notes / comments

[zourna]

Re: notes / comments

AN EXPLANATION
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When an old Indian once predicted a bad winter, he was asked how he knew. His reply: “White man make big wood pile.”


The gist is evident, but in arabic they say "let's put the poits where they belong"
It goes like this

The Indians asked their Chief in autumn if the winter was going to be cold or not. Not really knowing an answer, the chief replies that the winter was going to be cold and that the members of the village were to collect wood to be prepared.

Being a good leader, he then went to the next phone booth and called the National Weather Service and asked, "Is this winter to be cold?"

The man on the phone responded, "This winter was going to be quite cold indeed." So the Chief went back to speed up his people to collect even more wood to be prepared.

A week later he called the National Weather Service again, "Is it going to be a VERY cold winter?"

"Yes", the man replied, "it's going to be a very cold winter."

So the Chief goes back to his people and orders them to go and find every scrap of wood they can find. Two weeks later he calls the National Weather Service again: "Are you absolutely sure, that the winter is going to be very cold?"

"Absolutely" the man replies, "the Indians are collecting wood like crazy!

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Tuesday, January 08, 2008
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ON PATRIOTISM
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Some of the e-mails I read are so abusive that I have no choice but to conclude they were written under the influence of an illegal substance. Cannibals and butchers have no business in a convention of vegetarians; likewise garbage-mouth dupes in a controversy.
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On the day a man decides he knows all he needs to know (this is always true of dupes) he dies. He may continue to breathe, walk, eat, and copulate, but he is brain-dead. Knowledge is not an end with a STOP sign, but a beginning with no end in sight.
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A dupe is one who cannot think for himself, no doubt as a result of six centuries of brutal subjection. Habits can shackle a man as surely as chains and ropes.
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Ask a dupe to define free speech and he will say it consists in the freedom to recycle his favorite brand of propaganda.
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We don’t believe in free speech. We think of it as an invention of the degenerate West, the very same West that looked the other way while we were being butchered.
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We don’t know how to deal with disagreement even though we have had plenty of practice, because dissent is in our blood as surely as “treason and betrayal” (Raffi).
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Every dupe speaks in the name of patriotism, or so he wants us to believe. What he doesn’t seem to be aware of is that there are strings attached to his particular and peculiar brand of patriotism. During the Soviet era, I remember, one of our white-haired chic Bolshevik elder statesmen (may he rest in peace) wrote me an abusive letter because I had dared to mention violations of human rights in Armenia. In his view, all Armenians owed a debt of gratitude to our Big Brothers, the Russians; and scribblers like me should keep their traps shut.
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During World War II we had two brands of patriotism locked in mortal combat: the patriotism of Armenians (under Stalin) brainwashed to believe they were fighting in defense of the Homeland; and the patriotism of diasporan Armenians (under Hitler) who fought to liberate the Homeland.
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Dupes are easy to identify. They write as if their readers were functional illiterates and Mongoloid retards. Their patriotism is akin to the venom of vipers that paralyzes the brain. Patriotism is not a dogma that legitimizes intolerance. Patriotism means love of country (not hatred of fellow countrymen), and love is first and foremost acceptance, understanding, compassion, and solidarity. Disagree with me if you must, but do not think of me as your enemy.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Wednesday, January 09, 2008
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PARALLELS
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Flavius Josephus of Jerusalem (37-100 AD), the xxxish historian of the Judaeo-Roman war, makes the following comment on “the misfortunes of my country.” “She fell,” he writes, “because she was a house divided against itself.” He goes on: “The hands of the Romans were forced by the tyrannical leaders of the xxxs, and the fire was called down upon the Holy Temple by their doing.”
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ON NATIONALISM
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Yeghishe Charents (1897-1937): “‘Homeland,’ ‘pure love,’ ‘oblivion and dreams’: these are the germs of our literary tuberculosis which gives birth to nationalism, romanticism, pessimism, and symbolism.”
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General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”
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[crusader1492]

Re: notes / comments

*
General Antranik (1865-1927): “I am not a nationalist. I recognize only one nation, the nation of the oppressed.”
#

IMO, if the Armenian National hero, General Antranig, were alive today he would personally beat you with his own hands...he had no patients for davajans.

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

a reader comments:
Having read you since the seventies all that I could, without sounding as a desciple, i wish you all the powers and patience that only you can muster!
Once in a while a pat on the back by an appreciator of your efforts, should give one a little zest to carry on without feeling a "tsayn parparo hanabadi".
Thank you from this old foggy, that was becoming more and more sceptical about the humanoids but for pens like yours

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

IMO, if the Armenian National hero, General Antranig, were alive today he would personally beat you with his own hands...he had no patients for davajans.

the good general was himself treated as a davajan by our revolutionaries. /

[crusader1492]

Re: notes / comments

That does not change my opinion of how he would treat you (that is if he chose to deal with you....you are beneath him).

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

TWO ANECDOTES / THREE MORALS

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When I told my father I wanted to be a writer, he said, "You’ll starve!"

I didn’t believe him

Many years later, when I told Mischa Kudian (our foremost translator) I wanted to follow his example and be a translator too, he said, "You must be nuts!" or words to that effect.

I didn’t believe him either.

I should have. He was right. My father was right too, and I was dead wrong. Even so, I don’t regret my decision.

Moral 1. It never pays to be an optimist in an Armenian environment.

Moral 2: Experience is a more reliable guide than wishful thinking.

Moral 3: Better an honest failure than a fat-assed fraud.

[crusader1492]

Re: notes / comments

Moral 1. It never pays to be an optimist in an Armenian environment.

It wouldn't have mattered if you were born Chinese. You are a sad-sac in heart and would have ended up in the same lowly state no matter the origin or environment. Some people are just born with this depressive trait...you happen to be one of them.

Moral 3: Better an honest failure than a fat-assed fraud.

Spoken like a true failure (perhaps of the fat-assed ilk?).

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, January 10, 2008
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THE ART OF READING
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There are three rules for being a good pianist: practice, practice, and practice. There is only one very easy rule for being a good reader: stop reading when the book bores you -- stop reading even if the author is the Good Lord Himself, and I dare anyone to read the final pages of EXODUS and the first pages of LEVITICUS without yawning.
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DEMOCRACY RUN AMOK
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The Internet is a great invention. It allows everyone an equal opportunity to express himself. A garbage-mouth teenage hooligan and a white-haired elder statesmen may post on the same forum, and what is even more astonishing, to reach an agreement. That’s what happens in an environment where closed systems of thought are dominant and free speech anathema. Writes Lance Morrow: “Sometimes it is the faithful of the churches and the mosques who need policing most of all.” Also commissars parading as editors, publishers, and forum moderators.
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ON POPULARITY
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Ever since it dawned on me that the ambition of every scribbler is to be popular, I have done my utmost to be unpopular – an enterprise easily achieved by calling a spade a spade and by writing what you see as opposed to what you pretend to see what isn’t there.
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ON BEING POSITIVE
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To expose and analyze the ugly and the incomprehensible in us may well be the most positive form of criticism. What could be more cowardly, and therefore negative, than to cover up or ignore the fact that we, as human beings, have our share of failings and that these failings have contributed mightily to our misfortunes.
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WRITERS
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Most Armenian writers today write for odars in odar languages. Some say this is a curse of our smallness. I disagree. It is rather the curse of a nation ruled by philistines for whom esthetic values and free speech are unpatriotic concepts. As recently as seventy years ago we had giants like Oshagan and Zarian who wrote in Armenian for Armenians. We don’t even have midgets today.
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Friday, January 11, 2008
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MEMO TO A TURKISH FRIEND
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Turks are warlike, and proud of the fact. Only warlike people become masters of a great empire and run it for six centuries. But are they magnanimous in victory? That is the unanswered question. To fight in defense of the territorial integrity of the Homeland may be a noble enterprise, and to emerge victorious a glorious achievement, but to do so with gallantry, that is the mark of a truly civilized nation. If the Armeno-Turkish conflict during World War I was a “war” which the Turks won, then it is up to them to have the nobility of character and generosity of spirit to admit that if in the heat of battle innocent civilians perished, they are willing to discuss the matter with their defeated adversaries and to negotiate terms with the benevolence that is becoming in a victor. Then and only then will they prove to the world that, as truly civilized people, they more than deserve to join the European Union and be seen as an integral part of the West.
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Saturday, January 12, 2008
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FROM MY NOTEBOOKS
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Nothing bores me as much as talk of xxxishness, Turkishness, Armenishness, or any other kind of --ishness whose sole intent is to make its adherents feel good by emphasizing the positive and covering up the negative thus certifying their perennial status as dupes.
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No one can be as dangerous as the brain-dead who believes his convictions are his.
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To think and to think you are thinking are two entirely different activities.
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To our superpatriots I ask: What do you say to fellow Armenians whose favorite mantra is “Mart bidi ch’ellank”?
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Let Yanks speak of the American Dream. For us it’s the Armenian Nightmare without end and without closure (to use one of their favorite neologisms) compliments of our Turcocentric pundits.
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To reduce life to the point that one can think only of massacres: I can’t imagine anything more narrow, negative, and ultimately hateful.
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Organized religions are like loaded guns. Harmless in themselves but lethal in the hands of irresponsible people, and like drunk drivers, irresponsible people are everywhere.
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It is said that Laurence Oliver used to stand behind the curtain muttering at the audience over and over “You bastards.” Exactly my frame of mind when I take pen in hand. I am not complaining. Our bastards are my bread and butter. If it weren’t for them I would run out of inspiration and fall silent.
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"Intellect is invisible to the man who has none."
Arthur Schopenhauer