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NOTES / COMMENTS
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The speed of darkness
exceeds the speed of light.
*
If most people lust for success,
success can’t be a good thing.
*
My standard answer to those who say
I see only the dark side of things:
“Nobody is paying me to lie.”
*
People don’t want their problems solved
because the solution may expose them
as former dupes.
*
All religions have a history
and all histories have a beginning and an end.
*
Chickens are failed dinosaurs.
There is a moral and a lesson in that.
*
Some men may be smarter than chickens
but most of them cannot even produce
an honest egg.
*
You want answers to all your problems?
Join a congregation.
#
Our misfortunes did not fall on us
like thieves in the night:
we invited them;
and when they responded to our invitation
we pretended to be astonished.
*
#
Our misfortunes come from over dependence on foreign powers and the false assumption that the great powers would come to Armenia's aid even when the great powers did nothing after the 1894-96 atrocities, and did nothing when Turkey invaded Armenia in 1920
FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
**********************************
To be happy means to be in deep xxxx
and not know it.
*
I come from an environment with a mindset
that assumes the victim to be guilty
for failing to take evasive action.
*
To love popular music means
to trust mob rule.
*
We are a nation constipated
with too much bad history.
*
An Armenian disagreement
is my definition of verbal massacre.
#
ON IDENTITY
*******************************
Just because I was born in Greece,
that doesn’t make me a Greek.
Just because I was educated in Italy…
Just because I live in Canada…
Who the hell am I?
My tentative answer:
an Armenian whose ambition in life
is to be born again as a human being.
*
ON TURKS
***********************
A Turk, very much like a rose,
is a Turk, is a Turk.
Bad reputation in the West.
In Vittorio de Sica’s TWO WOMEN,
Sophia Loren identifies her rapists as Turks.
They were Moroccans.
*
ON ARMENIANS
*****************************
When they are not confused with
Romanians or the Biblical Aramaeans
they are perceived
as smart operators in the marketplace,
and smart in the sense of,
after you shake hands with one
count your fingers…
#
ON IDENTITY
*******************************
ON ARMENIANS
*****************************
When they are not confused with
Romanians or the Biblical Aramaeans
they are perceived
as smart operators in the marketplace,
and smart in the sense of,
after you shake hands with one
count your fingers…
#
To be famous as cunning traders can mean that, in the community the traders represent, money is valued above all else, which
needless to say, is a dangerous concept if dealing with managing a country!
ON LOVE: TWO VIEWS
*********************************
Love is a creative force.
It sees things that aren’t there.
*
Love is a racket.
Women know this.
By the time men find out,
it’s too late.
*
ON LEADERSHIP
**************************
The captain goes down with the ship.
Armenian translation:
The captain is the first to abandon ship.
*
ON SURVIVAL
********************
When our leaders brag
about our instinct for survival,
they mean of course their own.
*
THE FUNCTION OF LEADERSHIP
**************************************
Combating the enemy’s big lies
with bigger lies.
*
ON POETRY
******************
Poetry should be as accessible as
“To be or not to be,” and
“Sometimes I feel like a motherless child.”
Poetry that needs footnotes
is chocolate-coated b.s.
*
BIG LIES
*************************
To explain the incomprehensible and the unknowable,
man has created ten thousand gods
and twice as many big lies.
*
MORE ON LEADERSHIP
***********************************
The main function of leadership
is to convince the 99%
they know nothing
and they understand even less.
#
MORE IS LESS
**************************************************
A Turkish-Armenian is more Turkish and less Armenian.
A Soviet-Armenian is more Soviet and less Armenian.
An Armenian-American is more American and less Armenian.
An Armenian from the Middle-East is more Levantine and less Armenian.
Something similar could be said of French-Armenians,
Greek-Armenians, Italian-Armenians
(assuming there are some left), and so on.
That's because, in Krikor Zohrab's words:
“As impressionable as soft wax,
the Armenian acquires indiscriminately the virtues as well as the vices
of the country in which he happens to be living.”
*
And I remember a retired Armenian schoolteacher in her eighties
(may she rest in peace and may the blessing of the Lord be upon her)
saying, “Armenians are fast learners of all the wrong things.”
#
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