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. #

IMMORTALITY ******************************** On the radio this morning when asked if he believes in immortality, a self-described “Christian agnostic” replied: “Only in the sense that my DNA will survive in my children and grandchildren.” * WISDOM OF OLD AGE ******************************* Once upon a time I sought the company of fellow Armenians. Now I avoid them. Ignorance is a luxury only the young can afford. * TWO BIBLES ********************* There are two Bibles: God’s (written) and the Devil’s (unwritten). The first is used for sermons. * BEAUTY AND THE BEAST ******************************** Leonard Bernstein to Glenn Gould after he played Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto: “You played so beautifully in the cadenza that I almost came in my pants.” * IMMORTALITY (II) ********************************** I have already lived twice as long as the average Armenian writer. That’s long enough for me. # TRIBALTHINKING ********************************** If Assad is on our side, he can no wrong. If the rebels are against us they can do nothing right. The mindset of tribal people without a moral compass. * UNGRATEFUL BASTARD! ************************************* Because I diagnosed him as a sado-masochistic fascist and an advanced case of narcissism, he refuses to talk to me. Instead of gratitude for saving him from many trips to the shrink, I am treated as a hostile witness. But then, no one has ever said gratitude is our strong suit. * SHARING WISDOM ************************** Some readers refuse to share their wisdom with me. They only say “You know nothing and understand even less,” or words to that effect. Throughout our millennial history our writers have been misunderstood, ignored, rejected, abused, starved, even betrayed and murdered by the people and their representatives. So they can dish it out but they can’t take it? * PREVENTING MEASURE ********************************** There is a park, a lake, and a river a block from my house. To prevent anyone from crapping on my grave I have decided to have my ashes scattered in one of them. # ON THE RISE & FALL OF EMPIRES ************************************************* Two thousand years ago -- give and take a decade or two – England was part of the Roman Empire. Who could have predicted then that from the ashes of one empire another would rise? * What will the world look like two thousand years from now? If the Turks acquired an empire of their own, why not the Zulus? * What if after long centuries of degradation, darkness, and filth a new generation of Armenians says enough is enough! We want our own place in the sun. We want to choose our own allies and, with their cooperation and help, our own empire? * As I write, we are witnessing the gradual collapse of the American and Russian empires. Who will replace them? Can anyone guess? When it comes to the rise and fall of empires, your guess or anyone else’s is as good as mine. * To say we will never have an empire of our own is as absurd as to say we will. I choose to say neither. What I say is, in the realm of possibilities nothing is impossible. Or, in the words of Jean-Paul Sartre: “As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.” #

WE ARE A NATION ********************************* We are a nation that has suffered genocide. Delete the Genocide from our history and our collective profile would disintegrate into fragments or tribes that have been loyal and obedient servants to first-class swine. * It addition to a profile the Genocide has also given us a rallying point, not to say full-time jobs to scholars, teachers, Turcocentric ghazetajis, fund-raisers, Genocide-Recognition tax collectors, activists, lobbyists, and memoirists. * Don’t misunderstand me. I am not implying we should be grateful to the perps. I am only saying let’s give the Devil his due. * All professions, we are told, are “conspiracies against the laity.” We have all heard of cynics who use someone else’s crucifixion to make a comfortable living. The blame-gave is the favorite sport of our leadership. Zohrab tells us it is a mistake to confront our problems with lamentation. * I am not casting aspersions. All I am saying is as human beings we share the frailties of our species. We are not a morally superior nation. But we are a nation. We… # TURKS QUOTE ME? ****************************** That may be because my critics keep calling me a “denialist.” * You expect me to believe you are a dedicated and selfless patriot? But my belief system tells me “the better they classify themselves, the worse they are.” * You want to know what I think of Arabs and Muslims in general? All I know about them is that they want to be loved by the world even as they hate one another unto death. Could something similar be said of us? * You say everything I say about Armenians proves that I don’t know them, I don’t understand them, I can’t stand them. So what’s wrong with that? The people have consistently rejected, even betrayed and starved our writers. If you don’t like the word justice, how about retaliation? Unless of course you are one of those who can dish it out but can’t take it. # POLITICIANS **************************** An American mayor on TV when told she doesn’t behave like a politician: “That’s because I am not a politician. I am a public servant.” * WISDOM ****************** To read the unwritten and to hear the unsaid are the beginning of all wisdom. * DISAGREEMENTS ************************** When an honest man disagrees with me I begin by questioning the validity of my own convictions. But when a crook disagrees with me I feel vindicated. * THEY ARE AHEAD OF US ********************************** Turks have produced their share of dissidents because they know what compulsive and habitual liars their politicians and academics are. * I REPEAT MYSELF? ***************************** So does our reality! * Q/A ***************** Did he use poison gas against his own people, including women and children? An irrelevant question. He is guilty as hell because his father is his role model. He thinks he can save the nation by reducing its cities to rubble. He enjoys the support of imams and Putin. Like all dictators, including their Muslim variants, he is a natural-born killer. * VOLTAIRE SPEAKS ************************** “…and because it was a religious war, there were no survivors.” # POLITICS ABC ************************* There are divisions everywhere, even within the family unit. A healthy family is one in which divisions are reconciled by means of mutual tolerance, understanding, compromise and consensus. * Divisions are symptoms of failure in leadership. Reconciling differences is one of the most important functions of the state. * To assume that you can stifle discontent and impose harmony by force or massacre is an Ottoman misconception. * Compromise and consensus don’t happen on their own. They are man-made. In politics they are results of competent statesmanship. * The Syrian leadership had several decades during which to reconcile its internal conflicts and differences. It failed to do so. What’s happening today is a consequence of that failure. * The blame-game explains nothing. Its sole aim is to deny failure and reject responsibility. * Honesty is a universal and invisible empire. We are either its citizens or cowardly liars who refuse to face facts and deal with reality. #

INSANITY *********************** Because the plea of insanity is not an option, they speak of political, economic, social and cultural conditions beyond their control. Ask them why they keep dividing and subdividing the nation, they will say it’s the opposition that does that. Ask them why they hate to assume responsibility, and they will call you “a piece of sh*t who doesn’t have Mt. Ararat in his heart.” * DEMOCRACY ****************************** In a democracy there is always a remote possibility that the right thing will be said and done. * ON WRITING ************************* Gide is right: writing gets progressively more difficult. Mann is also right when he says writing is difficult especially for a writer. * MY AMBITION ************************ To write prose and verse that is as accessible as “to be or not to be,” “Our Father who art in heaven,” and “There is nothing new under the sun.” * NOTHING NEW ************************** Everything that needs to be said has been said. All we can do now is quote, paraphrase, abridge, repeat, and when necessary, expand. # ENEMIES ************************** If my enemy’s enemy is my friend, what about his friends? Who would have thought Turks would have more friends in Washington than us, even after millions of dollars wasted on politicians? * AT HOME IN THE WORLD ************************************** Some people are born equipped for life. I wasn't. Never learned how. Never felt at home in the world. Who represents Armenians more: our fat-bellied bosses, bishops, and benefuctors or our starving poets? * TIME ****************** It will take time, they say, assuming time to be on their side. It wasn't in the Ottoman Empire. Neither was it in the USSR and the Middle East, nor even in our own beloved homeland. * MONEY ********************** Making money: I can’t imagine anything more degrading. The only reason I made money was to quit making money. * JUSTICE *************** A headline in this morning’s paper reads: “Access to justice in Canada ‘abysmal’ law group report says.” So is everywhere else, alas! # THE WORD & THE SWORD ************************************* The OLD TESTAMENT and DAS KAPITAL are, without any doubt, two books that changed the world and almost everyone in it. * Who reads Hegel today? Only a handful of academics who do not always agree on what he said or meant to say. And yet Hegel fully qualifies as one of the most influential philosophers of all time if only because Marx is unthinkable without him. * What did Dante and Shakespeare change? Only the lives of a few translators. There are twenty-two published English translations of Dante and a new one (by Clive James) has just come out. * Hitler’s MEIN KAMPF and Thomas Mann’s THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN: which has been more influential? The only thing I can say with any degree of certainty is that, like the Good Lord, the“word” moves in mysterious ways and literary merit is not one of them. # UNFORGETTABLE LINES ********************************************** “In a forest it rains twice”(German saying). * There are some lines that once heard or read are never forgotten. Lines from movies: “I am going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.” “The cat is in the bag and the bag is in the river.” “Gee, I wish we had one of those Doomsday machines.” * Closer to home: “Treason and betrayal are in our blood” (Raffi). * “The end is another beginning” (Baruir Sevag). * “To the poor everyone is generous with advice.” * “Pigs never see the stars.” * “Truth is a language that if not spoken is forgotten” (Hagop Baronian). * “Every Armenian has another Armenian whom he considers his mortal enemy” (Derenik Demirjian). * “You write a hit play the same way that you write a flop” (Saroyan). * “Let us learn to be human by observing animals” (Aramais Sahakian). * “He was a very passionate man. He was an Armenian” (Chekhov). * “You must burn in order to enlighten” (Toumanian). # Q/A ************** If we were introduced to our self as seen by others, would we recognize him? * ONLY IN ARMENIA ******************************* Can you win a political election if you have the personality of a non-person and the charisma of a robot? That question has been answered in Armenia. * THE SOPRANOS *************************** How can a non-Italian like David Chase, creator/writer/producer of THE SOPRANOS, know so much about Italians? The answer: very much like Mario Puzo he is Italian and his real name is DiCesare. For more on the subject see DIFFICULT MEN by Brett Martin (New York. 2013). * THE CASE OF THE DISAPPEARING NOSE *********************************************** In her biography of SAUL STEINBERG (New York, 2012) Deirdre Bair speaks of“Armenian noses, one bigger than the other”(page 355). I once heard one of our political activists say: “Our political parties have played a key role in the preservation of our identity in the Diaspora.” If the case of our disappearing proboscis is an index, they have been doing a lousy job. # ON FAITH ************************* Faith is not what it pretends to be. Faith is an imaginary antidote to imaginary fears. * ANSWERS ********************** To readers who say they don’t always understand my kind of writing, I say what I was told by adults whenever I asked an inconvenient question: “You will find out when you grow up.” * ON BEING TRANSPARENT *********************************** If we are an open book to others, it may be because we brag too much. Only idiots brag about what they don’t have. Smart, progressive, Christian? Don’t make me laugh! * HATRED UNTO DEATH ********************************** In his last book MORTALITY (New York, 2012) the late Christopher Hitchens regrets his early death from cancer because, he writes, he will not have the pleasure of reading “the obituaries of elderly villains like Henry Kissinger and Joseph Ratzinger.” I like that. I prefer honest hatred to dishonest sermons on forgiveness and love. * BAD ADVICE ********************** When told to be more tolerant and positive, I say, I refuse to entertain sentiments I don’t have. In the name of what, may I ask? To flatter the swollen egos of morally bankrupt nonentities? * EMPTY BOAST ******************** “No one understands Turks as well as we do!” Oshagan once bragged. My question is: What did we do with our superior brand of knowledge and understanding except wait until it was too late? # PEZEVENGS (corrected version) ******************************* There is a type of self-assessed “authentic” Armenian, born and raised in the shadow of Mt. Ararat, who views diasporan Armenians with Turkish surnames as second-class citizens or“white niggers” in need of his political and cultural guidance. * Thoroughly stupefied, brainwashed and moronizedby Kremlin propaganda this so-called first-class pure-blooded specimen whose preferred medium is Russian operates on the assumption that the USSR was a more civilized place than the Ottoman Empire and Stalin a morally superior butcher than the Sultan and Talaat. * Therefore, in solidarity with my Dajgahayer (Turkish-Armenian) brothers and sisters I plan to change my surname from Baliozian to Baliozoghlu. #