notes / comments

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Wednesday, November 07, 2007
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GULBENKIAN, MIKOYAN,
BARONIAN & PARAJANOV
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My BREWER’S DICTIONARY OF MODERN PHRASE & FABLE quotes “Mr. 5%” (Calouste Gulbenkian) as having said it was “better to have a small slice of a big cake than a big slice of a small cake.”
The M in “MiG” we are further told stands for Mikoyan, the G for Gurevich, and the “i” means “and” in Russian. I am sure our aghbers from the Homeland know all this already, but their aghbers in the Diaspora may not.
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Speaking of what we know and what we don’t: There is a type of Armenian who knows more about Turks than about Armenians, and the only thing he knows about Armenians is that they were massacred by the Turks. I once asked one such specimen if he knew anything about Armenian literature and he said he did not. Had he read a single Armenian writer, I asked next, and he replied he had not. Someone must have told him reading Armenian writers is a waste of time because none of them will tell him anything he doesn’t know already, even if what he knows is nada.
VIVA LA REVOLUCION!
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Speaking of Armenian writers: in the introduction by one of our pro-Establishment pundits to an English translation of Baronian I read that Baronian had been so nasty in his depiction of his contemporaries in Istanbul that he fully deserved to be betrayed to the Ottoman police. Is it conceivable that no one, not even the translator, bothered to point out the fact that this pundit was legitimizing betrayal?
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Another case in point: Speaking of Parajanov, I remember one of our chic Bolshevik elder statesmen saying: “He was a syphilitic homosexual and a black marketeer. They should have sent him to the Gulag and let him rot there.”
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As you may have guessed by now, I am not one of those who says, if it’s ours, it must be good, or my country right or wrong, or my mother drunk or sober.
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Tuesday, November 06, 2007
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TOOTHLESS DOGS AND PROPHETIC GOATS
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Whenever I am insulted anonymously or from a safe distance, I think of the old Armenian saying: “A toothless dog always barks from a distance.”
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There is more common sense in our people than in the wisdom of our bishops. Hence the saying, “If there were wisdom in beards, goats would be prophets,” and “Better a wise delinquent than a foolish saint.”
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Willed ignorance is the kind of ignorance that is freely chosen because it is thought to be to one’s advantage. People who know or ought to know better but pretend otherwise are like the jackass that “travels to the Holy City forty times but it still comes back a jackass.”
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You may think of reading and writing as harmless activities. Medieval xxxish scribes who copied the Holy Scriptures knew better. “A single misplaced word or even letter, they said, “may mean the destruction of the world.” The bloodthirsty disposition of men is such, however, that even when copyists do a perfect job the result may be war and massacre. Millions of people have died because someone at the top of the food chain did not understand what he was reading, or he understood but pretended not to. What could be more clearly and unequivocally stated than “Thou shalt not kill”? And yet, at one time or another theologians have justified and legitimized torture, war, and massacre in the name of the Almighty.
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At the source of all our divisions and misfortunes search for the “fool who threw a stone into a well and forty wise men could not haul it out.”
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Hagop Baronian: “Do you want to dine and wine to your heart’s content every day? Be a bishop.”
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Rick Bayan on bosses: “The alpha male in a tribe of baboons.”
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Neshan Beshigtashlian: “Priests wear black cassocks because they are in perpetual mourning, and what they mourn is the death of the human being within.”
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Monday, November 05, 2007
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THE COBRA & THE MONGOOSE
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The best things in life are free, they say. They also say, you pay most for things you get for nothing. Flattery, for instance, may be free but it can also come with a heavy price, especially if you believe it.
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You tell a fool he is smart and he will think he is infallible; he may even adopt a criminal career thinking he will never get caught. Hence, the more than a thousand Armenian inmates in Los Angeles prisons. I am reminded of the cobra that got so used to biting rats that it ended up biting a mongoose.
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Differences of opinions among us are so radical that we might as well be aliens to one another. Instead of counteracting this dangerous trend, our speechifiers and sermonizers encourage it. Only when it comes to raising funds do they emphasize the importance of brotherhood.
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A writer does not choose his readers, in the same way that a law-abiding citizen does not choose his mugger.
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“Who remembers Armenians today?” Well, what about Biafrans? Who remembers them? I suspect not even Armenians.
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[arabaliozian]

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Sunday, November 04, 2007
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HAYADIATS
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It happened when I was nine or ten. After a very brief exchange with a Greek official, an older friend of mine said: “That man is hayadiats.” That was a new word for me and I couldn’t even guess what it meant. Later I realized it meant “Armenian-hater.” xxxs are better off – they only have anti-s; we have haters, and not all of them goyim. Did the Greek official know enough about Armenians to hate us? I doubt it. Hatred, like love, has nothing to do with knowledge or understanding. It comes from the gut and is therefore blind. Some people have an instinctive drive to hate anyone who is different perhaps because they consider themselves the equivalent of the gold standard. Because I hold views different from theirs, fellow Armenians have called me all kinds of names. In the Ottoman Empire Armenians who betrayed Baronian to the police, and in the Soviet era Armenians who betrayed our ablest men to Stalin’s executioners (not all of them Russians or Georgians) probably thought of themselves as law-and-order gold-standard types too. And if you think the era of sultans and commissars belongs to our irrevocable dark past, it may be because, like a Chagall character, you float in a realm that is above the clouds.
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GOSTAN ZARIAN
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When I first read Zarian, I sensed immediately that I was in the presence of an Armenian with his feet planted firmly on planet earth. Don’t get me wrong. The average Armenian is not a daydreamer. In the marketplace he can be a tough, shrewd, ruthless operator (hence the popular Italian saying: “It takes seven xxxs to fool an Armenian”). But when it comes to writing, he turns into a timid little rodent afraid of his own shadow.
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MORE ON ANTI-SEMITISM
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Anti-Semites have the questionable habit of putting xxxs under a microscope and seeing things there that are not visible to the naked eye. It doesn’t even occur to them that if they were to give the same treatment to the Vatican or to any other race, creed, nation, or tribe (including Armenians) they will be surprised at the amount of dirt they can dig up. We all swim in the same “enfer de merde” and none of us can afford to assume a holier-than-thou stance.
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A FINAL COMMENT ON BETRAYAL
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About the Soviet-Armenians who betrayed an entire generation of our best writers to Stalin’s executioners: far from being anonymous, faceless, brainwashed dupes, they were the elite of our intellectual and political leadership. For more on this subject, see PAK DERNERI GAGHTNIKE (The Secret of Closed Doors): CHARENTS, BAKOUNTS & OTHERS, by D.V. Gasparian (Yerevan: Apollon, 1994, 727 pages).
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Saturday, November 03, 2007
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SCANDAL
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When in the 19th century the English in India banned suttee (the burning of widows), the Hindus objected saying it was their custom. “Very well,” the English responded. “We also have a custom. When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.” And that was the end of suttee in India. Moral of the story: Never justify criminal conduct simply because it has been around for such a long time that it has become a custom.
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What manner of men burn defenseless, innocent women in the name of tradition and get away with it? To put it differently: What kind of pervert legitimizes criminal conduct and what kind of cowardly dupes accept him as a role model instead of hanging him from the nearest tree?
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In the name of tradition, millions of women today are genitally mutilated not only in Africa but also in the United Kingdom. Closer to home: in order to support their families hundreds of thousands of men emigrate and thousands of women engage in prostitution because our bloodsuckers refuse to give up their corrupt practices legitimized during the Soviet era. Whenever this subject comes up, we like to say it will take at least two generations… that simply means, we have done nothing, we are doing nothing, and we plan to do nothing, in the name of tradition. The message to the bloodsuckers is a simple one: Carry on as before. You have our blessing. We respect your judgment and we trust your ways even if the result is poverty, prostitution, and exodus or “white massacre,” i.e. assimilation.
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I think of our fables that end with the words: “Three golden apples fell from heaven…” and I cannot help reflecting that this may indeed explain the large number of permanently damaged skulls among us.
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[arabaliozian]

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Friday, November 02, 2007
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SHERLOCK HOLMES & THE SULTAN
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In a review of a new biography of Conan Doyle, I read that “the Sultan of Turkey, a man with a thousand concubines, used to have Sherlock Holmes stories read aloud to him in translation…What did Conan Doyle have that a thousand women above the Bosphorus could not supply?”
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CHARLES AZNAVOUR ON HIMSELF
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In a recent interview published in LE POINT (Oct. 11, 2007) I read: “France is my country, not Armenia. My heart is French, my soul Armenian. It’s like coffee and cream: once mixed they cannot be separated…I don’t know if I believe in God but I would like to believe in the immortality of the soul…I don’t watch television. Television is for the young and the old. I am neither young nor old…I am not a star. Everyone recognizes Bruce Willis, not me.”
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A FAMILIAR SCENARIO
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It happens every day. I read about it in the morning paper. An addict needs a fix, doesn’t have the money, walks into a bank, says he has a gun. The teller follows the routine set by the management and hands him a wad of cash. The bandit rushes out to a waiting stolen car, if he has a partner, or disappears in the crowd, and by the time the cops arrive, there is no trace of him in the neighborhood. Problem solved. Another fix taken care of until tomorrow.
I see this kind of scenario played out every day on our discussion forums. A member doesn’t like what another says. No need to stand on ceremony or engage in dialogue or even make sense. Just don the mask of a superpatriot or that of a Bible-quoting sanctimonious prick and let him have it…all in the name of God and Country of course. Problem solved or compounded? Who cares? What matters is instant satisfaction.
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A DIGRESSION
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Questions: A garbage-mouth superpatriot and a born-again reborn in the gutter? You see an inconsistency here? Who cares! We are Armenians. Rules of inconsistency or logic do not apply to us. We make our own rules. We know better.
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HISTORIC PARALLELS
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Speaking of instant satisfaction: consider the actions of our heroic revolutionaries at the turn of the last century. They didn’t like the way the Empire was run. What to do? Ask wealthy Armenian merchants to finance your insurgency. If they refuse to cooperate, kill a few as a warning to the rest. Even better, take over a bank, threaten the Sultan with death, and damn the consequences. As for the judgment of history: why worry about that if (in the words of Churchill) you are going to write it?
#

[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Thursday, November 01, 2007
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DEFINITIONS
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In BREWER’S DICTIONARY (mentioned above), ACTION FRANCAISE is described as an ultra-nationalist, proto-fascist, anti-democratic, and anti-Semitic group that during World War II collaborated with the Nazis – how’s that for consistently? It ceased to exist after 1944, when its leader, Charles Maurras, was given a life sentence.
There are fairly detailed entries on GENOCIDE and YOUNG TURKS, in which Armenians are not mentioned. The historic assessment of Young Turks is on the whole on the positive side and it ends with the words: “Young people eager for radical change to the established order.”
The phrase AGREE TO DISAGREE is defined as “To cease discussion because neither side will compromise.” If an Armenian Moses ever makes an appearance among us, I do hope he will make this definition the first commandment of his Decalogue. To cease discussion! Why should that be so un-Armenian? Is it because as perennial losers we find the prospect of a meaningless verbal victory irresistible?
While reading the entry on Sartre’s HELL IS OTHER PEOPLE, it occurred to me that in our cases “other people” could be replaced with Turks, and in the absence of Turks, fellow Armenians.
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[arabaliozian]

Re: notes / comments

Wednesday, October 31, 2007
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COUNTING TO TEN
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1.
“And the jock shall dwell with the nerd and the cheerleader lie down with the wimp and there shall be peace upon the campus.” From BREWER’S DICTIONARY OF MODERN PHRASE & FABLE, compiled by Adrian Room (London, 2000), page 473.
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2.
If we have more writers than readers, and more chiefs than Indians, it may be because we have neither writers nor chiefs.
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3.
There is no sound as deafening as the whisper of your conscience.
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4.
The hardest thing in life is to admit one’s mediocrity and cowardice.
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5.
Never trust a man whose spirit of contradiction exceeds his common sense.
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6.
Naregatsi may indeed be right. You don’t need psychoanalysis to achieve sanity. All you need is the humility, objectivity, and courage to admit your failings.
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7.
If you think you have all the answers it may be because you haven’t yet begun asking the right questions.
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8.
He who sees only the best in himself will see the worst in others.
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9.
When a man decides to do the devil’s work, he will speak in the name of god.
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10.
Today’s quotation in our paper is by Bertrand Russell: “Few people can be happy unless they hate some person, nation or creed.”
If the kingdom of god is within us, so is the person, nation, or creed that we hate.
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[zourna]

Re: notes / comments

What aversion?! are you serious?
well if you are, mr. "Armenian" is a hint of many fit compatriots to illustrate my point. In fact we, Armenians, see ourselves elevated. Thus any criticism, be it from a fellow Armenian or an odar, healthy or unhealthy, will ultimately sound drastic.

I see myself as a sole example, such is the case of anyone of us. A unique blend of Ali Agca,Talaat, Antranik...

[Lucin]

Re: notes / comments

what could be more cowardly
than to insult a fellow armenian anonymously
and from a very safe distance? / ara

Oh, really?? Now all of a sudden you become our "fellow Armenian"?? Let me quote yourself on your nationality:

My own nationality is the planet earth and all of mankind. / ara

In other words, you are a " fellow Armenian" when it suites you, otherwise you'd rather be a good citizen of planet earth and all of mankind. Utter hypocrisy?