Thread: comments

INSANITY

***********************

Because the plea of insanity is not an option,

they speak of political, economic, social and cultural conditions

beyond their control.

Ask them why they keep dividing and subdividing the nation,

they will say it’s the opposition that does that.

Ask them why they hate to assume responsibility,

and they will call you “a piece of sh*t who doesn’t have

Mt. Ararat in his heart.”

*

DEMOCRACY

******************************

In a democracy there is always a remote possibility

that the right thing will be said and done.

*

ON WRITING

*************************

Gide is right: writing gets progressively more difficult.

Mann is also right when he says writing is difficult

especially for a writer.

*

MY AMBITION

************************

To write prose and verse that is as accessible

as “to be or not to be,”

“Our Father who art in heaven,” and

“There is nothing new under the sun.”

*

NOTHING NEW

**************************

Everything that needs to be said has been said.

All we can do now is quote, paraphrase, abridge, repeat,

and when necessary, expand.

#

ENEMIES

**************************

If my enemy’s enemy is my friend,

what about his friends?

Who would have thought Turks

would have more friends in Washington than us,

even after millions of dollars wasted on politicians?

*

AT HOME IN THE WORLD

**************************************

Some people are born equipped for life.

I wasn't. Never learned how.

Never felt at home in the world.

Who represents Armenians more:

our fat-bellied bosses, bishops, and benefuctors

or our starving poets?

*

TIME

******************

It will take time, they say,

assuming time to be on their side.

It wasn't in the Ottoman Empire.

Neither was it in the USSR and the Middle East,

nor even in our own beloved homeland.

*

MONEY

**********************

Making money: I can’t imagine anything more degrading.

The only reason I made money was to quit making money.

*

JUSTICE

***************

A headline in this morning’s paper reads:

“Access to justice in Canada ‘abysmal’ law group report says.”

So is everywhere else, alas!

#

THE WORD & THE SWORD

*************************************

The OLD TESTAMENT and DAS KAPITAL are,

without any doubt, two books that changed the world

and almost everyone in it.

*

Who reads Hegel today?

Only a handful of academics

who do not always agree on what he said

or meant to say.

And yet Hegel fully qualifies as one

of the most influential philosophers of all time

if only because Marx is unthinkable without him.

*

What did Dante and Shakespeare change?

Only the lives of a few translators.

There are twenty-two published English translations

of Dante and a new one (by Clive James)

has just come out.

*

Hitler’s MEIN KAMPF and

Thomas Mann’s THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN:

which has been more influential?

The only thing I can say

with any degree of certainty is that,

like the Good Lord, the “word” moves

in mysterious ways

and literary merit is not one of them.

#

UNFORGETTABLE LINES

**********************************************

“In a forest it rains twice” (German saying).

*

There are some lines that once heard or read

are never forgotten.

Lines from movies:

“I am going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.”

“The cat is in the bag and the bag is in the river.”

“Gee, I wish we had one of those Doomsday machines.”

*

Closer to home:

“Treason and betrayal are in our blood” (Raffi).

*

“The end is another beginning” (Baruir Sevag).

*

“To the poor everyone is generous with advice.”

*

“Pigs never see the stars.”

*

“Truth is a language that if not spoken is forgotten” (Hagop Baronian).

*

“Every Armenian has another Armenian

whom he considers his mortal enemy” (Derenik Demirjian).

*

“You write a hit play

the same way that you write a flop” (Saroyan).

*

“Let us learn to be human by observing animals” (Aramais Sahakian).

*

“He was a very passionate man. He was an Armenian” (Chekhov).

*

“You must burn in order to enlighten” (Toumanian).

#

Q/A

**************

If we were introduced to our self as seen by others,

would we recognize him?

*

ONLY IN ARMENIA

*******************************

Can you win a political election

if you have the personality of a non-person

and the charisma of a robot?

That question has been answered in Armenia.

*

THE SOPRANOS

***************************

How can a non-Italian like David Chase,

creator/writer/producer of THE SOPRANOS,

know so much about Italians?

The answer: very much like Mario Puzo

he is Italian and his real name is DiCesare.

For more on the subject see DIFFICULT MEN

by Brett Martin (New York. 2013).

*

THE CASE OF THE DISAPPEARING NOSE

***********************************************

In her biography of SAUL STEINBERG (New York, 2012)

Deirdre Bair speaks of “Armenian noses,

one bigger than the other” (page 355).

I once heard one of our political activists say:

“Our political parties have played a key role

in the preservation of our identity in the Diaspora.”

If the case of our disappearing proboscis is an index,

they have been doing a lousy job.

#

ON FAITH

*************************

Faith is not what it pretends to be.

Faith is an imaginary antidote to imaginary fears.

*

ANSWERS

**********************

To readers who say they don’t always understand

my kind of writing, I say what I was told by adults

whenever I asked an inconvenient question:

“You will find out when you grow up.”

*

ON BEING TRANSPARENT

***********************************

If we are an open book to others,

it may be because we brag too much.

Only idiots brag about what they don’t have.

Smart, progressive, Christian?

Don’t make me laugh!

*

HATRED UNTO DEATH

**********************************

In his last book MORTALITY (New York, 2012)

the late Christopher Hitchens regrets his early death

from cancer because, he writes, he will not have the pleasure

of reading “the obituaries of elderly villains

like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger.”

I like that. I prefer honest hatred

to dishonest sermons on forgiveness and love.

*

BAD ADVICE

**********************

When told to be more tolerant and positive, I say,

I refuse to entertain sentiments I don’t have.

In the name of what, may I ask?

To flatter the swollen egos of morally bankrupt nonentities?

*

EMPTY BOAST

********************

“No one understands Turks as well as we do!”

Oshagan once bragged. My question is:

What did we do with our superior brand

of knowledge and understanding except

wait until it was too late?

#



PEZEVENGS (corrected version)

*******************************

There is a type of self-assessed “authentic” Armenian,

born and raised in the shadow of Mt. Ararat,

who views diasporan Armenians with Turkish surnames

as second-class citizens or “white niggers”

in need of his political and cultural guidance.

*

Thoroughly stupefied, brainwashed and

moronizedby Kremlin propaganda

this so-called first-class pure-blooded specimen

whose preferred medium is Russian

operates on the assumption that

the USSR was a more civilized place

than the Ottoman Empire

and Stalin a morally superior butcher

than the Sultan and Talaat.

*

Therefore, in solidarity with

my Dajgahayer (Turkish-Armenian)

brothers and sisters

I plan to change my surname

from Baliozian to Baliozoghlu.



#

WE ARE A NATION

*********************************

We are a nation that has suffered genocide.

Delete the Genocide from our history

and our collective profile would disintegrate

into fragments or tribes that have been

loyal and obedient servants to first-class swine.

*

It addition to a profile the Genocide has also given us

a rallying point, not to say full-time jobs

to scholars, teachers, Turcocentric ghazetajis,

fund-raisers, Genocide-Recognition tax collectors,

activists, lobbyists, and memoirists.

*

Don’t misunderstand me.

I am not implying we should be grateful to the perps.

I am only saying let’s give the Devil his due.

*

All professions, we are told,

are “conspiracies against the laity.”

We have all heard of cynics

who use someone else’s crucifixion

to make a comfortable living.

The blame-gave is the favorite sport

of our leadership.

Zohrab tells us it is a mistake

to confront our problems

with lamentation.

*

I am not casting aspersions.

All I am saying is

as human beings

we share the frailties of our species.

We are not a morally superior nation.

But we are a nation.

We…

#

TURKS QUOTE ME?

******************************

That may be because my critics

keep calling me a “denialist.”

*

You expect me to believe you are

a dedicated and selfless patriot?

But my belief system tells me

“the better they classify themselves,

the worse they are.”

*

You want to know what I think of Arabs

and Muslims in general?

All I know about them is that

they want to be loved by the world

even as they hate one another unto death.

Could something similar be said of us?

*

You say everything I say about Armenians

proves that I don’t know them,

I don’t understand them,

I can’t stand them.

So what’s wrong with that?

The people have consistently rejected,

even betrayed and starved our writers.

If you don’t like the word justice,

how about retaliation?

Unless of course you are one of those

who can dish it out but can’t take it.

#

POLITICIANS

****************************

An American mayor on TV

when told she doesn’t behave like a politician:

“That’s because I am not a politician.

I am a public servant.”

*

WISDOM

******************

To read the unwritten and to hear the unsaid

are the beginning of all wisdom.

*

DISAGREEMENTS

**************************

When an honest man disagrees with me

I begin by questioning the validity of my own convictions.

But when a crook disagrees with me

I feel vindicated.

*

THEY ARE AHEAD OF US

**********************************

Turks have produced their share of dissidents

because they know what compulsive and habitual liars

their politicians and academics are.

*

I REPEAT MYSELF?

*****************************

So does our reality!

*

Q/A

*****************

Did he use poison gas against his own people,

including women and children?

An irrelevant question.

He is guilty as hell because

his father is his role model.

He thinks he can save the nation

by reducing its cities to rubble.

He enjoys the support of imams and Putin.

Like all dictators, including their Muslim variants,

he is a natural-born killer.

*

VOLTAIRE SPEAKS

**************************

“…and because it was a religious war,

there were no survivors.”

#

POLITICS ABC

*************************

There are divisions everywhere,

even within the family unit.

A healthy family is one in which

divisions are reconciled by means

of mutual tolerance, understanding,

compromise and consensus.

*

Divisions are symptoms of failure in leadership.

Reconciling differences is one

of the most important functions of the state.

*

To assume that you can stifle discontent

and impose harmony by force or massacre

is an Ottoman misconception.

*

Compromise and consensus don’t happen on their own.

They are man-made. In politics

they are results of competent statesmanship.

*

The Syrian leadership had several decades

during which to reconcile its internal conflicts and differences.

It failed to do so.

What’s happening today is a consequence of that failure.

*

The blame-game explains nothing.

Its sole aim is to deny failure and reject responsibility.

*

Honesty is a universal and invisible empire.

We are either its citizens or cowardly liars

who refuse to face facts and deal with reality.

#

IMMORTALITY

********************************

On the radio this morning

when asked if he believes in immortality,

a self-described “Christian agnostic” replied:

“Only in the sense that my DNA will survive

in my children and grandchildren.”

*

WISDOM OF OLD AGE

*******************************

Once upon a time I sought the company

of fellow Armenians.

Now I avoid them.

Ignorance is a luxury only the young can afford.

*

TWO BIBLES

*********************

There are two Bibles:

God’s (written)

and the Devil’s (unwritten).

The first is used for sermons.

*

BEAUTY AND THE BEAST

********************************

Leonard Bernstein to Glenn Gould

after he played

Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto:

“You played so beautifully in the cadenza

that I almost came in my pants.”

*

IMMORTALITY (II)

**********************************

I have already lived twice as long

as the average Armenian writer.

That’s long enough for me.

#

TRIBALTHINKING

**********************************

If Assad is on our side,

he can no wrong.

If the rebels are against us

they can do nothing right.

The mindset of tribal people

without a moral compass.

*

UNGRATEFUL BASTARD!

*************************************

Because I diagnosed him

as a sado-masochistic fascist

and an advanced case of narcissism,

he refuses to talk to me.

Instead of gratitude for saving him

from many trips to the shrink,

I am treated as a hostile witness.

But then, no one has ever said

gratitude is our strong suit.

*

SHARING WISDOM

**************************

Some readers refuse to share their wisdom with me.

They only say “You know nothing and understand even less,”

or words to that effect.

Throughout our millennial history

our writers have been misunderstood, ignored,

rejected, abused, starved, even betrayed

and murdered by the people and their representatives.

So they can dish it out but they can’t take it?

*

PREVENTING MEASURE

**********************************

There is a park, a lake, and a river a block from my house.

To prevent anyone from crapping on my grave

I have decided to have my ashes scattered in one of them.

#

ON THE RISE & FALL OF EMPIRES

*************************************************

Two thousand years ago

-- give and take a decade or two –

England was part of the Roman Empire.

Who could have predicted then

that from the ashes of one empire

another would rise?

*

What will the world look like

two thousand years from now?

If the Turks acquired an empire of their own,

why not the Zulus?

*

What if after long centuries

of degradation, darkness, and filth

a new generation of Armenians says enough is enough!

We want our own place in the sun.

We want to choose our own allies

and, with their cooperation and help,

our own empire?

*

As I write, we are witnessing the gradual collapse

of the American and Russian empires.

Who will replace them?

Can anyone guess?

When it comes to the rise and fall of empires,

your guess or anyone else’s is as good as mine.

*

To say we will never have an empire of our own

is as absurd as to say we will.

I choose to say neither.

What I say is, in the realm of possibilities

nothing is impossible.

Or, in the words of Jean-Paul Sartre:

“As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me,

but what they can become.”

#

VIGNETTES

**************************

As a child I had the IQ of a parrot

and the understanding of an ape.

*

More often than not

lies make more sense than the truth.

*

Fiction is more predictable than reality.

*

We will never know all the consequences

of our actions and words.

*

A child will believe everything he is told

by an adult.

*

Superstitions acquired in childhood

are never abandoned.

*

Children educated by rabbis, imams, and bishops

will grow up to be Jewish, Muslim, and Christian respectively.

*

Human conflicts begin in the cradle

and end in the grave.

*

There is no law that says

it is criminal to deceive children.

*

Wars and massacres are planned and executed

by ruthless operators who speak in the name of God

that is merciful and compassionate.

*

Whoever said Planet Earth is the insane asylum

of a distant galaxy knew what he was saying.

*

Am I right or wrong?

I don’t know and I don’t care to know.

My past is an encyclopedia of blunders:

one more will make no difference.

#

CONSIDER SYRIA

*********************************

We are perennial dupes because

we are satisfied with easy explanations.

Turks massacred us because they are evil.

We are a progressive nation because

we were first to convert to Christianity.

We are smart because

“it takes seven Jews to fool an Armenian.”

Russians are our Big Brothers.

*

All these explanations that have acquired

the status of slogans can be easily torn to shreds

by anyone with a single-digit IQ

and a superficial knowledge of history.

*

Case in point:

what’s the use of being smart in the market place

if we are idiots in politics?

And if we are idiots in politics

what’s the use of being smart anywhere else?

*

Turks are evil?

Can you name a nation that has not committed massacres?

And if you can’t name one,

consider Syria and the fact that

most Armenians support the massacres.

*

As for Russians being our brothers:

Russians are nobody’s brothers,

not even their own.

#

COMMON SENSE & HISTORY

********************************************

In their initial phase

my greatest blunders appeared to me

as triumphs of logic and common sense.

*

When the distribution of wealth is uneven

there will be benefactors;

and where there are benefactors

brown-nosers will prosper.

*

In a dishonest environment

honesty will be perceived as a capital offense.

Common sense may be against me

but history is with me.

*

To say we need solutions

is to conspire with habitual and compulsive liars.

*

One of our most cherished ideas:

If you can blame it on others,

why assume responsibility?

*

In political and religious propaganda

lies make more sense than the truth.

What is the truth?

I don’t know and I may never know it.

I am neither a prophet nor a messiah.

I am only a scribbler whose sole function is

exposing lies and liars.

#

QUESTION I

******************************

Which is worse or more damaging

to the economy of a nation :

street crime or dishonest chief executive officers?

*

QUESTION II

**********************

Which is worse or more damaging

to our survival as a nation:

what the Turks did to us at the turn of the last century

or what our own political leadership has been doing to us

for the last two thousand years?

*

ON STYLE

************************

Charlatans are long-winded.

Be brief. If what you say makes sense

you don’t need a defense attorney.

*

SLOGANS

******************

We preach “freedom or death”

but practice life at all cost,

no matter how degraded and dehumanized.

*

CONFESSION

**********************

Like everyone else I was born stupid

and I was educated to say “yes, sir!” to idiots

until I realized that stupidity is

neither an asset nor a terminal condition.

#

OBSERVATIONS

*************************

Loyalty or subservience to the leadership

is not a definition of patriotism but of fascism.

*

The only good thing about life is that

it is above ground.

*

Sometimes we forget that Assad sits

on a “throne of blood,” like Macbeth,

and reality is catching up with him

as it tends todo sooner or later with all of us.

*

If someone whose judgment I don't trust

were to agree with me,

I would disagree with myself.

*

Andrea De Carlo: "He tells me to follow my instinct.

But what if I have two of them?"

#

PROVERBS

***************************

If you like proverbs you will love

THE DICTIONARY OF MODERN PROVERBS

Compiled by C, Doyle, W. Mieder & F.R. Shapiro

(London: Yale University Press, 2012).

Some samples follow:

*

“The best man for the job

may be a woman.”

*

“If you aren’t the lead dog,

the scenery never changes.”

*

“Life is a shit sandwich:

the more bread you have,

the less shit you eat.”

#

SPEAKING OF OBAMA

**********************************

Next time you speak of Obama, ask yourself:

Would Romney have been a better choice?

*

To brainwash children means to train them

to say “Yes, sir!” instead of “Hell, no!”

*

Cherish your enemies,

you may learn more from them

than from your friends.

*

Our most dangerous enemy is not the Turk

but the Turk within us.

*

I find it very difficult to love my fellow men

after reading my morning paper.

#

NOBODY’S PERFECT

********************************

Whenever I am told “Nobody’s perfect”

(meaning “Shut the f*ck up!”) I say:

“Dzour nesdink, shidag khossink.”

In other words: our own imperfections

should not prevent us from discussing

our own motherf*ckers.

*

My contempt for loud-mouth Armenians from the Levant

is not mine but that of a Levantine elder statesmen

who once told me:

“They walk past an elementary school

and brag about their university degrees.”

*

Neither is my antipathy for Islam mine

but that of Sunnis and Shias

for one another.

*

You cannot deceive God,

not even a non-existent God

because God is another word for Reality.

*

The right word at the right time

can be as effective as a hammer-blow to the head.

#

CONFESSION (XXII)

*************************

Since I have no political ambitions

I don’t mind admitting that

I have been wrong most of my life

and I am probably wrong today.

If to be right means to kill someone

I’d much rather be wrong.

*

My favorite illusion:

As human being most people are equipped

to see the light of reason.

*

Addicts of the blame-game

refuse to believe that we have played a key role

in our history and we continue to do so today.

*

Anonymous: “History does not repeat itself,

but it rhymes.”

#

WORSE THAN A CRIME

*************************************

A friend of mine once wrote a book

titled AS OTHERS SEE US

but was careful to quote and discuss

mostly friendly witnesses.

*

I committed a worse blunder:

I wrote a book on Armenian history

from which I excluded anything

that may be remotely classified as negative;

and what’s even more repellent to me now,

I never thought of what I was writing

as propaganda. Like all idiots and dupes

I believed it was my patriotic duty

to treat my readers as idiots and dupes.

*

Assad’s crime we are told is using poison gas

to kill his own people.

What we are not told is that

his blunder consisted in having made no effort

to reconcile and unite his fragmented nation.

*

I think it was Talleyrand who once said to Napoleon:

“It was worse than a crime, Sire, it was a blunder.”

#

ON TEXTBOOKS

*********************************

There is one past but there are

ten thousand historians.

*

ON THE STUDY OF HISTORY

*********************************

There are two basic approaches to the study of history:

objective and hysterical.

*

FROM AN OBJECTIVE STUDY

OF ARMENIAN HISTORY

***********************************

We were divided by Turks;

we were divided by Bolsheviks;

and we are now being divided by our own

Ottomanized, Stalinized, and moronized bureaucraps (sic).

*

FROM A TEXTBOOK

ON POLITICAL SCIENCE AND DIPLOMACY

**************************************************

Never fight your enemies if you can divide them.

Remember the Armenians.

*

FROM A TEXTBOOK

ON BRAINWASHING

*******************************

After you moronize them

you can even convince them to be

just about the smartest people on earth.

#

DISAGREEMENTS

*********************************

Many readers disagree with me.

That does not surprise me in the least.

In human affairs disagreement is the rule

rather than the exception.

*

Lawyers and politicians disagree all the time;

so do bishops and imams; and in our case

bishops (Etchmiadznagan) and bishops (Anteliassagan).

*

More often than not however,

disagreements are rooted not in ideas

but in sources of income, or power and prestige.

We live in a world where ideas have become

as relevant as the song of a non-existent bird

in an imaginary forest.

*

Speaking of our ruling classes,

and more specifically our neo-commissars

and crypto-Panchoonies: they have discovered

a new way of dealing with their critics:

they refuse to acknowledge their existence;

and it seems to work provided of course

you ignore the high assimilation rate in the Diaspora

and the exodus in the Homeland.

Criticizing them might as well be an exercise in futility;

and exposing their would be like trying to kill a man

who is committing suicide.
#

ORSON WELLES SPEAKS

************************************

He hated the Irish, beginning with Spencer Tracy.

In his recently published CONVERSATIONS he explains:

“Seven hundred years of bitter oppression

changed their character, gave them

that passive meanness and cunning.”

*

By contrast, he loved Hungarians:

“I love Hungarians to the point of sex!

I almost get a hard-on when I hear a Hungarian accent;

I am so crazy about them.”

*

On Israelis: “The only time they make good music

is when Zubin Mehta, a Hindu, comes to conduct.”

*

On Coppola: “THE GODFATHER is the glorification

of a bunch of bums who never existed.”

*

More to follow….

#

ORSON WELLES SPEAKS (II)

******************************************

On intellectuals:

“They are the biggest pushovers.

They love power.

They cluster around whatever golden boy,

or man, is in power and begin to justify it.”

*

On writers:

“I don’t like Dostoevsky.

Tolstoy is my writer.

Gogol is my writer.

I’m not a Joyce guy…”

*

On women:

“They are another race.

You can’t tell them the truth.

You have to lie.”

*

On Russians:

“They have terrible taste.

They are a people of genius;

and they are very literal.

They are ‘machine-made.’

Poor people.”

*

On American journalists: ‘

“Cocksuckers with typewriters.”

*

On Laurence Olivier:

“He was so in love with his own image

it was terribly hard for him

to resist going down on himself.”

#

ONCE BRAINWASHED

ALWAYS BRAINWASHED

*********************************************

That’s the only way to explain why so far

Christians have failed to convert Muslims

and vice versa.

*

Both bishops and imams agree that

when it comes to brainwashing

children are more receptive candidates;

and what’s even more outrageous,

they call it education.

*

The overwhelming majority of people

are born, live, and die as dupes.

*

I judge the importance of a book

by the number of prejudices and preconceptions

it exposes and shatters beyond repair.

*

An honest Christian will be honest

only in the eyes of his co-religionists.

An honest infidel or hetanos is an oxymoron.

*

An Armenian has no use for writers.

He is a man of action who understands everything

and knows nothing – or is it the other way around?

#

ON SERMONIZERS

******************************

Where preaching to the converted

has become a profitable enterprise,

exposing lies will be seen as a criminal offence.

*

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

***********************************

I thank my fellow Armenians

for allowing me to live.

*

AMERICAN SAYING

*****************************

“It is not enough for a gardener to love flowers;

he must hate weeds.”

*

HEROES

******************

Nations that are perennial losers

brag about their many heroes.

*

ORSON WELLES SPEAKS (III)

***********************************

On Kissinger:

“A selfish, self-serving shit.”

*

On the Cannes Film Festival

********************************

“Anybody connected with it is a crook.”

*

On himself

*******************

“I am a hypocrite. A sellout.”

#

WHAT IS LITERATURE

********************************

There are benefits to being a minor writer:

you write with greater freedom

because you are not yet slave to your reputation.

Saroyan failed because of his early success.

*

When I write I don’t think of readers.

I don’t allow them to dictate the direction of my thoughts.

As for those who disagree with me:

I will be more than happy to listen to them

provided they identify themselves as investigative reporters.

*

I am as capable of recycling propaganda or chauvinist crap

as the best of them. You want proof?

Read my first dozen books.

*

A famous French writer once said

literature consists in making shit look like rose jam.

*

He who speaks of gods speaks of false gods;

and he who speaks of false gods, speaks of thirsty gods –

thirsty for blood.

Who said that?

I don’t know.

I am not here to assert originality of thought

but to make sense; and if a sentence makes sense

it must have been said before.

*

It has also been said that man cannot create

a single worm but he has created ten thousand gods.

Now, replace the word “gods” with reality,

or even better, Reality, and I dare anyone to say

his Reality is more real than my Reality.

#

CONSIDER THE SYRIANS

********************************

Old age is not always synonymous with wisdom.

Syrians are much older than Americans.

If they go on killing one another it may be because

they know something Americans don’t know –

a knowledge that so far they have failed to share

with the rest of mankind.

They only say the rebels are terrorists.

Who is a terrorist?

Anyone who is willing to kill innocent civilians,

including women and children,

for a self-assessed “noble” cause.

Nothing further, your Honor!

*

ON CHAUVINISM

**************************

Write a short story about an Armenian so patriotic that

he believes the real inventor of the Molotov cocktail

was Mikoyan.

*

ON MODERN ART

**************************

Is modern art a gigantic hoax?

Some art critics think so.

One of them has even written a book

titled TO HELL WITH PICASSO.

And now consider Leonardo, Michelangelo,

and Piero della Francesca:

Has anyone ever dared to question their integrity?

*

CRITICS

******************

To those of my readers who classify me

as a “self-hating Armenian,” I say,

I am more than willing to concede that

I see nothing questionable in loathing anyone

– including myself – who rejects all ideas

that may question his status as a lovable human being.

#

INSPIRATION
**********
The eternal snow of Mt. Ararat .
Nightingales serenading the moon.
I leave these things to our versifiers.
The written word is my main source of inspiration.
When I agree with something,
I compose a variation.
When I disagree,
I improvise a contradiction.
When I read an irresistible passage,
I quote it.
I love to quote.
i love to read books of quotations.
So much so that I have myself compiled two of them:
one published (A DICITIONARY OF ARMENIAN QUOTATIONS),
the other (much more extensive) in manuscript form.
*
As for originality:
How much of Plato is Socrates?
How much Socrates owes to the pre-Socratics
most of whose works have survived, if at all, in fragments.
*
It was Hemingway who once said:
“Minor writers plagiarize. Major writers steal.”
And sure enough, at one time or another all major writers
have been accused of being plagiarists –
Sartre, Garcia Marquez, Toynbee, Zarian...
*
Toynbee once described himself as someone
who moves old furniture around.
Garcia Marquez’s style has been traced back
to the 1001 ARABIAN NIGHTS and Faulkner.
An American academic, Stern by name
(that’s the only thing I remember about him)
once wrote a book in which he traced all of Sartre’s ideas
to predecessors.
It was Oshagan who accused Zarian.
Need i say more?....
#
TWO GERMAN PHILOSOPHERS
**********
On Nietzsche:
When asked what he thought of Nietzsche,
Jules Renard is said to have replied:
"There are too many useless letters in his name."
*
On Heidegger:
The son-of-a-bitch was a Nazi
who fell in love with one of his students
who happened to be a Jewess.
*
LOATHSOME IMBECILES
**********
In his THE ITALIANS, Luigi Barzini writes:
"There comes a day in every man's life
when he realizes his leaders are loathsome imbeciles."
*
COUNTER-PROPAGANDA
**********
I repeat myself because I write counter-propaganda.
If propaganda repeats itself, what choice do I have?
#

FREEDOM
*************************
Everyone speaks of freedom of religion
as if it were a good thing,
a mark of progress and civilization.
What if what will civilize the world
is not freedom of religion
but freedom of dissent and heresy?
But as long as rabbis, bishops and imams
are allowed the freedom
to poison the minds of children
we will have wars and massacres.
*
Why is this so difficult to understand?
Empires decline and fall
not when its prostitutes, pimps,
thieves and degenerates prosper
but when its spiritually superior individuals
(self-assessed of course) assume leadership positions.
*
Moral I: Freedom of religion is freedom to enslave.
*
Moral II: Freedom to brainwash children
is a crime against humanity.
#
JAGADAKIR
**************************************
We have a school of thought that says
Christianity was a bad choice for us.
We should have converted to Islam.
The unmistakable implication being,
since we cannot change the past,
we cannot change our present and future.
What’s done is done and it cannot be undone.
It is our jagadakir (destiny) therefore
to remain perennial losers.
Let us therefore, in legal parlance,
drop our pants and bend over to whoever is on top –
be he a shah, pasha, padishah, sultan or commissar.
*
But I maintain our problem is not our choice of religion.
Our problem is ignorance of the world,
divisiveness, corruption, incompetence, treason,
and intolerance of any idea
that may shatter our image as la crème de la crème
and expose us as la crème de la scum.
#
IN BRIEF
************************
On our present situation:
Losers at the mercy of other losers.
*
SWINE
******************
The 1% are cold-blooded swine
who think they will not burn in hell
because hell is their own invention.
*
KNOWN UNKNOWNS
************************************
We know that Sultan Abdulhamid II’s mother
was Armenian. We also know that Talaat himself
was probably part-Armenian.
What we don’t know is
how many of our own present leaders are Turks.
*
INTERNET
***************************
Is the Internet making us smarter or dumber?
I don’t know. All I know is that
if an ape uses it he will not be born-again
as a human being.
*
ON ASSAD
**********************
Tina Brown on Bashar-al-Assad:
“A creepy, lisping, giraffe-necked liar.”
*
LOLITA
**********************
I don’t read and reread LOLITA
to be enlightened or instructed.
I read it because it is compulsively readable –
from the first (“fire of my loins”)
to the last sentence.
#
NOTES & COMMENTS
**************************************
There is a general in every solider
(according to Napoleon),
a pope in every seminarian,
a master in every slave,
a capitalist in every proletarian,
and (according to a schoolteacher)
a Turk in every Armenian.

*
Nothing disarms a man
with a highly developed spirit of contradiction
than agreement.
*
We read so many obituaries
and hear of so many deaths when we are alive
that we end up thinking of ourselves
almost as immortal.
#

THE STORY OF MY LIFE



**********************************************



One way to get acquainted with life



and with one’s fellow men is to work



for minimum wage under individuals



you would do your utmost to avoid



if given the choice.



*



WE ARE TOLD



******************************



There will come a time



when the lion will lie down with the lamb



and the Armenian with the Armenian,



but I doubt if I will live long enough to see it.



*



We are also told our political parties



play an essential role



in the preservation of our identity



as Armenians in the Diaspora;



the implication being our partisans



are dedicated and selfless servants



of the community



and men of honor.



*



“MEN OF HONOR”



*******************************



That’s how members of the mafia identify themselves,



as “men of honor.”



What did you expect them to say? –



that they are a gang of blackmailers, thieves, and murderers?



#



ON SUBSERVIENCE



********************************



It is said of Goethe and Beethoven that



they were once taking a walk in a park



when they ran into a family of aristocrats.



Whereas Goethe bowed down deeply



as a sign of respect, Beethoven plowed on



with the comment:



“There are so many of them, and so few of us!”



*



My question:



If subservience can penetrate the mighty brain



of an intellectual giant like Goethe,



what chance do the rest of us have



after long centuries of systematic indoctrination,



and brutal intimidation by the likes of Sultans and Stalin?



#



HABEMUS PAPAM!



***********************************



“Everything you have been saying about Armenians is wrong,”



a reader tells me, and goes onto inform me



he has discovered the root of all our problems.



*



OBSERVATION



****************************



Our bosses, bishops and benefactors tend to behave as though they were not part of history, they live outside space and time, the law of gravity does not apply to them, and their actions don’t have consequences; and armed with that conviction they continue to bankrupt the nation with a clear conscience.



*



COMMENT



******************



You can’t adopt a propaganda line and pretend to be an honest man.



*



REFLECTION



*************************



If only I could solve my own problems as easily as I solve the world’s problems!



#

THE BOTTOM LINE
****************************************
Our problems were thrust on us by others. We reject their solutions on our own.
*
Only the rotten succeed in a corrupt environment.
*
The greater the political control of schools, libraries, newspapers, community centers and churches, the greater the number of yes-men and dupes.
*
The challenge is to speak of serious things without taking oneself seriously; to be critical of others and even more critical of ourselves.
*
In a totalitarian environment to say your ambition is to succeed as a writer is like saying as a virgin it is your ambition to be a bordello madam.
*
When wolves are in charge, sheep will be useful only as lunch.
#
ORWELL SPEAKS
********************************
In one of his essays
George Orwell speaks of
“the corrosive digestive juices
of the British imperial leviathan.”
You may now have a better understanding
of the depths of our own degradation.
*
Elsewhere he speaks of
“the smelly little orthodoxies
contending for our souls.”
#
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
******************************************
There is an old saying:
“When you’re down, the only way is up.”
Like all rules this one too has its exceptions:
Armenians.
*
The Greek jury that condemned Socrates to death;
the men who crucified Christ;
the solitary Hindu who assassinated Gandhi:
they all shared one thing in common:
they were brainwashed to believe
the gods, truth, and historic necessity were on their side.
*
If you brainwash children to believe
in the myth of the Holy Trinity,
they will be inclined to believe in many other trinities
like liberté, fraternité, egalité;
thesis, anti-thesis, synthesis;
Marx, Engels, Lenin…
*
A nation that hates together stays together.
*
Judge a tree by its fruit and a propaganda line
by the number of its victims.
*
I quote to enhance my credibility.
What the hell does an Armenian scribbler know?
An odar author, that’s different.
Prof. Hamalian on Zarian,
after reading my translations:
“He writes like one of my bright students.”
*
Academics: they all proceed from the assumption
that they know better.
Question: With over a thousand Armenian academics
in America alone, why is it that our collective existence
is in such a mess?
#
I COULD BE WRONG
***************************************
Certainties are the source of all evil.
But I could be wrong…
*
Has anyone ever said
I could be wrong
but let’s divide the community anyway?
Or, I could be wrong
but let’s go to war …
*
To some a belief system is nothing
but a source of income and power.
*
Where there are idols
there are idol-makers.
Where there are dupes
there are deceivers.
I think it was Luther who said:
“The God of Christians (meaning Catholics)
is an idol.”
*
What is patriotism?
In theory, love of God and Country.
In practice, to brainwash children
and manipulate adults.
*
We should teach our children to say
“I could be wrong.”
*
Socrates was condemned to death
because he spoke in defense of doubt and uncertainty.
“Of the gods,” said he, “we know nothing!”
#

TO KNOW IS TO REMEMBER
******************************************
To write also means to repeat
what has been said and forgotten;
to shout that which is whispered;
and to expose that which is covered up.
As for solutions to our problems:
I can only say and repeat:
solutions, like the Kingdom of God,
are within you.
*
Be honest with yourself and others
even when to be honest means
to be outnumbered a thousand to one.
*
Thou shalt not deceive yourself,
especially when the deception is disguised
as tradition, the laws of the land,
or the word of a king, pope, or
some other phony representative of god on earth:
in short, propaganda.
*
If belief systems don’t tell us
not to be dupes of propaganda
it may be because that would be like
digging their own graves.
But I maintain being a dupe
is one of the most dangerous transgressions.
Wars and massacres are perpetrated
by dupes whose sole justification has been,
“I was following orders,” or
I trusted the word of god as spoken
by a rabbi, imam, or bishop.
#
BIG BROTHERS,
AMONG OTHER THINGS
********************************
The Russians are our Big Brothers
only in the sense that for 600 years
Turks were our Big Brothers.
So was Cain to Abel.
*
When you are young
you pull up your pants
and go wherever you want to go.
But when you are old
someone else pulls up your pants
and takes you where you don’t want to go.
I am now paraphrasing the Bible
which may suggest it is not the Word of God
but of men with a credibility problem.
*
Lies that flatter are infinitely more dangerous
than mad dogs, venomous snakes, and mad elephants.
#
HOLIER-THAN-THOU
**************************************
There is a type of holier-than-thou reader
who likes to point out the fact that
my criticism of Armenians is nothing
but a projection of my own shortcomings.
Such a reader is convinced he knows better
because he is better.
His unspoken aim is not to understand reality
but to explain it in such a way
as to prove his moral and intellectual superiority;
and to prove it to others
in order to convince himself.
#
MEIN KAMPF
*********************************
All my efforts are now concentrated
on being readable. As for saving the nation:
I leave that to our bosses, bishops, benefactors
and dime-a-dozen superpatriots
with messianic ambitions.
*
ON SERMONIZERS AND SPEECHIFIERS
**********************************************
One way to define them is to say
they are men who know what must be said
but consistently and unanimously avoid
doing what must be done.
*
RIGHT AND WRONG
************************************
It is not enough to say we did nothing wrong.
Did we do anything right?
Even more to the point:
Can we even tell right from wrong?
*
OUR SHISH-KEBAB PARTIES
**************************************
Members of the Tea Party in America
are the offspring of individuals
who in the second half of the 19th century
fought a bloody civil war –
some say the bloodiest in history –
in defense of slavery.
They remind me of our
bosses, bishops, and benefactors
who, to save the nation, they divide it.
*
WORDS OF WISDOM
********************************
There is an old Armenian saying:
“He is so smart he even knows
where the devil sleeps.”
The devil, my friends, sleeps where he resides
and he resides in our hearts.
*
TELL ME
************************
Am I saying anything
you don’t already know?
#

ON CRACKPOTS
***********************************
In a recent issue of TIME magazine
there is an interview with Andre Agassi
in which Armenians and massacres are not mentioned.
*
The best thing Saroyan ever said about the Genocide is that
he felt sorry for the Turks.
*
Now you may understand why I refer to
Genocide ghazetajis, Hai Tahd activists and fund-raisers
as Turcocentric crackpots.
*
There is a baloney artist in all politicians
and ours are no exception.
#
THREE MAXIMS
***************************
Thinking against oneself
is one of the cardinal virtues.
*
Politicians and honesty are
mutually exclusive concepts.
*
To believe when you are right
you have God and Truth on your side
is to be a potential assassin and terrorist.
#
READING BETWEEN THE LINES
********************************************
We all have our share of limitations
with one difference: some of us
are infatuated with them.
Erasmus of Rotterdam was right when he said:
“Everyone loves the smell of his own sh*t.”
*
The need to be understood
always exceeds the need to understand.
*
Where lawyers and politicians enter,
injustice and lies are sure to follow.
*
Never contradict a politician or a lawyer:
remember, they are professionals.
*
To my anti-American friends
from the Middle East I say:
“I agree with you provided you also agree with me
when I say the rest of the world is no better.”
*
Nobody ever said to be an honest man among crooks
comes without a price.
*
I don’t always like or agree with what I say
but once I put down 2+2=
I have no choice but to say 4.
#
READERS
*************************
There is a type of reader
(and I have my share of them)
who is programmed to disagree and reject
anything that is not recycled propaganda.
Such a reader doesn’t even bother or begin
to understand what’s being said.
He just hangs a label on you
and forever after identifies you
as the lowest form of animal life –
namely, an Armenian
who doesn’t love all Armenians
and hate all Turks.
Such a reader is convinced
anyone who has more power or money
must know better.
He is Bolshevik in his pragmatism,
capitalist in his value system,
and Catholic in his dogmatism.
#



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ON CRACKPOTS
***********************************
In a recent issue of TIME magazine
there is an interview with Andre Agassi
in which Armenians and massacres are not mentioned.
*
The best thing Saroyan ever said about the Genocide is that
he felt sorry for the Turks.
*
Now you may understand why I refer to
Genocide ghazetajis, Hai Tahd activists and fund-raisers
as Turcocentric crackpots.
*
There is a baloney artist in all politicians
and ours are no exception.
#
THREE MAXIMS
***************************
Thinking against oneself
is one of the cardinal virtues.
*
Politicians and honesty are
mutually exclusive concepts.
*
To believe when you are right
you have God and Truth on your side
is to be a potential assassin and terrorist.
#
READING BETWEEN THE LINES
********************************************
We all have our share of limitations
with one difference: some of us
are infatuated with them.
Erasmus of Rotterdam was right when he said:
“Everyone loves the smell of his own sh*t.”
*
The need to be understood
always exceeds the need to understand.
*
Where lawyers and politicians enter,
injustice and lies are sure to follow.
*
Never contradict a politician or a lawyer:
remember, they are professionals.
*
To my anti-American friends
from the Middle East I say:
“I agree with you provided you also agree with me
when I say the rest of the world is no better.”
*
Nobody ever said to be an honest man among crooks
comes without a price.
*
I don’t always like or agree with what I say
but once I put down 2+2=
I have no choice but to say 4.
#
READERS
*************************
There is a type of reader
(and I have my share of them)
who is programmed to disagree and reject
anything that is not recycled propaganda.
Such a reader doesn’t even bother or begin
to understand what’s being said.
He just hangs a label on you
and forever after identifies you
as the lowest form of animal life –
namely, an Armenian
who doesn’t love all Armenians
and hate all Turks.
Such a reader is convinced
anyone who has more power or money
must know better.
He is Bolshevik in his pragmatism,
capitalist in his value system,
and Catholic in his dogmatism.
#

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
**********************************
Loyalty or subservience to authority
is not patriotism but fascism.
*
My guess is, we produce
more speechifiers, sermonizers and pundits
per capita than any other nation on earth.
*
Who speaks today in the name of the people,
and when I say people I mean
not the dead but the living.
*
The most important questions in life
are destined to remain unanswered.
Even belief systems that pretend
to have all the answers
are willing to acknowledge this fact.
There is a well-known story about a theologian
who on informing the Pope that he had written
a 1000-page treatise explaining the mystery
of the Holy Trinity was ordered to “burn it!”
#
LIVE AND LEARN
**********************************
Until very recently I wasn’t aware of the fact
that fund-raising is a profitable enterprise
and that some chief executive officers
of charitable organizations
are paid million-dollar salaries.
*
Wee are more civilized.
Our charitable organizations
don’t have chief executive officers;
even more to the point,
they are accountable only to God,
which in practice, means no one.
*
Question: Do CEOs of charitable organizations
contribute to charitable organizations?
#
SCENARIOS
******************************
On the day Azeris open their borders
we will bleed from three open wounds:
East, West, and North.
*
At the present rate of exodus,
they will not have to fight us
to reoccupy their lands,
they will just walk in.
*
I am a comfort to our enemies?
What about our dividers?
What is their message?
Let me guess:
“No need to kill us,
we plan to commit suicide.”
What else?
#