Wednesday, May 29, 2013 ********************************* A PROPOSAL ************************** The Allah of Turks and the God of Armenians may not recognize each other when they meet; but the God of Catholics, Protestant, Etchmiadznagans and Anteliassagans is one and the same. The least we can do is worship Him from a single church thus saving millions for the poor, the sick, and the unemployed. * I am not asking our bishops to give up their cherished dogmas, prejudices, secretaries, accountants, and fund-raisers. Only the address from which they operate. * You say it can’t be done? I say where there is a will there is a way; and where there is no will there are men whose number one concern is number one and to hell with common sense and decency. * As for those who want to solve the problems of the Homeland, I say to them: Start with your own backyard. Deal with your own bishops, vartabeds and derders – they may be more amenable to reason and compromise than our crypto-Stalinist neo-commissars in the Homeland. * You say I repeat myself? I say sometimes with unruly children you have to. # MEMORANDA ******************************* No writer has ever silenced a tyrant. * In my formative years I could not recognize a big lie when I saw one. * “Most theoretical ideas turn out to be wrong.” * When I steal I am plagiarized. * In Dante’s INFERNO our Turcocentric monomaniacs will be condemned to write about Armenians without mentioning Turks. # THE POSITIVE AND THE NEGATIVE ********************************************** Let others count their positives; I prefer to count my negatives beginning with the fact that I am an Armenian who compounded the felony by choosing to be a writer. * My father was born in Sivrihisar, birthplace of Nasreddin Hodja. that’s my only positive I can think of. * When I was a brown-nosing and cowardly yes-man, I thought of myself as a loyal, obedient patriotic Armenian. inferiority complex or objective assessment? * Whenever a reader says something remotely positive about me, I think: What if he is deceived? What if I have achieved excellence only in deceiving others? * After each positive assessment I think of its contradiction and see more sense in it. * We were subservient to Turks for 600 years. Did anyone ever identify that fact as a negative? # ON WARS AND REVOLUTIONS ******************************************** All wars and revolutions are driven by lies and illusions. * Our revolutionaries thinking with God and the great powers on their side they couldn’t lose. * Palestinians thinking as the offspring of empire builders, Allah and Arab oil on their side they couldn’t lose. * Thinking is more like an orchestral performance and less like a solo recital. Many factors must be carefully and objectively assessed. * What a book one could write on the role of wishful thinking in human affairs! * To how many of my patriotic readers I could say, to prove you are a good Armenian it is not necessary to behave like a bad Turk. * Censorship and propaganda are Siamese. * As a nation we are not guilty of genocide; only in creating conditions in such a way as to make genocide possible. * You cannot reason with a man who is blinded by his own greed for power. #

Thursday, May 23, 2013 ************************************** CHEKHOV ********************* In one of his short stories Chekhov writes (I quote/paraphrase from memory): “You are saying man is the architect of his own happiness and I am saying if you had a toothache and a shrew as a mother-in-law you would sing a different tune.” * DANTE AND SHAKESPEARE ***************************************** There is a type of writer whose every statement needs a footnote whose every footnote needs a commentary, and whose every commentary needs an explanation. And then there is a type of writer whose statements mean what they say preferably in monosyllables, like “To be or not to be.” * WHAT IS LITERATURE ******************************** The function of a writer, I was brought up to believe, is to make the reader feel good and proud of his identity. I know now that a writer is neither a comedian nor an entertainer. * KURDISTAN ***************************** The projected map of a future Kurdistan looks surprisingly like Armenia only twice as big. * OPTIONS ********************* Between a past we cannot change and a present we can change, we have allowed our Turcocentric ghazetajis and genocide academics to turn us into pillars of salt. # THE WRONG MAN ****************************** If I can explain one little thing that you didn’t understand before, I have done my part. If you read me with the hope to be enlightened, you’ve got the wrong man for the job. The world, the people in it, God above and the Devil below are a mystery to me too. * And speaking of people: A hundred years ago they were in the business of slaughtering innocent civilians and creating refugees by the million. They are now busy welcoming them from Syria. Times change, people change, conditions change and charity is thrust on some as greatness is on others. # THE GOOD AND THE BAD ************************************ Good Turks and Armenians exist but they are outnumbered by the brainwashed. * All wars and massacres begin in the classrooms of the nation. * They teach intolerance, hatred, and murder and call it education and patriotism. And because I say these things I am thought of as an enemy. #

Sunday, May 19, 2013 ************************************ HAVE A NICE DAY *************************** ********* As a child I was taught there are two kinds of “nahadags” or martyrs: regular nahadags and “esh (jackass) nahadags.” A regular nahadag is one who dies in the name of a cause he believes in. A jackass nahadag, by contrast, dies in the name of a lie someone else pretends to believe in; or, in Sartre’s words, someone who “believes that he believes but he doesn’t.” * There is no such thing as an undeserved defeat or a moral victory. Both are fabrications of propagandists. Only the thoroughly and systematically moronized believe what their politicians tell them. * Patriotism is not an ideology but an intellectual disease or mass moronism. * Example of Turkish moronism: After engaging in the wholesale massacres of civilians, they plead self-defense. * Example of Armenian moronism: After dividing the nation or digging its grave they preach self-sacrifice, heroism, and martyrdom; and they are believed by systematically moronized dupes who have been brainwashed to believe they are smart. * Have a nice day. # BALONEY ARTISTS *********************************** Whenever I say our history has been a succession of blunders and catastrophes and we have been and continue to be at the mercy of traitors and collaborators with the enemy, I am asked: “What would you have done in their place?” My standard answer to that question is: “Very probably what they are did and having done so I would live in shame and degradation forever after. I wouldn’t parade as a role model to future generations I wouldn’t adopt a holier-than-thou stance; I wouldn’t delivery lectures and speeches on patriotism, dedication to ideals and principles, self-sacrifice and heroism; and I wouldn’t attack insult those who dare to speak the truth. * One of our academics once said to me: “I agree with everything you say and I promise I too will speak the truth after I retire.” This happened about thirty years ago when he was in his sixties. But as far as I know he has at no time published a single word of dissent, and I doubt if he ever will. That’s because when you work for an Armenian political party, organization or bureaucracy you sign an oath of confidentiality or secrecy. In effect you promise not to divulge inside information. Break your promise and you get no more retirement money. It’s all legal and above board. Our buggers sure know how to cover their ass. # CELEBRITIES ****************** Richard Burton on John (MALTESE FALCON) Huston: “Huston is a simpleton. But believes himself to be a genius. And a self-aggrandizing liar. Cunning at it.” A “cunning” “simpleton?” * One reason I enjoy reading books by celebrities is that every other celebrity is treated like shit. * If you like malicious gossip I recommend CONVERSATIONS WITH TRUMAN CAPOTE. I forget the writer’s name – he has also written CONVERSATIONS WITH MARLON BRANDO. * Speaking of Capote and Brando: the best thing I remember to have read about Brando is Capote’s “The Duke in His Domain.” After reading it Brando wanted to kill him. # AS I SEE IT *************************** QUESTION: What kind of revolutionaries rely on foreign support? ANSWER: Armenian revolutionaries. * A question we avoid asking: What possessed us to trust Turks, Russians, and today our own bosses, bishops, and benefactors? * I believe in god but not in the god of rabbis, imams, and bishops Where their god enters propaganda is sure to follow; and where propaganda enters can a big lie be far behind? * Throughout our history, god (or our faith in him) has been the least reliable source of strength and support. * When it comes to god what matters is not how we define him but how our enemies define him – especially if they have bigger battalions. #

Saturday, May 18, 2013 ************************************* AS I SEE IT ************************ The average Turk is totally unaware of the fact that Talaat and Kemal were fascists; and the average Armenian has nothing but contempt for “bourgeois democracy” – in case you thought Armenians are smarter. * In our circles, as in all autocratic circles, refusing to kiss ass is thought of as a serious offense. * The only way to understand Armenians (or anyone else for that matter) is to work for them or to be dependent on their goodwill. * I have dealt with too many crooks who pretended to be honest men to be taken in by cheap rhetoric. I am anti-Armenian only in the sense that I am anti -myself, which I believe to be a more useful stance that being pro-myself. # FROM MY NOTEBOOKS ******************************* Once upon a time I had all the answers. That’s when I was a dupe. * To speak of an honest politician is like praising a vegetarian cannibal. * Some Armenians owe their life to Turks and some Armenian writers owe their death to Armenians. My ambition in life: to write a cheerful book about death. # IT TAKES TWO TO TANGO ********************************* They behaved like bloodthirsty savages and we behaved like illiterate idiots who could not decipher the writing on the wall. * If our leaders emphasize the first (savages) and cover up the second (idiots) it’s because this cunning maneuver allows them to preside over another genocide (sbidak chart) and put the blame on economic, political, social, and cultural forces beyond their control. * But competent leadership consists in confronting and overcomin invisible historic forces that when left unchallenged can destroy not only tribes and nations but also empires as surely as bloodthirsty Asiatic barbarians on the warpath. #

Sunday, May 12, 2013 ************************************* CONFESSIONS ************************** At the beginning was the Word and the Word was a Big Lie. * God created heaven and earth. It was Man who created Hell. * I am an atheist only in the sense that I don’t believe in the God of rabbis, imams, and bishops. * The dead are replaced by the living and worlds are replaced by other worlds. What if, even as I write these lines, in another world Cain is murdering Abel and Nietzsche is announcing the death of God? * I am not an atheist. For thirty-five years I was a church organist, my favorite composer is J.S. Bach, and my favorite quotation is by Santa Teresa of Avila: “Never submit your intelligence to someone who doesn’t have enough of it himself.” * The Catholic priest who hired me as his organist (may the Good Lord have mercy on his soul) once said to him: “Organ music makes people feel holier.” When informed I was an atheist, he said: “God is in everything that is beautiful and you love music…” # WHAT IF… ***************************** What if I am not consistently wrong and you are not consistently right? What if once or twice a year I may be right and you may be wrong? What makes you think you are better than the fellow in the Vatican who thought he was doing God’s work even when he authorized the torture of heretics? * In the eyes of our Turcocentric ghazetajis, academics, and dealers in chauvinist crapola I am only an Armenian Turks love to quote. * Fanatics may be defined as individuals who place prejudice and hatred above understanding. * A tolerant and balanced view is one in which assertions are modified by their contradictions. * It is safe to assume that our enemies may not always be wrong because our friends may not always be right. * The God of fanatics is the Devil. * To say we have the leadership we deserve is like saying countless innocent civilians deserved to be slaughtered when it was only their leaders who should have been hanged (I am now paraphrasing General Antranik as quoted by Mahari in his autobiography). * If the Sultan was replaced by Talaat, the Czar by Lenin and Stalin, The German Monarch by Hitler, the Spanish King by Franco, (I could go on) what makes you think our own revolutionaries were men of integrity and statesmen of vision? I am not making assertions or casting aspersions, just asking a question. # ELEMENTARY ***************************** After saying “We all make mistakes,” we should ask: “How many of them were avoidable?” * After saying “There are divisions everywhere,” we should ask: “How many of them are necessary or justifiable?” * After saying “Armenians are smart,” we should ask: “Why is it that we have been consistently victimized by Mongoloid barbarians, inbred morons, and bloodthirsty savages?” * After bragging about our celebrities, we should ask: “How many of them ever bragged about their Armenian identity? Mamoulian? Gulbenkian? Mikoyan? Jack S. Avanakian?” * You can’t pretend to seek solutions if you don’t acknowledge the existence of the problem. Neither can you have the right answer if you don’t even bother to ask the right question. # SWINE ************************* From IT HAPPENED IN NAPLES, an old Italian film: SOPHIA LOREN (angry): You are not a lawyer. You are a pig! VITTORIO DE SICA (with disbelief): But a man can be a lawyer and a pig at the same time. * You can tell right from wrong? That means you have discovered the recipe for an unhappy life. * I am all for forgiving my enemies, but only after they die. * Everything I write has autobiographical roots. * I have behaved like a pig and I have behaved like a human being: I can tell the difference. * All power structures, belief systems, and regimes depend on a class of highly paid individuals who specialize in deception or the invention of big lies. In other words, people not only need to be deceived but also want to be deceived, so much so that they are more than willing to pay good money to their deceivers. * I have behaved like a deceiver and I have behaved like a dupe. I can tell the difference. #

My childhood ambition was to excel in a specific field so that I would enjoy the respect of my fellow men, make a living, and provide for my family. It was my misfortune to choose literature, and Armenian literature at that – a field in which the better you get the more you are abused. But by the time I discovered that however, it was too late, I had reached a point of no return. I now do my utmost to earn as much contempt as I can, and I am glad to report I am doing just fine, even if the better I get, the worst my prospects get.

Thursday, May 09, 2013 *************************************** MEMO TO MY CRITICS *************************** If what you say is right, obviously I can’t be worth reading and you would be more justified in criticizing yourself for wasting your valuable time on me. * You want to know the difference between an honest and a dishonest writer? Easy! A dishonest writer flatters. An honest one is a thorn in the flesh. * Of how many potential dissidents we could say because they were bullied by idiots, they fell silent. * I understand my critics. Thirty ears ago I was one of them. * National historians: the intellectual equivalents of empty suits. * What makes our ruling classes so arrogantly and ruthlessly stupid? The answer must be: experience, reality, history, or the fact that they have been fooling us for centuries and no one ever said off with their heads. # THE WRITING LIFE ****************************** Literature: I leave that to our creative writers, scholars, and academics. * Love stories: I stopped writing them on the day I realized their true aim is to entertain the bourgeoisie. I now write to expose deceivers. * When in a letter to the editor many years ago a reader said he felt terrorized by my words, I was flattered rather than offended. * We are tired of being sheep in a world of wolves. That’s why an Armenian is another Armenian’s wolf. He has to start somewhere. * In the words of an American comedian: “I take my lion to church every Sunday. He has to eat.” * If you are not thirsty it makes no difference if the glass is half-empty or half-full. * Silence has no need for translators. # MEMOS TO MY TURKISH READERS *************************************** Do you want to understand Armenians? Think of them as a people that for 600 years had Turks as their role models. * There are no Armenians and there are no Turks: only people who speak Armenian and Turkish. * MEMOS TO MY FELLOW ARMENIANS ******************************************* To confuse patriotism with loyalty or subservience to liars and crooks: I can’t imagine anything more cowardly and idiotic. * Divisions are popular with us because we are not popular with one another. * We are not a work in progress; we are a dead end. * A common Armenian allergy: other Armenians. * Hatred of Turks is our opium. * A nation that hates together stays together. #

Wednesday, May 08, 2013 ******************************* READING ******************** There is a new book out on bankers and politicians titled ASSHOLES: A THEORY. If it is as good as its title will be a best-seller. * After having sex with his wife, Tolstoy wrote in his diary: “It was so disgusting; I felt I had committed a crime.” * Gorky on Tolstoy and God: “They sometimes remind me of two bears in a den.” Thomas Mann is right: Gorky’s REMINISCENCES OF TOLSTOY is the best thing he ever wrote. * Chekhov and Zarian agreed on one thing about writing: Leave something to the imagination. No need to explain and describe everything. Delete the first and last paragraphs. * In Saul Steinberg’s biography. I note so many parallels: childhood in the Balkans (Romania for him, Greece for me) education in Italy (Milan/Venice), life in the New World (U.S./Canada), favorite contemporary writers (Nabokov, Bellow). * Elia Kazan believed his “method” created Brando. In his DIARY Richard Burton asserts Brando was ruined by Kazan. At one point he identifies him as the British Brando. Burton hated acting. His ambition was to be a writer. To the end he remained a voracious reader. # ON PATRIOTISM (VII) ********************************* To say or imply or suggest that Armenian patriotism is better than Turkish, American or any other kind of patriotism is like saying cancer in one nation is better cancer in another. * I would like to meet an Armenian whose speech is not contaminated by patriotism, whose understanding of our past has not been shaped by our own historians, and whose values are not tribal or parochial but universal. * Patriotism may be defined as collective narcissism. But whereas individual narcissism is treated as a psychological aberration, collective narcissism is thought of as a sacred civic duty. And why? Because the ruling classes everywhere need individuals willing to kill and die in defense of their powers and privileges. * To say we live in a world where wars are inevitable amounts to saying all human disagreements and conflicts must end with murder or suicide. * If most individual conflicts are resolved without the death of either or both parties, why not collective conflicts? # READING RICHARD BURTON’S DIARY ************************************** On Reagan: “--dangerously stupid.” * On Nixon: “I dislike drunkards and he was drunk as the devil the last time I saw him.” * On film directors: “I don’t remember anything they said except idiocies which I ignored.” * On Laurence Olivier: “…he really is a shallow little man with a very mediocre intelligence.” * On Mussolini: “Fundamentally he was a weak but decent man.” * He rates Spengler above Toynbee because he hates the English – totally unaware of the fact that Toynbee hated the English more than he did. # THE UNBEARABLE WEIGHT OF REALITY ******************************************** It is not history or social, economic, cultural and geographic conditions beyond our control that have divided us and keep us divided today; rather, it is the gradual and cold-blooded development of a system – a system of cunningly formulated prejudices, dogmas, and lies – that favors the dividers among us and penalizes the proponents of solidarity and unity. In short: our problems are ours; they are not enemy action, and if they are, the enemy is within. * Speaking the truth is easy; what’s hard is to make it palatable, comprehensible, and bearable. * Perennial victims are not and cannot be morally superior. * I agree with those who assert we are the real Chosen People – chosen to be the targets of bloodthirsty barbarians, both foreign and domestic. #

Thursday, May 02, 2013 ********************************* AS I SEE IT (XXXIII) ***************************** Things are looking up. At this rate our dissidents will outnumber our dupes. * Has any one of our vodanavorjis ever written a sonnet titled “Yes im anoush commissarneri”? * Some of our Diasporan leaders are Turks who speak Armenian fluently, I was informed once by one of our elder statesmen. What about our oligarchs in the Homeland? Are they human beings? * The secret ambition of all ass-kissers is to be ass-kickers. * To cover up blunders is to promote and legitimize future disasters. The blame-game is a dead end and our role models are the scum of the earth. # PERVERSIONS **************************** Some people agree with one another because they place the strength of unity and consensus above the weakness of discord. We are different. First and foremost we are men of principle and the principle we believe in and practice more than any other is self-destruction. * If you are judged by your inferiors you will be found guilty on grounds of superiority. * The greater the incompetence of a regime, the greater the number of its victims. # ZERO ******************** The greater the distance between what you think of yourself and what others think of you, the greater the number of conflicts between you and the world. * Paraphrasing Gandhi, if you reduce yourself to zero your conflicts will be zero. * If you think of yourself as the center of the universe, you will be wrong even when you are right. * If you think God is on your side, both God and the Devil will conspire against you. * And if you think you belong to a nation that is God’s chosen, you will be torn to shreds by the scum of the earth. This is neither theory nor speculation, neither prediction nor metaphysics, but historic reality. #

Sunday, April 28, 2013 ****************************************** KING AND COUNTRY ********************************** Have you ever wondered how many men who killed and died in the name of King and Country ever stopped to ask: Whose King and whose Country? Or for that matter, whose Sultan and whose Commissar? * The Brits who fought against German in World War II had a German king. Napoleon was Italian, Hitler Austrian, Stalin Georgian, the Greek king too was a German; most Byzantine emperors – the most warlike and bloodthirsty – were either Armenian of half-Armenian; the Ottoman sultans were bastards – the last one’s mother was an Armenian. * Royalty, like so much else, is a big joke played by the ruling classes on the ignorant masses. As for Country: at one time or another, every piece of real estate, except the Garden of Eden, has been contested. * What a book one could write on the role of lies, illusions, and wishful thinking in human affairs! * By the way, most Armenian kings, including the last one, were odars. As for our present leadership: one of our elder statesmen once confided in me that some of them are Turks who speak Armenian fluently. I didn’t believe him then but I do now. # ON CONSENSUS *************************** When I first read the words “consensus seeker” I thought if I were a millionaire the first thing I would do is establish a university course on the subject. If we don’t have such a course today it may be because we are natural-born sh*t-disturbers who thrive on conflict. * Think of society and its laws as a conspiracy whose aim is to produce criminals. * You may have noticed that Armenians who demand solutions don’t like to think of themselves as the problem. * Honest Christians exist as surely as honest Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and atheists but they are not allowed to formulate and implement policy. # KING AND COUNTRY (ii) **************************************** It could be said of our leadership: the higher they rise, the lower they sink – which is what happens in all criminal organization. * If I were to produce an autobiography I would begin by warning the reader that my life is so unreadable that I would have to either invent it or write the opposite of what really happened. The same applies to an objective account of our past. * Power and lies are Siamese. The greater the power, the bigger the lies. * To legitimize their power, popes assert infallibility notwithstanding their countless blunders – from the Crusades to the persecution, torture and death of heretics. * Kings, we were told, got their power from God via the Church. It is safe to assume that men who speak in the name of god are compulsive and habitual liars. * I repeat myself? So do you whenever you say “Yes, sir!” # THAT WHICH WE SHARE WITH YANKS *********************************** Americans have trouble understanding why someone who has enjoyed all the benefits and privileges of being a citizen of the greatest democracy in the history of mankind would freely choose to be a terrorist. They cannot imagine themselves to be so repulsive that in the environment they have created to kill and die become more desirable than to live and prosper. * As for Armenians: our arrogance and stupidity are such that we cannot imagine ourselves to be targets of criticism by fellow Armenians. * After Kazantzakis died and was buried in Crete, the natives would shit on his grave. My advice to our dissidents: stipulate in your will to be buried in a grave without a headstone. * When sheep get organized they choose a wolf as their leader. * Dissidents are neither harlots nor pimps but brothers and sisters who hear a different drummer. Now then, go ahead and explain that to our bosses, bishops, benefactors, and commissars. #