,a 23 years’ old,Chinese girl.Want to make friends with you .Here is my blog in the Alibaba :http://blog.china.alibaba.com/blog/sxcatv88.html
Looking forward to your message!
Best wishes
Sunshine
Oooh lookit what a Gazoo article did for ya : girls from China!
400+ words that do, in fact, explain….
Great to see you in the Gazoo…
Always a pleasure to drop in to your world…
And I’m with you on the elevator thing.
Martha
Regarding being hard to explain: I think you should consider yourself in good company. When people are describing Cirque, they often say ”I can’t expalin it, you just have to see it.” We’ve taken that to be a compliment ;).
Maybe your new tagline should be ”I can’t explain it, you just have to read it”?
congrats on the mention, blork!
[parenthetically, this Steve Faguy is a funny and clever writer, which I assume is how he got to work at the Gazette freelance. But so are we--and so does one just write query letters if one wants to freelance somewhere?]
i wonder if the blurb [hehe, the blork blurb] will net you all sorts of new readers?
Hey, Ed,
I think the success of your blog is your meticulous attention to writing style and topic. Chris DeWolf of urbanphoto shares that with you and I think that that’s why you deserve the plaudits and attention.
Me, I have a very unfocused tone to my blog and I usually just type whatever I feel at the time, usually to the detriment to my mental state.
You, my dear boy, have a true “blog”. All the rest of us are mere imitations.
Y’all are too kind. Or, to use the Texan plural, all y’all are too kind. ;-)
Stony, I don’t really expect a spike in readership because of the exposure. My blog has been profiled before in the Gaz as well as other papers, and I haven’t noticed an increase. I’m sure some folks check it out, and some might even come back, but there’s no tsunami of new readers.
It might be different if this were a highly specialized blog about something that people have been waiting for. “What? There’s a blog aboutzero gravity bowling? OMG, I have to go!”
But as a sort of general purpose blog that tends to have long posts, I don’t know if it is particularly attractive to people at first glance. I’m grateful to those who do come back and read regularly, but I acknowledge that this blog sort of has to grow on you, over time (like mold, or a fungus). :-P
Nick, I always assume your rants are cathartic.
BTW, I have no idea what to make of that “Sunshine” comment. Normally I’d just flag it as spam, but I follwed the link back and it just seems to be some girl’s chinese blog or something.
hey blork–
–the “sunshine” thing? i bet you she seriously just wants a (platonic) penpal. she prob just wants to practice her english and has no one available.
–also, you know that “first wednesday” of the month thing, where the YUL blog people meet? i have vowed to make it this month [*cough* if i am invited]!
–so that would be wednesday the 6th of june, and the location is ___? can you please flag me to the info? i know it’s on rachel east, but it’s not La Banquise, right…? thanks for this public service… :-D
Stony, consider this your invitation. Although you don’t need it — YULBlog First Wednesdays are “open” events, anyone can come whether you have a blog or not. After all, it’s not a formal meeting; there’s no agenda, no speeches, nothing like that. It’s just an evening in a bar where most of the people happen to have blogs. A bystander could easily spend the whole evening there and not even know they were in t he midst of a “meeting” (although they’d wonder why the bar was so full on a Wednesday night).
So please come, and feel free to bring a friend or two or three!
The location is “La Quincaillerie” on Rachel. It’s the first door west of La Banquise.
BTW, you’re registered at YULblog.org, so you should be on the mailing list. A reminder message goes out every month a few days before the event. Maybe it’s getting spam filtered?
Hello,everyone here !I am sorry for that my former comment here brought you so strong response .Indeed I am a Chinese girl who comes here wants to practice .Am I wrong? It is my falt that last time I left you a homepage of my blog ,which has so much Chinese.Here is my English blog:http://blog.china.alibaba.com/blog/sxcatv88/chapter/i610472-p1.html.I know everyone is busy for his life ,but I do not know why you “flag it as spam”? As a Chinese girl ,I also have my own thought and dream .I work hard in my life and English ,In order to have a higher platform for my future .Am I wrong?
Hello Sunshine. You are not wrong to come here to practice English or to dream about a better future. You are welcome here any time!
I did not flag your comment as spam (if I had done that, it would have been deleted). But I wondered if it was a genuine comment or if it was spam. I get many, many spam comments every day, and sometimes it is difficult to tell when they are spam or when they are genuine. Because you had not commented here before, I wasn’t sure what to think.
Finally, I thought your comment was probably genuine. I’m glad to see I was right. :-)
God, isn’t it truly great that the universe is so bloody disorganised but that we still exist?
Spam, evil, horror, murder, nastiness, but we still exist!
Blork, you’re riding the Big Wave of the blogger universe for all of us. I thank you for that.
And I promise more irrational rants in the near future. If only I could get all the comments that you do . . . :)