I am restoking my commonplace book, dogfood. It’s a tumblr blog I started ages ago so I’d have a place to just dump stuff I liked so I could come back and find inspiration when I need it.
Much of it consists of photos I take of cool stuff, but I think I’m going to start using it for writing stuff too, to collect all the ideas and quotes and factoids I glean here and there and have just been storing in my private Evernote notebooks. Most of it will appeal mainly to me but who knows, some of it might spark you too.
I’m adding the feed to the right hand column of this blog too, so you can see the latest when you come here.
The URL is dannybaba.tumblr.com/. Danny baba is what our servants called me when I was a kid and lived with my grandparents in Pakistan. My grandmother used to sing me a lullaby in Urdu that went:
Ninny, baba, ninny.
Makan roti chini
Makan roti hogyah
Danny baba sogyah.
As a result, I called my grandmother “Ninny.”
Anyway, this may reinvigorate my desire to write and share stuff on the Internet again. I have entered this phase of late where I am doing stuff but am not sure what to share of it. As result, whenever I think of posting, I’m not sure if I can manage to craft it into something worth your while.
I also keep hearing about the death of the blog, which I actually find rather exciting. I started this blog 13 years ago, essentially to share jokes with my old pal Richard Bell, and never imagined it would become what it had over the decades. Maybe if I scale it back to just a bunch of jokes and discoveries rather than portentous, ponderous polemics designed to change the world, I and the world will be better off. Maybe that will be my resolution for 2017.
Danny Gregory 
I do hope blogs don’t go away… I enjoy reading quite a lot of them, getting in depth info instead of sound bites on various social media, some of which I don’t even do. So please don’t stop the blog… not yet… please, please
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On the contrary. I have doubled my blogosphere.
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Which reminds me, I must delete most of the 30 blogs I have started, then abandoned over the years!
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Thirteen is quite young for a blog Danny (I’ll be starting my 20th year of blogging next October!) Please continue to be portentous and polemical and disarmingly funny; one eye open wide and one eye closed is a good way of looking at the world these days.
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Oh, Danny, write on and On and on…….you keep me REAL! In contact with real art, real food, real dogs, real humor, real get off your butt and draw talk!
Happy New Blogggggg Year, loved the Urdu song from your grandmother!
My grandmother used to sing “You are my sunshine to me and this reminded me of that song! Inky hugs!
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I have not heard of the death of blogs-but then I’m always a day late and a dollar short. I feel the same about my blogs. Lately I just can’t hit publish. I second guess everything I write to post anymore. But you shouldn’t quit. I find this one of the few blogs I’ve consistently read through the years. You keep writing, I’ll keep reading!
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Do as you must. Just make yourself happy!i like your blog as I never know what I might find here!
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Omg, that title made me cackle soo loud! You grabbed my attention right away. I ❤️.
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I echo other readers’ comments, I actively prefer blogs because, when written by people who take time and care to compose a piece, they actually give so much more than the whole lot of social media lumped together. I am not even on FB and, frankly, what does one ‘get’ from Twitter or Instagram? The former is the natural habitat of the dim-witted who think that composing a short soundbite equates to being Oscar Wilde [I’ve got news for you idiots, there will never be another Wilde], while the latter is now more and more infested with advertorials disguised as ‘my life in pics’. I am on both, so I absolutely know what it is like!
For those of us who actively ENJOY reading [more than 10 words at a time] and writing [ditto] the blog will never die. I surely hope yours won’t Danny. Happy holidays to all of you reading, I hope you are having a restful time.
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Danny, to quote Carole King, “Where you lead, I will follow”, and you KNOW I’m in for anything titled “Dogfood”! Happy New Year in whatever form it takes 🙂
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