BAH-HUMBUG ********************************* Where would the 1% be without the full cooperation, dedication, and hard work of the 99%? * To be a good Armenian it is not necessary to be a bad human being with a closed mind. * Crooks have their uses: they make us appreciate the importance of honesty. * Being smart also means not repeating idiotlc blunders like dividing the community and abusing children by brainwashing them to brag about our genius for survival. # MEMO TO A WRITER ******************************* If you say the opposite of what your average reader wants to hear you can’t go wrong. * ON POPULARITY *********************** Popularity is an American aberration and best-sellers the surest symptoms of mediocrity. * A CRITIC SPEAKS *************************** “You have been writing for thirty years now and you have changed nothing,” a reader writes implying either shut up or change your tune. Change begins in the heart and what happens there doesn’t make headlines, neither does it penetrate the hick skulls of those in a position to change things, especially if the status quo has been good to them. * WHY ENGLISH? ******************************* I write in English because 99% of what I write would be considered unprintable by our 1%. # My greatest liability: I never mastered the art of flattering the powerful and the rich -- i.e. the scum of the earth. # Was Santa good to you? * Both capitalism and communism have been good to their 1%. What does that tell you about ideologies and belief systems? * My own answer: They introduce meaningless divisions even when they know the result may be the slaughter of countless innocent victims; even when they have been warned “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” # TO MY CRITICS ****************************** Gentle reader: Unlike you, I don’t pretend to speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Think of me only as the voice of another school of thought. * Knowledge and understanding are not your enemies. There is no need for you to defend yourself against them. * To think that you can speak the truth and be popular is an American fallacy. * So many first-class literary works have been rejected by publishers or ignored by the public that one is tempted to define writing as composing music for the deaf. # A HISTORY OF DECEPTION *********************************** Turks have been successful in convincing the Yanks (a) we are their Red Indians, and (b) whenever we don’t get our way we engage in acts of terrorists; which is what happened in the Ottoman Empire at the turn of the last century and more recently all over the world including America. * DUPES **************** We are born dupes. First we believe in the friendly disposition of the Young Turks and now we believe our own leaders when they tell us with our financial support they will have the Genocide recognized by the Yanks. * DUPES (II) ****************** Where would tyrants be without cowardly dupes? * Q ******************* “Melonsmellonous osculations.” Can you guess what’s being said and the identity of the author? # LESSONS ***************** If history teaches us anything it is this: we can be wrong; we can be wrong even when we are right; we can be dead wrong even when God and the Great Powers are on our side. * The #1 concern of our 1% is not to solve our problems but to defend and protect their powers and privileges, which means Plan B only for themselves. * My ideal reader is one who hates to read; which means he has been at the mercy of speechifiers and sermonizers and is thus virgin territory easily impregnated with new ideas. * When I was young, unemployed and unemployable, two senior members of the Party came to see me. Someone had told them I love books and reading. “We are willing to subsidize your university education,” they said, “provided you agree to work for us.” Meaning: We have no use for your garbage; we have our own. Which may explain my present status as an abominable no man. Mart bidi ch’ellank! #

Today at 7:13 AM IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE ************************************* Some of my critics take pleasure in the knowledge that I am a failure and a loser. To them I say, that may well be why I understand the nation. * FANS *************** It is true that our leaders have their share of admirers. But then so did Nero, Genghis Khan, Hitler, Stalin, Nixon, and Reagan. * LAWYERS AND POLITICIANS **************************************** Can you finish the following sentence? “If the world is in deep shit today it’s because…” * Q ********* Is it possible that I am the only one who thinks the world would have been a better place without Elvis and the Beatles? * Q/A ************ What will happen next? That which you least expect it. # RAFFI'S WARNING AND CHARENTS'S MESSAGE ************************* To prove to a visiting Venetian painter what the neck of a beheaded man really looks like, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, also known as the Lawgiver, had a prisoner brought before him and beheaded. It is said that the Venetian painter (one of the Bellini brothers) was so shocked by the bloody spectacle that he left that same night under cover of darkness. That is the difference between that Venetian painter and us. The Venetian left. We stayed We stayed even after Raffi warned us the Ottoman Empire was no place for us because Turks had no respect for human life. We ignored Raffi's warning in the 19th century as we ignore today Charents's final message concerning our “salvation.” By “we” I mean less the people and more the leaders who speechify during the day about survival and turn into gravediggers under cover of darkness at night. # We are few. We are weak. We are vulnerable. Therefore, we are divided. Which is like saying: “I think. Therefore I am not.” # DISAPPOINTMENTS ************************************ What is life if not an endless series of disappointments? A monster of human frailties, my ambition was to achieve perfection. I wanted to be the wealthiest man on earth but never made more than minimum wage with many intervals of unemployment. As a writer I have failed again and again to convince my readers that the smartest man in business may be an idiot in politics; in the same way that the loveliest woman in the world worshipped from a distance may be no better than a living corpse – all because man is not yet equipped to tell the difference between love and lust. You want to know more about the human condition? Take a good look at yourself in the mirror. # ON UNDERSTANDING ********************************** You want to develop your understanding? Teach yourself to view things through alien eyes including your worst enemy. * Don’t speak of your problems to a friend unless of course you want to make him happy. I remember once, many years ago, when I mentioned a problem to a co-worker – a cute little blonde – she cut me off with the words: “I’ve got problems of my own.” * Wisdom can be found in the most unlikely places. * When I speak of a nation I mean of course its leaders and their dupes. The average law-abiding citizen may not be as smart as his political leaders, but he will be more honest. * Socrates is right: one can guess how honest a man by his income. #

THE DEFENSE ************************ The Turkish line of defense is simplicity itself: “We did to the Armenians what you did to your Indians.” * The only people who refuse to acknowledge the finality of this statement are our fund-raisers and Hai Tahd (Armenian Case) tax collectors. * If the Greeks in their Golden Age ... found Socrates guilty of a capital offense and executed him, how dare we hope we can get justice from a jury of convicted liars and cut-throats? # ON STATESMANSHIP **************************************** You say he was a great statesman? Tell me, how many of our problems did he solve? A statesman is first and foremost a man of action: he formulates and implements policies which he can do only after developing a consensus. * You say Armenians are ungovernable? In that case a statesman’s function is to make the ungovernable governable. If he cannot do what must be done, he is a failure or, at best, a man not of action but of contemplation. He is more like Naregatsi and less like Gandhi, Churchill, and Mandela. * “He was a man of vision, a great patriot, sincere in his commitments to ideals?” So were Hitler, Mussolini, and Mustapha Kemal Ataturk. # A STORY WITH A HAPPY ENDING ******************************************* When asked to name his favorite role model, one of our intellectuals (let’s call him Comrade Panchoonie) named one of our benefactors (let’s call him Jack S. Avanakian) and was amply rewarded. * SHAHAN SHAHNOUR SPEAKS **************************************** "A French whore is a whore. A German whore is a whore. A Greek whore is a whore. But a whore who writes is an intellectual." * QUESTION *********************** To the anonymous critic who reads and curses everything I write: “Are you the one I once called an inbred moron?” * JUST A GUESS ************************** I wouldn’t be surprised if they said: “Let’s do to our Armenians what the Americans did to their Indians.” But I would be surprised if one of our revolutionaries said: “What if they do to us what the Americans did to their Indians?” #

HOW TO SOLVE OUR PROBLEMS ************************************** Tribal divisions are not a verdict without appeal. All we need is a Mandela. If Africans can do it, why can’t we? To those who say,” Why don’t you apply for the job?” I say: I am a failure as a writer. I would be a disaster as a political leader. My job consists in telling it like it is. Mandela? Hell, we couldn’t even come up with an Ataturk. # IN PRAISE OF OLD AGE *********************************** I have been young and I have been old and old is better. * If you are young and you assume to be right, you will be closer to the truth if you assume to be not just wrong but dead wrong; so wrong, in fact, that you may have to spend the rest of your life suffering the consequences of your blunder. * One advantage of old age is that you exercise more freedom in your choice of misery. * I write for dupes and idiots like myself when young. # EXPLANATIONS *********************************** If you have trouble understanding why successive American administrations have refused to recognize the reality of the Genocide here are some easily accessible explanations: Even when dead wrong, might is right. (Please note, I don’t make rules; I only state them as I see them.) Empires speaks a language tribal people don’t understand. Taking care of #1 is their #1 concern. Regimes don’t have principles, only interests. If you refuse to see the light it may be because you prefer to live in darkness (isn’t that what we did for 600 years?) Ignorance is a heavy burden. Lincoln was wrong. You can fool all the people all the time. Consider the long history of organized religions According to Toynbee (who quotes the Bible on almost every page he writes) our demands were unreasonable. It follows; the Turks did what they did because they had no other choice. To those who dismiss my short list of explanations as bullshit, allow me to quote another familiar proverb: “Life is a shit sandwich. The more bread you have the less shit you eat.” # NOISE **************************** The Chinese pictograph for noise is three women under the same roof – or so I remember to have read somewhere. The same word in an imaginary Armenian pictograph: two men. * Homo sapiens? Hell, no! Homo capable of being sapiens? Maybe. * Compared to nothingness (before we were born and after we die) being is an ephemeral dot so tiny that it might as well be invisible to the naked eye. One is almost tempted to say the reason we exist is to experience our own insignificance or nothingness. * When two selfish individuals meet, they learn the importance of altruism. #

DECEPTION (I) *************************** Everything that needs to be said has been said. The role of our propaganda today is to deceive us into thinking everything that needs to be done is being done when in fact nothing is being done. * DECEPTION (II) In our official version of the story the Genocide was inevitable. Which raises the question: if our leaders cannot foresee the inevitable, what are they good for besides raising funds? * OVERHEARD *********************** “Make friends when you don’t need them.” * “You have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince.” # TWO OBSERVATIONS ******************************** If a closed mind makes you happy, by all means, follow your bliss. Only be warned. A fool’s happiness is a house without foundations. * In the eyes of some I am a self-hating Armenian because I refuse to rely on the support of men who could be useful to me –bosses, bishops, benefactors, their hirelings, hangers on and dupes. They fail to see the obvious: if I am against these gentlemen it is out of self-respect, and I suggest self-respect and self-hatred are mutually exclusive concepts. # ON THE ORIGINS OF PATRIOTISM ********************************* If I had a choice between visiting Venice or Paris and the ugly little Greek slum where I was born and raised, I would choose the slum but I can’t because it’s no longer there – it was reduced to rubble by the Germans during World War II. * My doubts outnumber my certainties a thousand to one. I am one of those who feel guilty even when they say the right thing and do what must be done. * Judge an underdog by what he would do if he were a top dog. #

ON POPULARITY ****************************** Popularity is overrated. Neither Socrates nor Jesus was popular. Bach was neglected for a hundred years. Kafka was known only to a handful of close friends. Hegel’s last famous words: “No one understood me except one, and even he didn’t understand me.” My guess is Elvis and the Beatles made more money in a year than Mozart, Beethoven, and Brahms combined throughout their lifetime. * Have I said this before? No matter. Some things are worth repeating. # HOW TO BE OBJETIVE *********************************** The only way to be objective is to see oneself through alien eyes. The alternative is to view Catholics through the eyes of the Pope, the Soviets through the eyes of Stalin, and the Chinese through the eye of Mao on the grounds that these gentlemen know better. * One of the most important rules in dialogue: neither side is allowed to say “Yes, sir!” * Ideas like “All men are created equal,” should be judged by their history and not by their intentions. * Archie Bunker is dead, long live the Tea Party! # ON LAWYERS & RELATED ATROCITIES ************************************ Where lawyers prosper, justice suffers. The function of a jury, it has been said, is to decide which side had the more competent legal representation. * Where advertisers prosper, the line that separates fact from illusion will be blurred. * Where there is great wealth, there will also be crooks. Plato’s explanation for this phenomenon: unlike honest men who will employ only honest means, crooks will employ honest as well as dishonest means. * We live in a land of bankers, investment brokers, public relations men, advertisers and lawyers. It follows, we are in deep sh*t. # BOOK REVIEW *********************** 130 TALISMANS. By Kardash Onnig. Foreword by Alexander Boccialini Shundi. Illustrated. 2013. Published by Baraka (P.O. Box 145, Stanfordville, NY 12581). ************************************** Are talismans, also known as “charms,” objects with mystical powers over evil or mumbo jumbo? My reason tells me they belong to the mumbo jumbo department of life, but my subconscious sings a different tune. After a black cat crosses my path, I feel better if I find a penny on the sidewalk. Accuse me of being superstitious and I will deny it. Figure that one out if you can. This illustrated booklet of 130 talismans is the latest opus by our Renaissance man of arts and letters, Onnig Kardash. Each talisman costs $400.00. If they weren’t beyond my income bracket I would love to buy a dozen of them (one for each room in the house) and forever after feel less vulnerable. (For more information write to Transformer @gmail.com). #

RANDOM THOUGHTS ****************************** After moronizing its own people America is now engaged in moronizing the world. * Describe someone objectively and deep inside somewhere one of his defensive walls is bound to collapse. * Most of my critics are not idiots but they appear to enjoy acting the part. * More often than not when I try to solve a problem I succeed only in compounding it. * My piano teacher taught me the only way to learn a piece marked presto is by playing it lento. * One way to be brilliant is by writing a hundred different versions of the same line and choosing the best. # MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE CONCEPTS ********************************************* A wolf and a vegetarian diet. A closed mind and dialogue. An Armenian and a Turk. An Armenian and an Armenian. * What I write is free – like cheese in a mousetrap. * American saying: “90% of everything is crap.” Armenian translation: “99%.” # NOTES & COMMENTS *********************************** If the world were a room, the U.S. would be the elephant in it. * If you assume to be right you are automatically disqualified to engage in dialogue. * A liar’s best friend is another liar. * A snake’s ideal food is another snake. * Thirst for knowledge and thirst for blood are mutually exclusive concepts. * A dupe cannot have an open mind. * When the Nazis said “Gott mit uns” they meant of course the Devil. * I repeat myself? What about our sermonizers, speechifiers, and Turcocentric fanatics? * All corrupt regimes need enemies. Hatred is a glue and all politicians need scapegoats. #

REFLECTIONS ********************************** A single priest may brainwash as many as a thousand children, but a thousand bishops cannot convert a single imam. All victimizers are experts at least in one field: in their choice of victims. * If you are an adult, you know something about history, and you are a nationalist, you may safely declare yourself a public nuisance and a retard. * If we were to judge a religion by its history, who would dare to brag about being a religious person? * I have never said none of our bosses, bishops, and benefactors is an honest man. What I have said is that I never had the pleasure of meeting one. # MASTERS & SLAVES ******************************** As the offspring of perennial losers, I tend to divide my fellow men into masters and slaves, or top dogs and underdogs. * I fear and respect top dogs and I have as much respect for underdogs as I have for myself, which is none. That’s why my respect for our bosses, bishops, and benefactors knows no bound. Sometimes I even go as far as classifying them as architects of our collective destiny, when in fact they have as much power as a sardine in a pool of sharks; and when speechify and sermonize in the name of God and Country what they really mean is the KGB and the CIA. * HOW TO RECOGNIZE A RIGGED ELECTION ************************************** If the winner is an enemy agent, he has the charisma of a robot and the eyes of a reptile, it’s rigged. # JUNKIES **************************** Notwithstanding the fact that our writers have been consistently misunderstood, rejected, starved, even betrayed and murdered in cold blood, there are boys and girls today whose ambition is to be a writer. There is a reasonable explanation for this strange phenomenon: ignorance of history. * The official version of our past has been bowdlerized so drastically that if reality and our school texts ever met they wouldn’t recognize each other. * We have this in common with Turks: we are junkies of state propaganda. There are well-established academics today (not all of them Turks) who believe Talaat was a great statesman. * Talaat’s arrogance was such that he dared to parade in the streets of Berlin as if he were a universally respected royalty in exile. Until reality caught up with him, as it caught up with us in successive waves of massacres whose message we (or rather our leadership) chose to ignore. * The problem with compulsive and habitual liars is that they end up believing in their lies. # MEMO TO A CRITIC ********************************** My aim in life is to understand reality. Your aim, if I understand it correctly, is to assert some kind of superiority motivated by patriotism, which is also the aim of all speechifiers, sermonizers, and propagandists, who at least get paid for their work, * You may have noticed by now that I have a handful of favorite themes on which I compose endless variations. To those who accuse me of repeating myself I plead guilty as charged. My aim is not to achieve immortality or even earn minimum wage, but to speak of reality as I see it and not as I am told to see it by someone who may or may not be a compulsive liar, a child molester, or an inbred moron. * The trouble with Christianity as an organized religion is that 99% of Christians were brainwashed as children. The same applies to all organized religions: they are organized to lie, deceive and when necessary to kill and die in defense of a god who has no need of their protection. * We need to talk! #

corrected veersion ********************************** ******************************** INTERVIEW **************************************** Q: Raffi writes about bad as well as good Armenians. You write only about the bad. Why? A: Raffi was a great writer and a good man. Obviously I am not qualified to tie his shoes. Q: If propaganda is bad, why so many engage in it? A: So many also engage in adultery, drugs, smoking, war and massacre. You see, like you, I have more questions than answers. Q: Is it true that you love Turks and hate Armenians? A: I hate all liars and dupes regardless of nationality. Q: Why are you against patriotism? A: Because the ultimate aim of all patriotism is slaughter. I therefore say: F*** politicians who motivated by lust for power invent conflicts and brainwash the brainless. # TRYING TO MAKE SENSE ************************************ Leaders are first and foremost moronizing agents. The world is being systematically moronized today by Americans as surely as the Middle East and the Balkans were moronized by the Ottomans and the Soviet republics were sodomized by the Russians. * What we think of ourselves is never the same as what others think of us. In that sense we are not much different from the groupie who once declared: “I am not a groupie! I don’t have sex with the boys. I don’t use my body. I only do blow jobs.” * The secret ambition of all victims is to be a victimizer. This may explain why an Armenian is another Armenian’s Turk. * Where propaganda is over-developed, literature will be under-developed, and in our case, non-existent! # MEMO TO MY CRITICS ******************************************** Please note that I hate neither myself nor my fellow countrymen. What I really hate is the Turk in all of us and when I speak of Turks I don’t mean Turks as they are but as they appear to be in our history and collective experience. * READERS *********************** I don’t write for readers who know better. I write for readers who know as much as I did when I was a dupe. * ON A COMMON FALLACY ************************************** We all share the same illusion: namely, that people will judge us by our propaganda and not by our history. * ON LITERATURE ********************************* There is nothing wrong in admiring great writers provided you remind yourself that even the great ones, like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, had their share of contradictions which they could not resolve. * MORE ON PATRIOTISM *********************************** A patriotic Armenian, like a patriotic Turk, knows very little or almost nothing about the history of his nation and most of what he knows is a lie. * ON INFALLIBILITY ******************************* Arrogance and ignorance are at the root of all infallible assertions. * TO BE NOTED **************************** Compared to non-existence, existence lasts no more than a fraction of a second. # BROTHERS ***************************** Thomas Mann is right. Hitler was not an alien creature but “a brother.” There is a Sultan and a Talaat in all of us. * ON FRIENDSHIP *************************** I have so few friends that if I were to lose one I would be friendless. * SOMETHING TO BRAG ABOUT ************************************* I have been hired and fired many times but I have never hired and fired anyone. * ON SPEECHIFIERS AND SERMONIZERS ********************************************** There is a natural tendency in all speechifiers and sermonizers to underestimate the value of dialogue, compromise, and consensus. * ON FRIENDSHIP (II) ********************************** Because I write as I do, my patriotic friends pretend we have never met. * ON SURVIVAL ************************ Perhaps to be an Armenian means to be a survivor with a gaping wound. * ON DUPES ****************** One of the hardest things in life is to convince the average idiot that he is not a patriot but a dupe. # ALL BARK AND NO BITE ********************************* It could be said of our Turcocentric ghazetajis that they are all bark and no bite. Something similar could also be said of Armenian literature from the Golden Age to the present. As for our speechifiers and sermonizers: they at least make a more or less comfortable living. * As a child I trusted adults if only because whenever I asked an inconvenient or difficulty question I was told “You’ll find out when you grow up.” * In a recent issue of an Armenian academic periodical I read the reviews of six recently published books, five of them about the Genocide. * What’s being done to arrest or slow down the present rate of assimilation in the Diaspora and exodus from the Homeland? I am grown up and I still don’t have the answer to that question. But if you do, please feel free to share it with us. # MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS *************************************** Is there a single Armenian in a position of power today whom you trust? Someone you would go to for advice? Someone you would vote for if he were running for office? Someone you don’t suspect of being a former KGB, CIA or both? * Three sure ways of improving a writer’s reputation of work: verbal abuse, censorship, starvation. * Why are superstition and propaganda more believable than science and knowledge? * Jews have acquired the reputation of a people that enjoy mutual support. The same cannot be said of Armenians. # FROM ALPHA TO OMEDGA ******************************** If cathedrals are concrete and towering proofs of man’s faith in the existence of God, what are wars and massacres? * As for free will; it may apply to the Napoleons and Hitlers of the world but not to the average soldier who does the killing and dying; and certainly not to the civilian casualties. * The question, the real question, is not whether God exists or not but whether He gives a damn! * Am I shaped by my past or by my projects and hopes for the future? After I answer metaphysical questions I see more merit in their contradictions. * When the weak are led by the ruthless, the result will be a succession of catastrophes, that is to say, history as we know it. # ******************************** INTERVIEW **************************************** Q: Raffi writes about bad as well as good Armenians. You write only about the bad. Why? A: Raffi was a great writer and a good man. Obviously I am not qualified to tie his shoes. Q: If propaganda is bad, why so many engage in it? A: So many also engage in adultery, drugs, smoking, war and massacre. You see, like you, I have more questions than answers. Q: Is it true that you love Turks and hate Armenians? A: I hate all liars and dupes regardless of nationality. Q: Why are you against patriotism? A: Because the ultimate aim of all patriotism is slaughter. I therefore say: F*** politicians who motivated by lust for power invent conflicts and brainwash the brainless. # TRYING TO MAKE SENSE ************************************ Leaders are first and foremost moronizing agents. The world is being systematically moronized today by Americans as surely as the Middle East and the Balkans were moronized by the Ottomans and the Soviet republics were sodomized by the Russians. * What we think of ourselves is never the same as what others think of us. In that sense we are not much different from the groupie who once declared: “I am not a groupie! I don’t have sex with the boys. I don’t use my body. I only do blow jobs.” * The secret ambition of all victims is to be a victimizer. This may explain why an Armenian is another Armenian’s Turk. * Where propaganda is over-developed, literature will be under-developed, and in our case, non-existent! # MEMO TO MY CRITICS ******************************************** Please note that I hate neither myself nor my fellow countrymen. What I really hate is the Turk in all of us and when I speak of Turks I don’t mean Turks as they are but as they appear to be in our history and collective experience. * READERS *********************** I don’t write for readers who know better. I write for readers who know as much as I did when I was a dupe. * ON A COMMON FALLACY ************************************** We all share the same illusion: namely, that people will judge us by our propaganda and not by our history. * ON LITERATURE ********************************* There is nothing wrong in admiring great writers provided you remind yourself that even the great ones, like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, had their share of contradictions which they could not resolve. * MORE ON PATRIOTISM *********************************** A patriotic Armenian, like a patriotic Turk, knows very little or almost nothing about the history of his nation and most of what he knows is a lie. * ON INFALLIBILITY ******************************* Arrogance and ignorance are at the root of all infallible assertions. * TO BE NOTED **************************** Compared to non-existence, existence lasts no more than a fraction of a second. # BROTHERS ***************************** Thomas Mann is right. Hitler was not an alien creature but “a brother.” There is a Sultan and a Talaat in all of us. * ON FRIENDSHIP *************************** I have so few friends that if I were to lose one I would be friendless. * SOMETHING TO BRAG ABOUT ************************************* I have been hired and fired many times but I have never hired and fired anyone. * ON SPEECHIFIERS AND SERMONIZERS ********************************************** There is a natural tendency in all speechifiers and sermonizers to underestimate the value of dialogue, compromise, and consensus. * ON FRIENDSHIP (II) ********************************** Because I write as I do, my patriotic friends pretend we have never met. * ON SURVIVAL ************************ Perhaps to be an Armenian means to be a survivor with a gaping wound. * ON DUPES ****************** One of the hardest things in life is to convince the average idiot that he is not a patriot but a dupe. # ALL BARK AND NO BITE ********************************* It could be said of our Turcocentric ghazetajis that they are all bark and no bite. Something similar could also be said of Armenian literature from the Golden Age to the present. As for our speechifiers and sermonizers: they at least make a more or less comfortable living. * As a child I trusted adults if only because whenever I asked an inconvenient or difficulty question I was told “You’ll find out when you grow up.” * In a recent issue of an Armenian academic periodical I read the reviews of six recently published books, five of them about the Genocide. * What’s being done to arrest or slow down the present rate of assimilation in the Diaspora and exodus from the Homeland? I am grown up and I still don’t have the answer to that question. But if you do, please feel free to share it with us. # MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS *************************************** Is there a single Armenian in a position of power today whom you trust? Someone you would go to for advice? Someone you would vote for if he were running for office? Someone you don’t suspect of being a former KGB, CIA or both? * Three sure ways of improving a writer’s reputation of work: verbal abuse, censorship, starvation. * Why are superstition and propaganda more believable than science and knowledge? * Jews have acquired the reputation of a people that enjoy mutual support. The same cannot be said of Armenians. # FROM ALPHA TO OMEDGA ******************************** If cathedrals are concrete and towering proofs of man’s faith in the existence of God, what are wars and massacres? * As for free will; it may apply to the Napoleons and Hitlers of the world but not to the average soldier who does the killing and dying; and certainly not to the civilian casualties. * The question, the real question, is not whether God exists or not but whether He gives a damn! * Am I shaped by my past or by my projects and hopes for the future? After I answer metaphysical questions I see more merit in their contradictions. * When the weak are led by the ruthless, the result will be a succession of catastrophes, that is to say, history as we know it. # ******************************** INTERVIEW **************************************** Q: Raffi writes about bad as well as good Armenians. You write only about the bad. Why? A: Raffi was a great writer and a good man. Obviously I am not qualified to tie his shoes. Q: If propaganda is bad, why so many engage in it? A: So many also engage in adultery, drugs, smoking, war and massacre. You see, like you, I have more questions than answers. Q: Is it true that you love Turks and hate Armenians? A: I hate all liars and dupes regardless of nationality. Q: Why are you against patriotism? A: Because the ultimate aim of all patriotism is slaughter. I therefore say: F*** politicians who motivated by lust for power invent conflicts and brainwash the brainless. # TRYING TO MAKE SENSE ************************************ Leaders are first and foremost moronizing agents. The world is being systematically moronized today by Americans as surely as the Middle East and the Balkans were moronized by the Ottomans and the Soviet republics were sodomized by the Russians. * What we think of ourselves is never the same as what others think of us. In that sense we are not much different from the groupie who once declared: “I am not a groupie! I don’t have sex with the boys. I don’t use my body. I only do blow jobs.” * The secret ambition of all victims is to be a victimizer. This may explain why an Armenian is another Armenian’s Turk. * Where propaganda is over-developed, literature will be under-developed, and in our case, non-existent! # MEMO TO MY CRITICS ******************************************** Please note that I hate neither myself nor my fellow countrymen. What I really hate is the Turk in all of us and when I speak of Turks I don’t mean Turks as they are but as they appear to be in our history and collective experience. * READERS *********************** I don’t write for readers who know better. I write for readers who know as much as I did when I was a dupe. * ON A COMMON FALLACY ************************************** We all share the same illusion: namely, that people will judge us by our propaganda and not by our history. * ON LITERATURE ********************************* There is nothing wrong in admiring great writers provided you remind yourself that even the great ones, like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, had their share of contradictions which they could not resolve. * MORE ON PATRIOTISM *********************************** A patriotic Armenian, like a patriotic Turk, knows very little or almost nothing about the history of his nation and most of what he knows is a lie. * ON INFALLIBILITY ******************************* Arrogance and ignorance are at the root of all infallible assertions. * TO BE NOTED **************************** Compared to non-existence, existence lasts no more than a fraction of a second. # BROTHERS ***************************** Thomas Mann is right. Hitler was not an alien creature but “a brother.” There is a Sultan and a Talaat in all of us. * ON FRIENDSHIP *************************** I have so few friends that if I were to lose one I would be friendless. * SOMETHING TO BRAG ABOUT ************************************* I have been hired and fired many times but I have never hired and fired anyone. * ON SPEECHIFIERS AND SERMONIZERS ********************************************** There is a natural tendency in all speechifiers and sermonizers to underestimate the value of dialogue, compromise, and consensus. * ON FRIENDSHIP (II) ********************************** Because I write as I do, my patriotic friends pretend we have never met. * ON SURVIVAL ************************ Perhaps to be an Armenian means to be a survivor with a gaping wound. * ON DUPES ****************** One of the hardest things in life is to convince the average idiot that he is not a patriot but a dupe. # ALL BARK AND NO BITE ********************************* It could be said of our Turcocentric ghazetajis that they are all bark and no bite. Something similar could also be said of Armenian literature from the Golden Age to the present. As for our speechifiers and sermonizers: they at least make a more or less comfortable living. * As a child I trusted adults if only because whenever I asked an inconvenient or difficulty question I was told “You’ll find out when you grow up.” * In a recent issue of an Armenian academic periodical I read the reviews of six recently published books, five of them about the Genocide. * What’s being done to arrest or slow down the present rate of assimilation in the Diaspora and exodus from the Homeland? I am grown up and I still don’t have the answer to that question. But if you do, please feel free to share it with us. # MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS *************************************** Is there a single Armenian in a position of power today whom you trust? Someone you would go to for advice? Someone you would vote for if he were running for office? Someone you don’t suspect of being a former KGB, CIA or both? * Three sure ways of improving a writer’s reputation of work: verbal abuse, censorship, starvation. * Why are superstition and propaganda more believable than science and knowledge? * Jews have acquired the reputation of a people that enjoy mutual support. The same cannot be said of Armenians. # FROM ALPHA TO OMEDGA ******************************** If cathedrals are concrete and towering proofs of man’s faith in the existence of God, what are wars and massacres? * As for free will; it may apply to the Napoleons and Hitlers of the world but not to the average soldier who does the killing and dying; and certainly not to the civilian casualties. * The question, the real question, is not whether God exists or not but whether He gives a damn! * Am I shaped by my past or by my projects and hopes for the future? After I answer metaphysical questions I see more merit in their contradictions. * When the weak are led by the ruthless, the result will be a succession of catastrophes, that is to say, history as we know it. # IMAGINARY INTERVIEW (II) ******************************************* Q: Raffi writes about bad as well as good Armenians. You write only about the bad. Why? A: Raffi was a great writer and a good man. Obviously I am not qualified to tie his shoes. Q: If propaganda is bad, why so many engage in it? A: So many also engage in adultery, drugs, smoking, war and massacre. You see, like you, I have more questions than answers. Q: Is it true that you love Turks and hate Armenians? A: I hate all liars and dupes regardless of nationality. Q: Why are you against patriotism? A: Because the ultimate aim of all patriotism is slaughter. I therefore say: F*** politicians who motivated by lust for power invent conflicts and brainwash the brainless. # TRYING TO MAKE SENSE ************************************ Leaders are first and foremost moronizing agents. The world is being systematically moronized today by Americans as surely as the Middle East and the Balkans were moronized by the Ottomans and the Soviet republics were sodomized by the Russians. * What we think of ourselves is never the same as what others think of us. In that sense we are not much different from the groupie who once declared: “I am not a groupie! I don’t have sex with the boys. I don’t use my body. I only do blow jobs.” * The secret ambition of all victims is to be a victimizer. This may explain why an Armenian is another Armenian’s Turk. * Where propaganda is over-developed, literature will be under-developed, and in our case, non-existent! # MEMO TO MY CRITICS ******************************************** Please note that I hate neither myself nor my fellow countrymen. What I really hate is the Turk in all of us and when I speak of Turks I don’t mean Turks as they are but as they appear to be in our history and collective experience. * READERS *********************** I don’t write for readers who know better. I write for readers who know as much as I did when I was a dupe. * ON A COMMON FALLACY ************************************** We all share the same illusion: namely, that people will judge us by our propaganda and not by our history. * ON LITERATURE ********************************* There is nothing wrong in admiring great writers provided you remind yourself that even the great ones, like Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, had their share of contradictions which they could not resolve. * MORE ON PATRIOTISM *********************************** A patriotic Armenian, like a patriotic Turk, knows very little or almost nothing about the history of his nation and most of what he knows is a lie. * ON INFALLIBILITY ******************************* Arrogance and ignorance are at the root of all infallible assertions. * TO BE NOTED **************************** Compared to non-existence, existence lasts no more than a fraction of a second. # BROTHERS ***************************** Thomas Mann is right. Hitler was not an alien creature but “a brother.” There is a Sultan and a Talaat in all of us. * ON FRIENDSHIP *************************** I have so few friends that if I were to lose one I would be friendless. * SOMETHING TO BRAG ABOUT ************************************* I have been hired and fired many times but I have never hired and fired anyone. * ON SPEECHIFIERS AND SERMONIZERS ********************************************** There is a natural tendency in all speechifiers and sermonizers to underestimate the value of dialogue, compromise, and consensus. * ON FRIENDSHIP (II) ********************************** Because I write as I do, my patriotic friends pretend we have never met. * ON SURVIVAL ************************ Perhaps to be an Armenian means to be a survivor with a gaping wound. * ON DUPES ****************** One of the hardest things in life is to convince the average idiot that he is not a patriot but a dupe. # ALL BARK AND NO BITE ********************************* It could be said of our Turcocentric ghazetajis that they are all bark and no bite. Something similar could also be said of Armenian literature from the Golden Age to the present. As for our speechifiers and sermonizers: they at least make a more or less comfortable living. * As a child I trusted adults if only because whenever I asked an inconvenient or difficulty question I was told “You’ll find out when you grow up.” * In a recent issue of an Armenian academic periodical I read the reviews of six recently published books, five of them about the Genocide. * What’s being done to arrest or slow down the present rate of assimilation in the Diaspora and exodus from the Homeland? I am grown up and I still don’t have the answer to that question. But if you do, please feel free to share it with us. # MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS *************************************** Is there a single Armenian in a position of power today whom you trust? Someone you would go to for advice? Someone you would vote for if he were running for office? Someone you don’t suspect of being a former KGB, CIA or both? * Three sure ways of improving a writer’s reputation of work: verbal abuse, censorship, starvation. * Why are superstition and propaganda more believable than science and knowledge? * Jews have acquired the reputation of a people that enjoy mutual support. The same cannot be said of Armenians. # FROM ALPHA TO OMEDGA ******************************** If cathedrals are concrete and towering proofs of man’s faith in the existence of God, what are wars and massacres? * As for free will; it may apply to the Napoleons and Hitlers of the world but not to the average soldier who does the killing and dying; and certainly not to the civilian casualties. * The question, the real question, is not whether God exists or not but whether He gives a damn! * Am I shaped by my past or by my projects and hopes for the future? After I answer metaphysical questions I see more merit in their contradictions. * When the weak are led by the ruthless, the result will be a succession of catastrophes, that is to say, history as we know it. #

A SKETCH OF MY LIFE ************************************* In my formative years I was carefully brought up to be a garbage can Of prejudices, lies, and propaganda. If I understand my fellow Armenians today it may be because once upon a time I was one of them and I refuse to pretend otherwise. * It was very late in life that I realized deep inside somewhere I harbored a human being. * I wasted most of my life trying to please individuals whom I now classify as somewhere between moral riffraff and the scum of the earth. * When I say I loathe dupes what I really mean is that I loathe the dupe in me. The only thing I am willing to brag about is the fact that in my childhood I experienced homelessness, destitution, war, and discrimination in an alien environment. * Did I survive? Who can really tell? I feel more like that English soldier on the battlefield who, when informed by his king that he was wounded, replied: “Nay, Sire, I am dead.” # RECYCLING ************************** To live in oppression means to believe in things that you don’t and to trust the judgment of individuals with the morality of pimps. As a nation we have lived in oppression for so many centuries that we are no longer in a position to tell the difference between freedom and oppression. Hence the saying: “Once upon a time we were slaves; we are now slaves of former slaves.” Progress is our least important product. * One of the most useful tools in criminal investigations is to ask: “Who benefits?” Who benefits from our divisions? * “A bourgeois is a bourgeois regardless of nationality,” Lenin said. So is a divider, a charlatan, and a deceiver. * “You repeat yourself.” So do our dealers in chauvinist crapola. * I don’t write to achieve fame, fortune, and immortality. I write to share my understanding. # WHAT I BELIEVE *********************************** I believe in the Incomprehensible, the Unknowable and in the commandment “Thou shalt not bear false witness. As for “Thou shalt not kill”: I believe a system that has legitimized the burning of heretics and more recently war and massacre is an invention of the Devil. The rest is metaphysics, mumbo jumbo, propaganda, and taxation without representation. * My aim in life is not to achieve fame, fortune, and greatness but to be less dishonest. * As the offspring of perennial losers, I have a soft spot for all losers even when they are identified as the enemy. # TRASHLAND ********************** If Gogol and Kafka were to come back to life and collaborate on a book about reality in present-day Armenia, the result would be Denis Donikian’s VIDURES or AGHPASTAN, in Ruzanna Vartanian’s excellent Armenian translation (403 pages, Yerevan, 2013). Aghpastan, literally Trashland, is a biting satire and a horror story written with withering wit that utilizes many genres and styles reminiscent of James Joyce. * During a walk two friends discover the corpse of a woman in a garbage dump, an obvious victim of foul play. “I know who she is,” one of them says. “I recognize her by her hair and the undamaged side of her face. We should go to the cops.” The other is outraged. “The cops! The cops? Can you picture me walking into a police station? Walking in is easy. The trick is coming out. And sometimes you never come out.” “But it is against the law not to report a murder. If we ignore this murder and another murder next day, what happens if you or I are the next victims? If you and I and everybody else ignores a murder we become a nation of amnesiacs at the mercy of others.” “Maybe so -- but what happens if we are detained by the police? And when I say detained I don’t mean for an hour or a day but for months. Think of my piglets: what happens to them?” The conclusion is obvious: “Aghpastan” has become a country that swims in crime, criminals, executioners, and their victims. * The book begins and ends with the same two words: “Der Voghormia” (Lord have mercy). #

WHO IS A GOOD ARMENIAN? ******************************************* Sartre: “It is the rich man who is virtuous and wants everyone else to be. His values are a defense if the status quo.” * Everyone is against dividers, but everyone seems to be for the status quo, especially if he belongs to the privileged classes – namely bosses, bishops, benefactors and their assorted hirelings and dupes. * Who is a good Armenian? “An Armenian who has Mt. Ararat in his heart,” -- whatever the hell that means. * I am not a Biblical scholar but the scholars I have consulted inform me the Bible does not mention “Mt. Ararat.” It says “mountains of Urartu,” of which there are about a thousand and most of them are not in Armenia. # CAREER MOVES ******************************* For a good number of years my sole ambition in life was to be a brown-nosier. It took me quite a few years to realize it was a bad choice – and bad not on moral grounds but bad because the competition was too stiff. * MEMO TO MY PATRIOTIC READERS ********************************************* The difference between you and me is that you like to brag and I don’t. # OUR LORDS AND MASTERS ************************************** Some readers, among them former friends, disagree with me for an understandably compelling reason: they are financially dependent on the charity of swine. They may preach freedom but they are afraid not only of free speech but also of fellow Armenians who engage in it. * Our political and religious leaders are neither God’s nor people’s servants; they are our Lords and Masters. Deviate an inch and you are shish-kebab! #

ON POWER ************************************** Men in a position of power need flattery as much as a starving man needs bread. Their intolerance and hatred of dissent is rooted in vanity and not in some kind of ideological opposition. They don’t give a damn about ideas and ideologies which they consider a waste of time. To them intellectuals are no better than children and ideas their invisible toys or verbal hallucinations or ghosts and they don’t believe in ghosts. Words are good only when they glorify and flatter their egos. In their own eyes power is a blessing from God. It follows, whatever they do bears God’s seal of approval. Hence degenerate rulers and moronic multimillionaires operating on the assumption they are the uncrowned kings of the community. * History is clear on this point. Power drives men mad. Power is not a blessing but a curse. At the turn of the last century in the Ottoman Empire the sultan had a thousand concubines and as many versifiers, among them Armenians, singing his praises. * Talaat was more enlightened. He counted among his friends several intellectuals among them our own Zohrab. But as soon as he acquired power he had Zohrab assassinated. Napoleon put it best when he said “A man with an idea is my enemy.” # MORE ON TURCOCENTRISM ********************************************* Turcocentrism may also be defined as an ideology that says we are not the architects of our destiny. It follows, the only logical explanation of our misfortunes is: “Shit happens.” * Consider earthquakes as a case in point. What we are not told is that according to experts “Earthquakes don’t kill people; buildings do.” * Nothing comes more naturally to a compulsive and habitual liar than to cover up and to lie. * The priority of all businessmen is profit. The more profit the better. Likewise, the priority of all politicians regardless of race, color and creed is power – the more power the merrier, even if it means the destruction of the nation. * Our dealers in chauvinist crapola expect us to believe what applies to all politicians does not apply to our own who rule and divide by the grace of God. # FOREIGNER *********************** To me, the ultimate odar (foreigner) is the Ottomanized and Sovietized Armenian. * ON SURVIVAL ******************** We have survived – no one denies that – but survived as what? * PARADOX ************************* Armenians who classify themselves as the best, sooner or later expose themselves as the worst. # “We are a people like any other people.” “Don’t flatter yourself.” # ZOHRAB & CHARENTS ********************************** “We are a people like any other people.” “Don’t flatter yourself. Even our greatest intellectuals and poets, like Zohrab and Charents, were dupes of enemy propaganda.” “What would you have done in their place?” “Probably what they did and having done so I would deserve universal ridicule and contempt.” * SAROYAN ********************* I will never forget the angry letter one of our elder statesmen sent me after reading one of my anti-Soviet tirades: “Saroyan loves the regime. You think you are smarter than Saroyan?” * GUILTY AS CHARGED ***************************** You say I simplify complexities? What does propaganda do? What is propaganda if not the mother tongue of self-satisfied idiots and their dupes? * GUILTY AS CHARGED II ************************************* “You repeat yourself.” “Not as often as our propagandists.” #

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? #

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. # Reply, Reply All or Forward | More    Wine                          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. #

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? #

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!” #

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! #

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. #

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? #

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. #

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 **** sandwich: the more bread you have, the less **** 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. #

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. #

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.” #

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. #

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. #