french

Thursday, September 25, 2008
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A LAND OF 1001 WATERGATES
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A Watergate-style scandal is unthinkable in Armenia. When told the President had lied to the people, an Armenian is quoted as having said: “So what? They lie to us all the time.”
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MEMOS TO A YOUNG WRITER
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Never insult readers who insult you. Analyze them. No insult can be as lethal as a good analysis.
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Once about ten years ago I called one of my borodakhos and anpardavan detractors “an inbred moron.” Ever since then he has been trying to get even by reading and contradicting everything I say even when doing so means proving me right.
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Early success means early death. Mozart, Schubert, Chopin – dead in their thirties. Shakespeare, Beethoven, Dostoevsky – dead in their fifties. Another disadvantage of dying young is that you will never have a chance to read the obituaries of your detractors. Aim therefore at posthumous immortality.
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ON BELIEF SYSTEMS
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They are all alike in the sense that they teach the brain to be a useless organ and thinking for oneself a dangerous enterprise that may lead to heresy and eternal hellfire. In that sense fundamentalist fanatics of all religions are more vegetable than animal, and more mineral than vegetable.
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ON GENOCIDE RECOGNITION
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We have a better chance of achieving our goal if we appeal to the conscience of civilized Turks. To do so, however, we must first civilize ourselves.
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ON BEING POLITICALLY CORRECT
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The only reason we have not yet become a recognizable object of ridicule is that we keep talking about massacres, and massacres, as everyone knows, are no joke.
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QUOTATION OF THE DAY
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Noel Coward: “How would I like to be remembered? By my charm, you silly bugger.”
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Friday, September 26, 2008
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UN HOMBRE CON COJONES
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During the Soviet era, I remember, one of our brilliant academics, and no doubt a proud descendant of David of Sassoun, visited the Homeland and upon his return published a ferocious attack on lazy hotel waiters who, it seems, responded to his commands with the blinding speed of Slow Poke Rodriguez. This gentleman, it appears, was accustomed to dealing with waiters who moved with the alacrity of Speedy Gonzelez. And to think that we trust the education of our boys and girls to this type of elitist riffraff and crème de la scum.
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MEDIOCRITIES AND PLAGIARISTS
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If a writer is Armenian and is not internationally known, like say, Arlen and Saroyan, he is generally dismissed as a mediocrity. If, one the other hand, he is good, he is accused of plagiarism. Even Zarian was dismissed as a plagiarist by both Oshagan pere et fils. And worse! I once heard one of our academics assert that Zarian was a hireling of the KGB. Since I have myself been accused of being an agent of the KGB, the CIA, the Mossad, and the Grey Wolves, I feel justified in adopting a skeptical stance towards all such charges.
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SWAN SONG
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If I ever write an autobiography I will title it THE SWAN SONG OF A JACKASS: THE MEMOIRS OF AN ARMENIAN WRITER.
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QUOTATION OF THE DAY
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Charles Dickens: “It's over, and can't be helped, and that's one consolation, as they always say in Turkey, when they cut the wrong man's head off.”
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Saturday, September 27, 2008
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FORGIVE MY FRENCH
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Even senile old men who can't get it up refuse to die. How does one go about convincing boys and girls in their teens and twenties to go to war, to kill and die? Leave it to the elites, the educated classes, the leaders – the true creative forces in human history. Beside them writers, poets, and philosophers are nothing but hopeless mediocrities who deal in empty verbiage.
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By ridiculing our elites, I am told, I alienate the young, the naïve, and the innocent, thus threatening the survival of the nation. To which I can only say, a nation that has survived centuries of corruption, incompetence, ruthless oppression, wars, massacres, dispersion, and subhuman existence in foreign slums should not have any trouble surviving the opinions of a minor scribbler.
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When asked why he drank so much, Odian, an alcoholic, is quoted as having said, “To drown my sorrows.” Was he successful in drowning them?” he was asked next. “No,” he replied,”the buggers are excellent swimmers.” So are our bosses, bishops, and benefactors. For over a thousand years our writers from Khorenatsi, Raffi, Baronian and Odian to Shahnour, Zarian, and Massikian have exposed their dirt to no effect.
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And consider what's happening today in America. We are expected to trust the judgment of a bunch of millionaires telling us -- including slum-dwellers like myself -- that the economy is in deep shit and unless something is done pronto we may be in deeper shit.
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Dupes have no use for their brains because they believe everything they are told by someone with a beard, a title, and a degree. Somewhere Shakespeare writes “life is a tale told by an idiot.” It would be more accurate to say that it is a tale told by smart operators to a bunch of retards.
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