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. #