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? #