This Bland Drudge

blog.johnnydale.com
Hi, I'm Johnny Dale, the author of the YA serial The Darling Budds. Rearrange the letters and you get This Bland Drudge, where I post links and images that fans of the Budds might find interesting.
 

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  • June 2, 2012 3:54 pm

    “We somehow fooled ourselves into thinking we owed random people the right to comment on our work literally on our work…”

    Joel Johnson, writing at Animal:

    Moreover, the most active commenters [on internet articles] are given a sense of entitlement by the deference they’ve been given by media experts and all-internet-is-good-internet cheerleaders over the years, leading to authors who live in perpetual fear of shaming by the very people who are supposedly their most ardent fans.

    We somehow fooled ourselves into thinking we owed random people the right to comment on our work literally on our work, that this was somehow an integral part of the commons. This is perhaps my most controversial personally held belief about comments, but only so to the people who are so insecure they take personal offense at being [told] they haven’t earned the respect to be listened to more than a basic, stranger-level civility.

    Comments are a dinner party. If I’ve invited you to have a seat at my table, at least have the courtesy to not call me an idiot for serving you food slightly different than you preferred or flinging the china at my dog because that isn’t even the right color of dog anyway, duh.

  • May 23, 2012 4:01 pm
    Current Status

    Current Status

  • May 23, 2012 1:53 pm
  • May 23, 2012 12:37 pm
    Obviously this outfit is cute, but you really have to show a lot of commitment to a look to carry a dictionary around on your back all day…
(via The Sartorialist) View high resolution

    Obviously this outfit is cute, but you really have to show a lot of commitment to a look to carry a dictionary around on your back all day…

    (via The Sartorialist)

  • May 23, 2012 12:33 pm

    The Five Best Photos Of David Bowie Ever

  • May 21, 2012 12:53 pm

    "A swarm of benign bees on a hot summer day."

    — Vincent Canby on Maya Angelou’s poems

  • May 21, 2012 10:55 am

    "You can make more money than your grandparents did. You can also drive really fast, and you can change your sex. You can find friends without having to go to church, and you can see movies in your own house. You can get pictures of naked people almost anywhere, and you can curse out loud freely. You can buy dinner in a box and not have to wash anything after you eat it. You can fly to any city you want and meet a sexual partner, or you can talk to them on the phone. You can have bright light twenty-four hours a day without having to clean soot off the walls, and you can listen to any music you want anytime, anywhere. You can find people everywhere who like exactly the same things you do, and you can print your own books. You can buy vegetables from the other side of the earth, and you can build a house in a day. You can be perfectly warm or cool at every moment, and you can stay in school all your life. You can have sex fourteen thousand times and not have a baby. You can write with pens that don’t dry out, or leak, or have to be plucked from a bird, and you can hear about people being hacked to death thousands of miles away. You can see pictures through telescopes almost to the end of space and from the beginning of time, and you can keep milk fresher longer than ever before. You can shit in a bowl and then whisk it away, and you can visit caged wild animals in the middle of a city. You can buy things to make you see and hear better, and you can live anywhere you want. You can get your face stretched tight like when it was new, and you can be sick and not die for a really really long time. You can even wash your clothes in a machine so why can’t you figure out a way to be happy all the time?"

    — Chris Ware, The Acme Novelty Library

  • May 18, 2012 5:17 pm
  • May 16, 2012 1:41 pm
  • May 16, 2012 11:59 am
    dandyportraits:

Sven Raphael Schneider of Gentleman’s Gazette photographed by Rose Callahan in NYC on Jan 2012 from The Dandy Portraits

    dandyportraits:

    Sven Raphael Schneider of Gentleman’s Gazette photographed by Rose Callahan in NYC on Jan 2012 from The Dandy Portraits

  • May 15, 2012 6:01 pm
  • May 15, 2012 4:02 pm
  • May 15, 2012 3:32 pm
  • May 15, 2012 2:01 pm

    from The Darling Budds:

    Emily parked her silver Mini in front of Michael’s dark stone house. “So, you can hang out for a while?” she asked.

    “Tonight? Sure, I guess. Do you want to see what the rest of The Gang is doing? We could have a midnight reunion.”

    “Actually, um…” Emily tucked some hair behind her ear and laughed once or twice. “Do you, I don’t know…do you want to go up to your room and fool around?”

    “Absolutely.” Michael laughed and looked over at her, smiling broadly. (Something about his smile, though, gave her courage; he seemed too eager to look like he was laughing it off, just in case.) He was quiet for a few beats, his smile settling into a shy grin. “Wait…seriously?”

    Emily bit her lip, then nodded her head softly. “If you are.”

    Michael glanced past her, into the street, then looked back at her face. “Yeah, okay,” he whispered.

    Emily smiled and looked down at his hand. She reached over to take it, and he met her halfway. His hand was warm and large, surprisingly rough at the fingertips. Her hand seemed to fit in his palm by design, and he held it as though it was something that had just been born. “I guess we should go inside, then,” she said softly.

    But neither of them moved, there in the moonless summer night. Not for a long time.

    Read More.

  • May 15, 2012 11:53 am