homage

Thursday, July 24, 2008
**************************************
VARIATIONS ON FAMILIAR THEMES
*****************************************************
If you have a choice
between fighting a sumo wrestler
and a motor-mouth wench,
choose the fat Jap.
*
The difference between a garden-variety idiot
and an Armenian idiot is that
the Armenian will think of himself as a genius.
*
Of how many brainwashed dupes one could say,
he may shave and wear pants
but his brain is still in diapers.
*
If you are for honesty,
crooks will unite against you.
If you are for free speech,
commissars will gang up on you.
If you are for democracy,
fascists will verbally massacre you.
It has been my misfortune
to have riffraff as critics.
*
If no one wants you dead,
you can't be a writer.
A brown-noser, yes.
A writer, no!
*
Nothing can be as repellent
as the rottenness of a mediocrity
or the self-satisfaction of a total ignoramus
who parades as an expert on any given subject
and becomes so vulgar and aggressive when contradicted
that no one wants to tangle with him –
a fact which he invariably misinterprets as a victory.
#

Friday, July 25, 2008
*******************************************
HOMAGE TO MY MUSES
************************************************
Ever since some years ago I called one of my not-so-gentle readers an “inbred moron,” he has done his utmost to prove me right. More recently the same thing happened when I called two of my less-than-gentle readers a “fishwife” and a “garbage-mouth scumbag” respectively.

After reading that Charents had committed suicide by banging his head against the wall of his Yerevan jail, a reader suggests that I do the same – that is, bang my head against a wall until I am dead. I have every reason to suspect that if this reader were to bang his head against a cement wall, he would pulverize the wall long before he manages to do any discernible damage to his skull. Perhaps there lies the secret of our survival -- not inner strength, versatility, and cunning (as we have been brainwashed to believe) but an indestructible skull.
*
Judging by their concentrated venom, some readers hate me so much that all I have to do to get even with them is to stay alive.
*
One of the advantages of being an Armenian writer is the knowledge that all it takes to acquire a mortal enemy, a faithful reader, and an endless source of inspiration (all three for the price of one) is to come up with the right word at the right time and place.
*
Some poets are inspired by noble sentiments or heroic deeds, others by picturesque landscapes or sunsets or the eternal snows of Mount Ararat, still others by a lovely face. All I need is an ugly Armenian and I don't even have to look for them. They come to me gift-wrapped and free of charge. I can truly say therefore that when it comes to muses, my cup runneth over niagarally.
#
Saturday, July 26, 2008
****************************************
ALL IN A DAY'S WORK
********************************************
The struggle between truth-seekers and liars is as old as mankind, and if it ever comes to an end, you can be sure of one thing: it won't be in our lifetime.
*
A headline in our Op-Ed page today reads: “Junk science tactics are designed to confuse the public and the policy-makers.”
*
Kings are beheaded, presidents assassinated, generals killed, chief executive officers are exposed as crooks, writers are silenced, rejected, betrayed, starved, sometimes even butchered or shot by commissars and their many pseudo- and neo-successors. It's all in a day's work. It comes with the territory. It is an integral part of the human condition. A routine occurrence in the history of mankind.
*
I like to say that some of my worst detractors who write anonymously are either bishops or sons of bishops because when I wrote for the weeklies, one of the nastiest letters to the editor against me was written by the secretary of a bishop – probably dictated by him.
*
“To write as you do, you must have some big balls!” a reader tells me. No. Not really. As a matter of fact, whenever I visit my dentist, I remind him of the fact that I happen to be an Orthodox Coward. If I appear brave to some it may be because I am surrounded by yellow-belly dupes with the guts of a mouse who are afraid of their own shadow.
*
And then there is the motor-mouth fishwife and the garbage-mouth imbecile who expects me to believe that I am always wrong and s/he is always right. There is only one infallible person on this planet and we meet him every day in an Armenians discussion forum.
*
Since they write anonymous(e)ly, most of my detractors think no one will ever know who they are. No one except themselves; and they may run from themselves but they can't hide.
#