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  • Re: elegy

    Thursday, June 07, 2012
    ****************************************
    ASSETS & LIABILITIES
    **************************************
    A failed nation is defined as one
    ... that has not been successful in reconciling
    its internal factions.
    It follows, notwithstanding our many assets
    (high IQ, progressive, adaptable, first nation this, first nation that)
    we are a failed nation
    very much like Somalia, Sudan, Liberia, and Syria.
    *
    What’s the use of being smart
    if we are too stupid to reach a consensus?
    What the hell is the use of doing a thousand things
    if we cannot do that which must be done?
    And when I say “we” I mean not only our leaders
    but also those who support them.
    If our leaders divide us
    it’s because we allow them to do so.
    We are as responsible as they are.
    *
    Sooner or later all internal divisions
    lead to massacre – both “red” and “white.”
    And speaking of massacre,
    you may have noticed that
    when I made a short list of our assets,
    I included our genocide
    (“first nation to experience genocide in the 20th century"),
    which of course is not an asset but a liability
    and the worst failure that a nation can experience.
    # Friday, June 08, 2012
    ************************************************** ******
    COMMENTS
    ***************************
    To say philosophy is useless is to imply
    philomoronism is a superior discipline.
    *
    The only reason the number of my blunders
    has been going down steadily is that
    so is the variety and frequency of my activities.
    The dead don’t make mistakes.
    As for the frequency and variety of my written comments:
    more often than not what I do is speak in defense of Socrates
    and against the jury that condemned him to death.
    *
    If you want to get ahead in our environment
    study the art of kissing ass.
    You need no other qualifications.
    *
    The greatest source of error is self-assessed infallibility.
    #
    Saturday, June 09, 2012
    **************************************
    ON THE 1%
    *************************
    We are told the 1% create jobs.
    What we are not told is where would the 1% be
    without the blood and sweat of the 99%?
    And even important:
    who would wipe their asses
    when they are too young and too old?
    *
    ON BEING PREDICTABLE
    ***************************************
    If I am predictable
    it’s because I am consistently against
    recycling propaganda,
    promoting subservience,
    and legitimizing prejudice.
    If being unpredictable means
    adopting the opposite disposition,
    I solemnly swear here and now
    never to be unpredictable.
    *
    ON WOMEN
    **************************
    The worst thing I can say about women is that
    they are like men.
    #




    Warning: If you ever receive an e-mail from me

    asking for financial assistance,

    please ignore it.

    It's probably from a pirate in Somalia.

    Comment


    • Re: elegy

      Sunday, June 10, 2012
      *************************************
      OBSERVATIONS
      *****************************
      A man who kills in the name of God
      worships the Devil.
      *
      You are not brainwashed for your own good;
      you are brainwashed to better serve their interests.
      *
      Failure is the key to success,
      and success on one level
      may spell ruin in another.
      *
      Tell me what is it that you want more than anything else
      and I will tell you, if you get it, you will be disappointed.
      *
      Too big to fail or too insignificant to survive? – like kings…
      #
      Monday, June 11, 2012
      ************************************
      MORE OBSERVATIONS
      ********************************
      If I were a wealthy man
      I would be surrounded by brown-nosers.
      Ah! the privileges of poverty!
      *
      “If you don’t like the message, shoot the messenger!”
      That indeed is the philosophy of all authoritarian rulers.
      Did I say philosophy?
      Make it philomoronism.
      *
      The destiny of all organizations
      is to become a mafia.
      *
      Where there is power
      the devil is sure to be in charge.
      *
      It took mankind many centuries to conclude that
      kings don’t rule by the will of God.
      It may take many more centuries for mankind to realize that
      men who speak in the name of God
      engage in charlatanism.
      *
      Believers have doubts as surely as
      skeptics thirst for certainties.
      Is there life after death?
      Nobody knows.
      Speaking for myself,
      I think the universe is too complex and magnificent
      piece of machinery
      to end with a whimper.
      But that may well be wishful thinking on my part.
      #
      Tuesday, June 12, 2012
      ***********************************
      THEORIES & FACTS
      ******************************
      If you define patriotism as love of homeland,
      how do you define homeland?
      Speaking for myself I would define it
      as anywhere I am allowed to work and make a living.
      If thousands of Armenians have emigrated to Turkey,
      does that mean Turkey is now their homeland?
      A good question for which I don’t have an easy answer.
      I only know that when
      facts contradict theories,
      you discard the theories and keep the facts.
      Next question:
      Is Armenia our homeland
      if it’s at the mercy of former KGB agents
      and Bolshevik mafias?
      Another good question.
      Speaking for myself,
      I would have a better chance to survive in Turkey.
      #
      Wednesday, June 13, 2012
      ************************************
      EMPTY VERBIAGE
      *****************************
      To speak of Turks and Armenians
      is to engage in fiction.
      There are no Turks and Armenians.
      There are only mongrelized Mongols
      and bastardized Armenians.
      The rest is nationalist propaganda
      and all talk of “pure blood” is fascist nonsense.
      #

      Comment


      • Re: elegy

        Thursday, June 14, 2012
        *******************************************
        MEMORANDA
        ************************
        Historians are first and foremost
        propagandists of state-sponsored lies.
        With them presumption of guilt or innocence comes first,
        selection of evidence after.
        *
        Writing is easy.
        Deleting – that’s where creativity and originality move in.
        *
        To know when to shut up:
        birthplace of all masterpieces.
        *
        All organized religions have failed.
        If they continue to have followers
        it's because any meaning,
        even when meaningless,
        is better than no meaning.
        *
        Strong convictions are the surest symptoms
        of weak minds.
        #
        Friday, June 15, 2012
        *********************************
        IDIOTS
        ********************
        Canadians and Americans appear to be obsessed
        with their unemployment rates,
        not to say corruption and incompetence in high places.
        I have been watching Armenian news on TV
        for more than ten years now
        and I don’t remember a single mention
        of unemployment, corruption, and incompetence.
        All I see is a bunch of bureaucrats or “suits”
        (also identified as “kheyars,” meaning cucumbers)
        in official ceremonies,
        children and teenagers singing and dancing,
        and the rich variety of delicacies served at banquets.
        Idiots!
        *
        Turks are so busy being proud of their Turkishness
        that they pretend to be offended
        when massacres are mentioned.
        And we are so proud of our Armenishness
        that we consider unemployment, corruption, and incompetence
        alien concept not worth mentioning.
        Idiots!
        *
        We are not so much a divided nation
        as a broken one – a broken one, moreover,
        that refuses to mend itself
        though it has all the means to do so.
        Idiots!
        #
        Saturday, June 16, 2012
        *********************************
        DZOUR NESDINK,
        SHIDAG KHOSSINK
        **************************************************
        Burma has its San Suu Kyi,
        Tibet its Dalai Lama,
        Tunisia its Buazizi,
        Egypt its Muslim Brotherhood,
        and once upon a time we had Khrimian Hairik
        who dared to say No to the Czar.
        Whom do we have today?
        Only empty suits, brown-nosing wheeler-dealers,
        and gutless nonentities whose #1 concern is #1.
        This is true not only of the Homeland
        but also the Diaspora.
        That’s what a thousand years of subservience has done to us.
        We lament our million-and-half every year on April 24.
        We should lament our loss of manhood every day.
        #

        Comment


        • Re: elegy

          Sunday, June 17, 2012
          *************************************
          THE SULTAN IS DEAD
          *******************************
          People change.
          Nations change.
          Consider the Chinese:
          from communists to capitalists in a single generation.
          Consider the Mongols:
          who is afraid of them today?
          Consider the Yanks:
          from happy-go-lucky under Eisenhower and “I Love Lucy”
          to the post-Vietnam, Watergate, and “All in the Family” generation.
          *
          What about us?
          We too have changed – but only two words in our national anthem
          (from “Tshvar ander" to “azad angakh”).
          What else?
          I don’t know.
          You tell me!
          I am all ears.
          If our 99% are taken in by our 1%
          it may be because they want to be taken in.
          They demand to be duped.
          They beg to be duped.
          They are grateful to their deceivers.
          The Sultan is dead.
          Long live Putin!
          #
          Monday, June 18, 2012
          ****************************************
          QUESTION
          ************************
          Reality is a jungle
          and we are as backward and naïve as jungle tribes.
          Our friends have been our worst enemies
          and our flatterers our most dangerous liars.
          For every truth we have invented a Big Lie.
          *
          Zohrab trusted Talaat.
          Mikoyan trusted Stalin.
          Gulbenkian left only 5% of his wealth to us,
          and who can blame him?
          *
          Raffi is right.
          We don’t have an aristocracy.
          We don’t have elites.
          Even our best and brightest were taken in by riffraff.
          If I see the dark side of things
          it’s because I have earned the right.
          *
          Because I refuse to flatter your ego,
          am I then your enemy?
          #Tuesday, June 19, 2012
          **************************************
          NAPOLEON
          ********************
          Napoleon Bonaparte:
          I suspect at least one of his contemporaries saying:
          “With a name like that he will never amount to anything!”
          *
          No more wars?
          Only if you eradicate the Big Lies of the 1%
          and the idiocy of the 99%.
          *
          You can argue against half-truths
          but not against Big Lies.
          *
          I have been exposed to so much Armenian venom
          that I have every reason to suspect
          among ten Armenians
          nine are sure to be Turks.
          #
          Wednesday, June 20, 2012
          ***************************************
          INSANITY
          ************************
          The aim of all propaganda is to assert superiority:
          my god, or king, or nation, or race (blood)
          is better than yours.
          *
          Propaganda cannot be outlawed
          because everyone practices it.
          *
          When a transgression enjoys universal approval
          it ceases to be a transgression.
          *
          Anything that places a distance between reality and us
          leads to insanity.
          *
          The real danger in propaganda is not that
          it legitimizes prejudice, intolerance, and lies
          but that it leads to collective insanity.
          *
          Germans under Hitler experienced collective insanity
          as surely as the Chinese under Mao,
          Italians under Mussolini,
          Soviets under Stalin…
          and in general, all people
          under authoritarian or undemocratic rulers.
          *
          Propaganda and sanity are mutually exclusive concepts.
          *
          Religious wars in Europe
          (one of which lasted a hundred years)
          may be seen as eruptions of collective insanity.
          *
          Moral: If it makes you feel good,
          take a second look,
          and if you see nothing wrong, take a third look…
          and a fourth... until you unmask the deception.
          #



          Warning: If you ever receive an e-mail from me

          asking for financial assistance,

          please ignore it.

          It's probably from a pirate in Somalia.

          Comment


          • Re: elegy

            Thursday, June 21, 2012
            ***********************************
            COFFEE
            ************************
            Is coffee good for you?
            Yes. No. Maybe. No one knows.
            There are, it seems, a thousand ingredients in coffee.
            How many of them are good and how many bad?
            Remains to be seen.
            Who would have thought such a simple question
            would have so many complicated answers?
            But there are more complications
            that have nothing to do with coffee itself.
            Those who say coffee is bad
            also say that coffee drinkers are prone to acquire other
            bad habits – such as smoking, drinking, and a sedentary life.
            So that even after determining the nature
            of the thousand ingredients it may be necessary to factor in
            personality traits.
            *
            Is nationalism good or bad?
            Is democracy better than monarchy?
            Do angels and demons exist?
            What about God and the Devil?
            Is there life after death?
            Was there life before birth?
            *
            When asked what he thought of Armenians,
            George Bernard Shaw is quoted as having said –
            I am now paraphrasing:
            “Armenians are a great people
            provided they are periodically massacred.”
            So much for the usefulness of answers
            provided by great intellects.
            #
            Saturday, June 23, 2012
            ************************************
            POWER
            ********************
            Where there is power,
            there will be criminals.
            My guess is – and it’s only a guess
            because there are no statistics:
            the criminal rate on Wall Street, the Kremlin, and the Vatican
            are about the same.
            *
            Speak truth to power?
            What nonsense!
            Power knows already.
            The challenge – the real challenge -- is
            convincing the 99%,
            which amounts to saying
            unbrainwashing the brainwashed.
            #
            Saturday, June 23, 2012
            ***************************************
            SCENARIO
            **************************
            Cosmologists tell us planets, stars, and galaxies are born and die.
            In a billion years or so the earth will be incinerated by the sun
            and our solar system and eventually our galaxy (the Milky Way)
            will enter a black hole and emerge as a new galaxy
            with its own stars, solar system, and planets.
            Perhaps this has happened many times before
            and it is happening elsewhere even as I write.
            Perhaps in the next cycle the Ottoman Empire will be
            an Armenian Empire and we will do to them
            what they did to us.
            I for one wouldn’t be surprised if in another cycle
            Hitler dies of inanition in an Israeli concentration camp
            and Stalin freezes to death in a Siberian gulag.
            And these things may happen immediately after we die,
            because to die means to enter a timeless realm
            wherein a fraction of a second is as long as a billion years.
            You don’t believe me?
            Too good to be true?
            Listen to a cosmologist and see how much of what
            he says, assumes or supposes rings true
            and how much like pure fantasy.
            *
            If God exists He must be just.
            And when I speak of divine justice
            I mean the kind of justice beside which
            human justice is as nothing!
            #



            Warning: If you ever receive an e-mail from me

            asking for financial assistance,

            please ignore it.

            It's probably from a pirate in Somalia.

            Comment


            • Re: elegy

              Sunday, June 24, 2012
              ****************************************
              RECAPPING
              ********************
              Belief systems are useful in so far as they expose
              the fallacies of other belief systems,
              but dangerous when they assert orthodoxy or monopoly.
              Marxism was useful in so far as it exposed the fallacies
              of feudalism and capitalism but dead wrong
              when it legitimized crimes against humanity.
              Something similar could be said of Christianity and Islam
              whose innocent victims are without number.
              *
              We have no choice but to come to terms with the fact that
              what we know, what we can know,
              is only a tiny fraction of what we don’t know.
              Metaphysical systems may allow us to travel from A to B,
              sometimes even from C to D,
              but we will never make it to XYZ.
              *
              All belief systems are like the Tower of Babel:
              sooner or later they will collapse
              like the World Trade Center on 9/11.
              #
              Monday, June 25, 2012
              ************************************
              FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
              ********************************
              Propaganda is invisible to the brainwashed.
              *
              Dissent is a crime only in a state
              whose legislators are criminals.
              *
              In the NEW YORKER (June 18, 2012) I read:
              “Greeks invented democracy;
              they invented tragedy too.
              The problem is that in recent years
              they haven’t invented much of anything.”
              What about us?
              What’s our next “first”?
              What if we have run out of them?
              *
              I may not know better
              but I may see something you cannot see.
              #
              Tuesday, June 26, 2012
              *********************************
              COMMENTS
              ****************************
              Everything I say is guesswork.
              I leave truth to our imams, commissars, and their dupes.
              *
              For more than a thousand years
              the ancient Greeks believed in non-existent gods
              and built magnificent temples in their honor.
              Which may suggest that a god doesn’t need to exist
              in order to be believed and worshipped?
              *
              We emphasize the importance of good manners to our children;
              also the necessity to murder the enemy in time of war.
              #
              Wednesday, June 27, 2012
              ************************************
              SLOGANS
              **************************
              “Black is beautiful.”
              “Armenians are smart.”
              “xxxs are the Chosen People.”
              These assessments have as much validity or objectivity
              as their contradictions.
              *
              Slogans maybe defined as lies
              with political ambitions.
              “Separate but equal.”
              “Russians are our Big Brothers.”
              *
              My favorite slogans are the ones
              that are contradicted by other slogans:
              “All men are brothers.”
              “Homo homini lupus”
              (Man is wolf to other men).
              #

              Comment


              • Re: elegy

                Thursday, June 28, 2012
                ********************************************
                IS JUSTICE BLIND?
                *****************************
                Justice may be blind but she has a sensitive nose
                and can smell the unwashed.
                Remember that next time you decide to take a wealthy man to court.
                *
                The wealthy are so used to having their asses kissed
                that they now expect you to also tell the world they smell like roses.
                And you will be surprised how many are more than willing
                to grab the opportunity.
                *
                A gentle reader writes: "If, as you say,
                Armenian literature is a dead end,
                why not give up writing?"
                I write for two totally non-literary reasons:
                To fight boredom and to acquire friends;
                and with every book I have published,
                I have acquired a new friend;
                also (alas!) two enemies.
                #
                Friday, June 29, 2012
                ********************************************
                ON –ISMS AND RELATED ATROCITIES
                ************************************************** ************There is God;
                there are men who represent Him on earth;
                and there are the unwashed
                whose sole option is to say “Yes, sir!”
                There you have it:
                as good a definition of Ottomanism and Armenianism as any.
                *
                What is Turcocentrism?
                Like all –isms it is a closed system of thought
                that legitimizes prejudice, intolerance, and hatred,
                *
                The aim of all –isms is to moronize.
                *
                The stated aim of patriotism is to promote love of Country
                (not necessarily fellow countrymen).
                Its unstated aim: to hate and kill the enemy.
                Which is what moronized Turks did to us.
                Which is also why they refuse – make it, they can’t –
                plead guilty as charged.
                *
                What is historicism?
                In my morning paper today
                I read the following quotation by Napoleon Bonaparte:
                “History is the version of past events
                that people decided to agree upon.”
                There you have it:
                as good a definition of historicism as any.
                *
                What is the true aim of literature?
                To unbrainwash the unwashed.
                #
                Saturday, June 30, 2012
                ************************************************** ***
                OBSERVATIONS
                ***********************************
                Can a writer who belongs to a failed nation by a success?
                Cioran, Ionesco, Adamov, Nabokov:
                if they are respected names today
                it’s because they gave up their homeland and their mother tongue
                and adopted French or English as their medium.
                *
                In order to survive, our crème de la crème
                had no choice but to kiss the ass of our crème de la scum.
                Zarian.
                *
                In my dealings with our Turcocentric scholars and ghazetajis
                I have noticed that their greatest enemy is not the Turk
                but an Armenian who dares to question their methods,
                doubt their efficacy, question their messianism,
                and expose their true intent
                which is not justice but covering up
                the cowardice, dishonesty, and incompetence
                of our ruling classes.
                *
                To be powerless may not be a crime
                but it is treated as if it were a capital offense.
                #

                Comment


                • Re: elegy

                  Sunday, July 01, 2012
                  ************************************
                  IF…
                  ***********************
                  If we cannot learn from our mistakes,
                  who is going to teach us?
                  Has anyone ever taught us anything?
                  The Great Powers of the West?
                  The only thing we can learn from them
                  is double-talk and deception.
                  Isn’t that what they did to us
                  at the turn of the last century?
                  They promised their support
                  but when we needed them most
                  they assumed the role of passive spectators.
                  The Russian, our so-called Big Brothers?
                  Don’t make me laugh!
                  All they have done so far is
                  purge our best and brightest thus reducing us
                  to the status of perennial brown-nosers.
                  The Yanks?
                  They can’t even speak the G word
                  because they are afraid to alienate the criminals.
                  Turkish friendship means more to them
                  than the slaughter of countless innocent civilians.
                  And speaking of countless victims:
                  Very probably they have themselves slaughtered as many,
                  If not more of them, as their friends, the Turks.
                  As for Turks themselves:
                  give them half a chance and they will tear us to shreds,
                  feast on our carcass,
                  after which they will plead not guilty
                  by reason of manifest destiny.
                  Are we then condemned to remain
                  cowardly nonentities without cojones?
                  As if that weren’t bad enough,
                  we like to make a spectacle of ourselves
                  by bragging about our highly developed survival tactics.
                  You call that survival?
                  I call it dragging out a shameless existence.
                  *
                  Now you know why I will never be a popular Armenian writer.
                  I am the bearer of bad tiding because
                  I refuse to flatter, lie, misrepresent, and mislead.
                  #
                  Monday, July 02, 2012
                  *****************************************
                  FROM A BIOGRAPHY OF SOCRATES
                  AS TOLD BY HIS WIFE
                  ********************************************
                  Four words – that’s all I need to sum up his life:
                  All talk -- no action.
                  What did he talk about?
                  I don’t know and I don’t want to know.
                  I have too much respect for the law
                  to meddle into matters that are none of my business.
                  In the eyes of his friends he may be the wisest Athenian.
                  I am not sure about that.
                  What kind of wisdom is it
                  that drives you to an early grave, may I ask?
                  They say he was unjustly accused.
                  Let them say what they want.
                  I for one will not question the integrity of our justice system,
                  which, as far as I am concerned,
                  is the most advanced in the world.
                  Sometimes I am asked if he was gay.
                  I don’t think so.
                  In his youth he was a passionate lover,
                  but gradually he lost interest in sex.
                  He preferred the company of men.
                  That’s all I have to say on the subject.
                  #
                  Tuesday, July 03, 2012
                  ***************************************
                  Q/A
                  **********************************
                  “If you can’t change things,
                  why even bother to speak of change?”
                  Because if you don’t say the right thing
                  you may end up kissing the wrong ass.
                  There you have it:
                  our millennial history in a nutshell.
                  *
                  Worth remembering:
                  the so-called “Great Powers of the West,”
                  Russians, Turks, and Yanks, among many others,
                  are first and foremost their own worst enemies;
                  and empires fall not because
                  they can no longer defend their borders
                  against a more powerful enemy
                  but because of internal conflicts, decline, and generation.
                  *
                  To those who are brainwashed to think
                  if better nations than us are divided,
                  divisions must be an inevitable fact of life;
                  therefore we must be on the right path.
                  I ask: Who benefits from this line of thought?
                  Only the corrupt and the incompetent.
                  To which I can only say,
                  if kissing ass is your aim in life,
                  be my guest.
                  #
                  Wednesday, July 04, 2012
                  ***********************************
                  TOO BIG TO FAIL?
                  *********************************
                  There is not a single big truth
                  but only many small truths
                  and twice as many big lies.
                  *
                  Too big to fail?
                  What nonsense!
                  Empires rise and fall,
                  and when they fall,
                  people are liberated from the grip
                  of bloodthirsty parasites.
                  #




                  Warning: If you ever receive an e-mail from me

                  asking for financial assistance,

                  please ignore it.

                  It's probably from a pirate in Somalia.

                  Comment


                  • Re: elegy

                    Thursday, July 05, 2012
                    ******************************************
                    SOMETHNG ROTTEN
                    ******************************
                    “There is something rotten in the State of Denmark.”
                    That’s one way to sum up the central message of our literature
                    from Khorenatsi and Yeghishe
                    to Raffi, Baronian, Odian, Zarian, and Massikian.
                    *
                    As for the contrary view,
                    it goes something like this:
                    “We are a people like any other people.
                    There is nothing fundamentally wrong with us.
                    But there is something horribly wrong with our scribblers
                    who do nothing but xxxxx simply because
                    their readers are too smart to be taken in by their bullxxxx.”
                    *
                    To which I can only say:
                    “If you believe that, you will believe anything,
                    including the Big Lie that
                    our 1% 'ha sempre ragione”'(is always right),
                    and we never had it so good
                    because we are in the best of hands."
                    *
                    There is no limit to how blind our 99% can be
                    and how effective our 1% has been
                    in their systematic and organized effort
                    to control our educational system
                    and to brainwash our defenders of the faith.
                    *
                    FOOTNOTE
                    ************************
                    For more details see my
                    DICTIONARY OF ARMENIAN QUOTATIONS
                    and Naregatsi’s LAMENTATIONS.
                    *
                    WARNING
                    ***************
                    No need to take everything I say literally
                    or seriously, or as the last word on the subject,
                    but only as a tiny piece in a vast mosaic or
                    a single line in a long narrative.
                    #
                    Friday, July 06, 2012
                    **********************************
                    ON LOYALTY
                    **************************
                    The body language of some of my critics is so unfriendly
                    that I have every reason to suspect
                    if they and I had been citizens of the USSR
                    they would have denounced me to the KGB –
                    in the name of patriotism and loyalty to the regime, of course.
                    Which is why I am suspicious of both patriotism and loyalty
                    and I consider them not as assets but as liabilities.
                    *
                    ON BENEFACTORS
                    ************************
                    Great wealth and atheism might as well be synonymous.
                    The fact that our benefactors build churches
                    is proof only of the fact that they think they can bribe God –
                    they can manipulate Him
                    the way they manipulate their workers and hirelings.
                    To me that’s worst than atheism – it is blasphemy.
                    #
                    Saturday, July 07, 2012
                    ************************************
                    DIARY
                    **********************
                    A line from a Polish movie:
                    “The law is the law even when it is unjust.”
                    *
                    According to some observers,
                    drone attacks create more terrorists.
                    *
                    As the West argues endlessly for or against intervention in Syria,
                    al-Qaeda has decided unilaterally for intervention.
                    My guess is, on the day al-Qaeda joins the dissenters in Russia and China,
                    it may even enjoy American support.
                    *
                    If your favorite sport is the blame-game,
                    don’t be surprised if you run into someone
                    whose favorite sport is “blame the victim.”
                    #

                    Comment


                    • Re: elegy

                      Wednesday, July 11, 2012
                      ***************************
                      MEMOIRS
                      *******************
                      If I were to make a list of all my blunders,
                      I could write an encyclopedia on the subject,
                      and the first entry would be
                      my decision to write for Armenians.
                      *
                      Writing for Armenians is like
                      sending memos on strategy to Napoleon
                      or teaching counterpoint to Bach.
                      *
                      In the land of the insane,
                      can you plead not guilty by reason of insanity?
                      *
                      After I drop dead some of my readers
                      (no more than a dozen) may remember me
                      as a grouch who hated everyone
                      beginning with his fellow Armenians.
                      But if you were to ask anyone
                      who has been personally acquainted with me or met me,
                      you will be told I am as timid, withdrawn, and unassertive
                      as a sardine in a pool of sharks.
                      I have relatives who live no more than a couple of blocks from me
                      who haven’t seen me in years.
                      *
                      What I have been saying to our 1% is this:
                      You may moronize most of the 99% most of the time
                      but you cannot moronize all of the 99% all the time.
                      There will always be one who will object,
                      and where there is one there will be another.
                      #
                      Monday, July 09, 2012
                      ****************************************
                      KISMET
                      *****************************************
                      To justify their imperialist ambitions,
                      Americans have invented the concept of Manifest Destiny.
                      To justify our status as losers,
                      we have swallowed the concept of fatalism or jagadakir –
                      literally, written on our forehead.
                      It was our fate (jagadakir) to be slaughtered by the million.
                      Therefore, there was nothing we could have done to prevent it.
                      *
                      Whenever our 1% wants to justify its blunders or incompetence
                      it evokes the very convenient concept of jagadakir.
                      It is the same today.
                      To justify their total inability to prevent our “White Genocide”
                      (assimilation in the Diaspora and exodus in the Homeland)
                      our leadership is united in evoking
                      the philomoronic concepts of cultural, historical, and economic forces
                      beyond their control.
                      They expect us to believe they are all for solidarity
                      but our fate or the Will of God is against it.
                      *
                      If we are to believe our 1%,
                      nations may be divided into two:
                      those whose manifest destiny is to win
                      and those who manifest destiny is to lose.
                      You may not guess to which category we belong
                      and why is it that there is absolutely nothing wrong with our 1%.
                      *
                      For every philosophy there is a philomoronism
                      and of the two philomoronism will be more readily accepted by dupes.
                      #Tuesday, July 10, 2012
                      **************************************
                      PERVERSITIES
                      ******************************
                      There are atheists in all walks of life,
                      in all lines of work,
                      and in all places of worship
                      beginning with the Vatican
                      and not excluding Etchmiadzin.
                      *
                      Overheard:
                      “Banks are not too big to fail,
                      but bankers are too big to jail.”
                      *
                      Speaking of the 1% in general:
                      What could be more criminal than
                      the slaughter of countless innocent civilians?
                      And yet, sometimes it is treated as if it were
                      a necessary step in establishing and maintaining law and order.
                      *
                      Why is it that the demand
                      for a peaceful and fair distribution of wealth
                      is called “class warfare”?
                      *
                      Speaking of the indiscriminate slaughter of civilians:
                      Was the Genocide premeditated, planned and inevitable?
                      If yes, was our 1% blind not to see it coming?
                      As a nation today, do we go on living in darkness?
                      *
                      Why is it that whenever I try to be honest and objective
                      I am treated as if I were guilty of treason and betrayal?
                      In another time and place, and under a different regime
                      I would be arrested, tried, found guilty, and shot –
                      all in the name of law, order, and justice, of course!
                      #
                      Wednesday, July 11, 2012
                      **************************************
                      FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
                      *********************************
                      The 1% invented both class and warfare
                      and they now accuse the 99% of class warfare.
                      In psychology that’s known as projection.
                      By projecting the evil that is within onto others,
                      one exorcises it.
                      *
                      I wonder if the scientists who discovered the God particle
                      believe in God.
                      *
                      If I am or appear to be a heartless son of a xxxxx
                      it may be because I believe with Bismarck
                      that the only way to deal with a pirate
                      is to be a pirate and a half.
                      *
                      If I survived World War II and the Civil War in Greece,
                      it was by pure luck.
                      I cannot brag about it.
                      But I can brag about the fact that
                      I have survived countless Armenian verbal assaults.
                      #

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