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Describe one of your favorite moments. Seeing my granddaughter smiling at me.

Okay, so I begin with a lie. There is really nothing “new” in the calendar biz. They just keep using old ones over and over. They change the year, and maybe a few of the pictures of gorgeous farms in Amish Country for some muscle car portraits, but if you live long enough you’re going to have to slog through recycled time. Confession: I used this picture because of the chick holding the…

This will almost certainly be my final post of 2023, and I figured I would use it to talk about, oh I dunno, life and shit, I guess. I believe that’s a sort of year-end tradition, and I’m all about tradition. Or am I all about year-end? Am I all about anything? Oooo. Sounds like a good table-setter! So the table then, I guess. The calendar year 2023 was, yet again, a rollercoaster. And, I mean,…

I never, repeat and italicize never, publish anything as I am actively writing it on my Allpoety.com account. That requires one of two things: Nerves of steel Brains of pudding Still, I did. I wrote “live” and though panicking through the entire exercise, I finished, and hit publish, and there you go. So here: https://allpoetry.com/poem/17385558-The-Button-Labeled–HELL–by-PapaV#share Yours,…

New post about having had it with my own BS.

I’m pissed. I’m frustrated. I’d like to slap a brother. Sadly I’m the brother that needs the slapping. Here’s what’s going on: MUAH! Is there anything more sexy than a guy hooked by wires to various machines? One or two people who read this blog with a modicum of regularity, (ha ha – bathroom word), will know that I have been more or less struggling with a readthrough/edit/rewrite of what I’d…

Places to go, shopping to do! On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays my wife and I generally watch our granddaughter while her parents work. This morning we got a text from our daughter-in-law saying that she’d had a tough night and was going to keep Emi home. Shortly after telling us that, she sent the picture you see to the left. Clearly, Emi had business to conduct, mom’s sleep patterns be…

New blog post to help anyone who so desires keep track.

Hey all. I’m sitting on my back porch with my laptop, listening to a neighbor’s dog bark incessantly. I can only assume it doesn’t like writers. Tough crap, doggie. Neither did my dad. PROOF! But grouch in the garbage can imitation aside, it’s quite extraordinary, and I’m forced to admit that this is the first time I’ve done this in lost-count number of years living here. Bad Scottie! Why bad…

New Post - All the News that I can cram in...

Rant Face Varengo I begin by admitting angrily that 2023 has been a rough one, in which I’ve talked, in this context, much more about all the NOT WRITING I’ve been doing. Well, I’m tired of that. I’m done with that. Enough of that garbage, already, OK? Now, of course, having allowed myself that tiny little rant, (kind of makes you think I’d do okay on a big rant, doesn’t it – save that thought…

So much more going on than I could ever have imagined in all my many years of imagining. It’s enlightening in the sort of way your elders hoped you never would be. It hurts to be brought to this realization (I know better instinctively than to call it “understanding”) but what’s to come can be even tougher. I don’t know if you, the person reading these words, have also read about the physical…

Seriously. You do. I’m not sure when this became one of the guiding philosophies in my life. My gut tells me it was sometime during college, which was also sometime during my first marriage. Okay, it was all the time of my first marriage. Hahaha. Sometimes you just have to laugh. And no, I don’t count myself as some genius like Al, over here. Clearly, he knew this same secret. Now I have never…

Things are changing. Let me tell you about it.

I. Introduction I used to smile more. I don’t know that there was a significant change in the number of tears I’ve shed, but they were nonetheless different. A good deal of the difference no doubt relates to the injuries and other medical dookie I’ve gone through in the past year. Those who follow me have probably already heard me whining about all that, so there’s no need to shout, “Gloria,…

DISCLOSURE: Not my raised fist. It’s been a while since I’ve attended to this website, and this blog in particular, with any kind of regularity. The handful of readers who know me personally will know I have an excuse. Let me rephrase. I have an excuse that I’ve been using. In a day or so, the one-year anniversary of my heart stopping and breaking my skull on the sidewalk outside will arrive. I…

It’s Just Nuts

I consider myself a fairly even-keeled guy. That could come across as a brag, I suppose, and perhaps it’s been said for just that purpose. I don’t know, because I haven’t monitored every phrase spoken during my lifetime, and those prior to but that were not written about, well those may have never happened or whatever. But I’m guessing some dude has tried to get all suave and say, “I consider…

There are indeed times when I distrust myself, my choices. I look around me and see only evidence of my inadequacy, indeed my own foolishness. I can find not one scrap of a hint of a partial clue that I am worth the ink in my fountain pen. And if at one point or another I felt my worth exceeded that of the bottle of black ink, indeed I was mistaken, delusional. Believe me when I tell you, this…

I’m goin’ down…

…down, down, down, down, down. – Freddy King, “Going Down” There are far worse things if you’ve decided to make your living as a blues musician than to have the last name King. You can ask Albert, (not really a King, shhh,) or B.B. (a real King). You can even tell everyone your name is, like, Wendleford King, and learn to play the guitar. You can hang out in the blues clubs and talk to everyone…

Hey, Y’all! A’memba me?

First things first: Big deal, Varengo! You got all fucked up physically and mentally in the first months of 2022. So you’ve started a one-man campaign to make 2020 look like everybody’s kind Aunt Jenny. My car stalls at traffic lights. We all got problems. There. Now all the people inclined towards having written me off (HA! Irony! You know, cuz I’m a writer… never mind) can go about their…