Wednesday, August 07, 2013 ****************************** CHOICES ******************************* To live in the Homeland or in Turkey? Thousands of Armenians today choose Turkey. “Yes im anoush Hayastani!” * The God of Christians is an idol. I didn’t say that. Martin Luther did. * Two of the shortest sayings in the world: “Adam had’em” (microbes) and “Kirk krik” = forty broken (in Turkish). Freely translated “at the age of forty consider yourself half-dead.” * The secret of rewriting consists in deleting. If you can say the same thing in two words, why use three? * I see contradictions everywhere: moral failure in financial success and scratching the bottom in reaching the top. * Was the beginning of our cosmos the end of another? Does God recycle? * Two kinds of readers: the few who insult me anonymously and the many who ignore me. * Very often in life our choices are not between the good and the bad but between the bad and the worse, or between the worse and the worst. # FORGIVE MY FRENCH ********************************* My favorite political joke consists of a brief exchange between a speechifying Republican presidential candidate and a heckler. HECKLER: My grandfather was a Democrat; my father was a Democrat; I am a Democrat. CANDIDATE: If your grandfather were a jackass and your father were a jackass, what would you be? HECKLER: A Republican! * In the eyes of some we, all of us, are no better than jackasses. I speak from experience. Recently I was myself called “a piece of sh*t” by a committed patriot who spoke in the name of the eternal snows of Mt. Ararat. * Like all ideologies and belief systems, patriotism too is an instrument of deception whose aim is to divide, exploit, and deceive dupes. * The key to life is cooperation. If we are alive now it’s because of countless atoms in our body cooperating with one another. Let one of them deviate from its path and the result would be catastrophic illness and death. * As a nation we continue to be led by individuals who have consistently deviated from the right path by dividing us in the name of this or that ideology or belief system. In their eyes we may well be no better than jackasses who will believe everything they are told. * Some day in the near or distant future a historian may be justified in describing us as a nation of jackasses led by sh*ts – if you will forgive my French. # CONTRADICTIONS (IV) *********************************** Kipling: “When you know what you can do, do something else.” * What if what you do or say does not even register on anyone’s consciousness? What if nothing changes and when on those rare occasions something does change, the change is more likely to be for the worse. * I see contradictions everywhere. * The most important decisions in our lives are made behind closed doors. * The aristocracy does not work. Work is for the working classes. What the aristocracy does is create an educational system that promotes the importance of work. * If exploitation and thievery are both legal and profitable and if the 99% are more than willing to work for minimum wage, why deprive them of the privilege? * What if we have created an environment in which only liars and bloodsuckers prosper? * I see contradictions everywhere. Readers who demand a positive approach to our affairs blabber endless about massacres and genocide recognition. And consider our Turcocentric ghazetajis: the offspring of revolutionaries who promised heaven and delivered hall; and now they promise justice provided of course the 99% support their efforts financially. Mi kich pogh oughargetsek. * Samuel Johnson: “I can give you reasons; I can’t give you understanding.” I should like to see an Armenian writer producing such a line. # “C” POWER ************************* Louis B. Mayer on Ava Gardner: “She has cunt power.” (Mayer of Metro Goldwyn Mayer fame: no doubt an expert on the subject – he probably had more women in his stable than the last sultan had concubines in his harem). * Edmund Wilson on Saroyan: “…an agreeable mixture of San Francisco bonhomie and Armenian Christianity.” In what way is Armenian Christianity different from Gringo or Negro Christianity? I don’t know. I suspect neither does Wilson. * Armenians are smart but easily moronized. But then so is the rest of mankind. It is not that I have a low opinion of my fellow men; rather, I am beginning to see them through women’s eyes and think “Men are so stupid!” – especially when it comes to women’s “C” power. * Leonard Bernstein: “Love brings on tears.” Now I know why Bach’s Cello Suites make me cry. #