comments

[arabaliozian]

insanity

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.
#



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[arabaliozian]

coffee

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!
#



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[arabaliozian]

comments

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.”
“Jews 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).
#

[arabaliozian]

comments

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.
#

[arabaliozian]

if...

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.
#




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[arabaliozian]

diary

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 bitch simply because
their readers are too smart to be taken in by their bullshit.”
*
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.”
#

[arabaliozian]

comments

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 bitch
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.
#

[arabaliozian]

memos

Thursday, July 12, 2012

****************************

…AND THEN THERE WERE NONE

*********************************************

There are no more Armenians.

Once upon a time, yes.

But not any more.

What we have now are

Ottomanized and Sovietized Armenians.

Also Levantinized and Americanized Armenians.

But authentic Armenians?

They belong to the irrevocable and distant past.

They are the Armenians who built our churches,

composed our folk songs and liturgical music;

and like Naregatsi, when in trouble,

they blamed no one but themselves.

They were honest, unassuming, creative.

They are now greedy, arrogant, sterile, and hollow.

To quote Zarian:

Danger, danger, danger!

#

Friday, July 13, 2012

**************************************

MEMOS TO MYSELF

*****************************

Make it brief.

Make it simple.

Make it accessible.

Avoid academic verbiage like dichotomy and existentialism,

or words that are not in the Bible or Plato.

Paraphrase and steal when necessary,

if the alternative is footnotes longer than your text.

Don’t give the reader a chance to get bored.

Life is boring enough.

So are speechifiers and sermonizers

who speak in defense

of their powers, privileges, and source of income.

Readers who are against you

will be against you even if you combine

the reasoning skills of Socrates

with the eloquence of Cicero.

An Armenian who has made up his mind

is an immovable object.

Ignore him.

An Armenian with Turcocentric views:

let the Turks deal with him.

State your case even if it means making enemies.

Remember, the average Armenian reader

(that is to say myself for most of my life)

is a dupe, a coward, and a barbarian

who owes his survival to bloodthirsty sultans

and murderous commissars.

As for popularity:

leave that to those engaged in politics and prostitution.

The rest is propaganda.

#

Saturday, July 14, 2012

*********************************

IN PRAISE OF FAILURE

********************************

With power comes responsibility.

Or so we are told.

But in reality the higher a man rises,

the greater the insanity.

*

We owe all wars, massacres, concentration camps, and gulags

to men who were successful in reaching the top.

*

Success in one field spells failure in another.

History provides us with so many examples!

The Bible, the most successful book ever written

and a perennial best-seller has created more innocent victims

than nuclear weapons.

In it we are told to judge a tree by its fruit.

If we do that we may have to conclude that

far from being the Word of God,

the Bible may well be the word of the competition.

Which is why I feel justified in saying,

Long live failure!

#

07.13.2012 11:54 epress.am

Հայ գրողը՝ իշխանությունների մասին. «Ինձ ատում են, որովհետև մտածում եմ նրանց ուզածի հակառակը»

Կանադայում բնակվող գրող, արվեստի քննադատ Արա Բալիոզյանի կարծիքով՝ Հայաստանի մեծագույն խնդիրն այն է, երկրում չկա խոսքի իրավունք, քանի որ առանց դրա հնարավոր չէ երկխոսություն և առաջընթաց:

«Մենք պետք է մեր ապագան կառուցենք, օրինակ, Շվեյցարիայի մոդելով, այլ ոչ թե Խորհրդային Միության, որտեղ խոսքի իրավունք չկար: Երկիրը թեև անկախացել է, բայց ազատ չէ իրականում մոսկովյան տիրապետությունից: Ռեժիմի գլխին կանգնած են նախկին ԿԳԲ-ի գործակալներ: Տարբերությունն այն է, որ Ստալինի օրոք կոռուպցիա էր իշխում, հիմա` և կոռուպցիա, և արտագաղթ», – Epress.am-ի հետ զրույցում ասել է Բալիոզյանը:

Նա խոսքով ` հայաստանցիների մոտ կա ազատության սխալ ընկալում. նրանք մտածում են, որ ազատությունը հակասում է իրենց տարածքային, տնտեսական, սոցիալական և մշակութային շահերին, իրականում ճիշտ հակառակը, ազատությունը ալֆան ու օմեգան է ցանկացած իրավունք պահպանելու համար:

Հետևելով հայաստանյան իրադարձություններին՝ գրողը նկատել է, որ մարդիկ հաճախ անհանդուրժող են իրենցից տարբեր մարդկանց հանդեպ, ինչը, ըստ նրա, բնորոշ չէ հայերին, այլ հետևանքն է իշխանության ճնշման կամ հատուկ է հրահրվում իշխանությունների կողմից:

«Ազգային սիմվոլները չարաշահելով` իշխանությունները փորձում են մարդկանց կույր դարձնել համամարդկային արժեքների հանդեպ: Նրանք սերմանում են վախ, ինչը հզոր զենք է մարդկանց հնազանդ պահելու համար: Մարդկանց արժեքներ են տրվում պատրաստի, ոչ թե նրանք ազատ են իրենց արժեքների ընտրության մեջ: Սա կարելի է ասել նաև Սփյուռքի հայերի մասին: Իռլանդական ասացվածք կա` Իռլանդիան լավ տեղ է մեռնելու համար, նույնն են զգում սփյուռքահայերը Հայաստանի հանդեպ: Եթե դու չես ընդունում իշխանական պրոպագանդան, դու դառնում ես թշնամի: Հայաստանում ինձ ատում են, որովհետև ես իմ անձի մասին մտածում եմ նրանց ուզածի ճիշտ հակառակը»,- ասել է Բալիոզյանը:

Ազատության հասնելու միակ ճանապարհը ցույց տալու համար մեր զրուցակիցը ցիտել է Հեգելի խոսքերը` իշխանությունը երբեք չի զիջի առանց արյունահեղության:

«Ես արյունահեղություն չեմ քարոզում, միայն հիշեցում եմ, որ իշխանության գլուխ կանգնած մարդիկ խրոնիկ սուտասաններ են և ամեն ինչի ընդունակ են իրենց աթոռը պահելու համար: Բայց եթե արաբական գարուն եղավ, ինչո՞ւ չի կարող հայկական գարուն սկսվել»,- ասել է գրողը:

[arabaliozian]

comments

Wednesday, July 18, 2012
****************************************
ONCE UPON A TIME IN GREECE
**********************************************
“Have you heard?”
“What?”
“The miracle worker in Palestine who can raise the dead.”
“Big deal!”
“He can actually make a corpse rise and walk.”
“The world is full them.”
“Miracle workers?”
“No, walking cadavers.”
#
TWO OBSERVATIONS
**************************
For everyone who dares to whisper the truth
there will be ten who will try to shout him down.
*
The rich have an excellent reason to believe in God.
God has been good to them.
#
Monday, July 16, 2012
**************************************
BUMS
*************************
In the eyes of our 1%,
we, the 99%,
need their guidance,
even if so far their guidance has been in the wrong direction –
towards massacres, genocide, alienation, assimilation, and exodus.
With such a 1%, who needs sultans and commissars?
*
We are smart?
Don’t make me laugh!
Our 1% are smart only when it comes to deceiving the 99%;
and our 99%, far from being smart, are probably dumber
than Germans under Hitler,
Russians under Stalin,
and Turks under Kemal.
*
If I ever say “throw the bums out,”
I have every reason to suspect
all honest bosses, bishops, and benefactors
(assuming there are any left)
will secretly agree with me.
#
Monday, July 16, 2012
************************
NOTES / COMMENTS
*************************************
It is not generally known that
serving one’s fellow men
can be as rewarding an experience
as deceiving and exploiting them.
*
Everybody wants to be somebody;
nobody wants to be a decent human being,
which, in the kind of world we live,
may well be the most ambitious dream to realize.
*
People who make careless statements
and when challenged proceed to defend them,
end up believing in their own falsehoods.
Arguing with them amounts to promoting fanaticism.
#
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
***********************************
AS I SEE IT
***********************
No one can be as deaf as the man
who likes the sound of his own voice.
*
What we call prophecy very often is nothing
but an objective interpretation of human nature.
*
Epictetus once said:
“Of the ten evils we fear, only one happens to us.”
He should have added:
Of the thousand and one evils we do not fear,
all thousand and one will happen to us.
*
Greed, lust, and fear will make the most cunning man
behave like a fool.
*
It is not enough to have the perception to see the truth,
the honesty to admit it,
and the courage to speak;
one must also have the cunning to survive it.
*
When a nation suffers a military defeat,
its poets begin to sing of past moral victories.
#
Always read with a concrete aim in mind – to solve a problem, to expose a lie, to demolish an enemy.
#
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
****************************************
THE HUMAN CONDITION
**************************************
The 1% have more tricks up their sleeves
than the 99% have the imagination to see them.
*
Is the Genocide real or a figment of our imagination?
The 1% in both the United States and Turkey know it to be real.
As for the 99%:
(one) they are brought up to believe what they are told by the 1%, and
(two) they don’t give a damn.
*
Divine justice: the innocent are condemned to death
as surely as the guilty.
*
Imagine if you can our planet as seen from another galaxy.
Imagine further that on that speck of dust
there are billions of creatures all of whom think of themselves
as the center of the universe…
#



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.

[arabaliozian]

CAREER MOVES
*******************************
By HAGOP BARONIAN
**********************************
translated by a.b.
******************************
Do you want to make a fortune? Be a doctor.
Do you want to dine and wine every day? Be a bishop.
Do you want to be shameless? Go into politics.
Do you want to be innocent? Be a child.
Do you want to be loved? Be an attractive floozy.
Do you want to know what despair is? Grow old.
Do you want to serve your country? Be a parasite.
Do you want to be abused today and glorified tomorrow? Dedicate yourself to selfless intellectual labor.
Do you want to live a life of peace and contentment? Don't give a damn about anything.
Do you want to be refined and elegant? Be rich.
Do you want to be a devoted father to your daughters? Let them learn how to dance, sing, and play the piano.
Do you want to be civilized? Dismiss your fellow Armenians as barbarians.
Do you want to make a lot of money? Sell booze.
Do you want to be a writer? Starve!
#

[arabaliozian]

comments

Saturday, July 21, 2012

**************************************

DOUBLE-TALK

**************************

“Tell me who your friends are…”

An obvious euphemism for

“Tell me whose ass you kiss

and I will tell you who you are,”

or rather, what propaganda line you recycle.

I am now paraphrasing one of our elder statesmen

(may the Good Lord have mercy on his soul).

*

I was born again as a human being

on the day I realized I could kick ass

instead of kissing it.

*

The Syrian 1% is disintegrating.

It’s always the same story.

They preach the 99% to fight unto death

in defense of God and Country,

but when death comes knocking at their door,

they run like headless chickens.

*

War is an attractive option only to those

who don’t have to do the killing and dying.

*

After the Golden Age comes the Silver Age,

and after the Silver Age comes the Age of Garbage,

which is where we happen to be today.

Now then, go ahead and brag about that!

#

Saturday, July 21, 2012

****************************************

EXPLANATIONS

************************

What motivates the wealthy (or the 1%)

is not greed but altruism – to create jobs

for little people (or the 99%).

*

Austerity measures are designed for the 99%

not the 1% who are too set in their ways to change or adapt.

*

Massacres are not always crimes against humanity

but necessary means for maintaining the territorial integrity

of an empire or nation.

*

What is the difference between a massacre and genocide?

It depends on the identity of the perpetrators and their victims.

If the perps are our friends

and the victims are politically irrelevant to our interests

it can’t be genocide.

*

There is an explanation behind every explanation.

Leave it to politicians (most of whom are lawyers)

to come up with reasons why

a bloodthirsty sadistic serial killer

should be declared not guilty

by reason of self-defense,

which happens to be a universal human right.

Case closed!
#
THE MAN WHO RAN AWAY FROM THE KING
************************************************** ***
By AVEDIK ISSAHAKIAN
**************************************
Translated by a.b.
*************************
Very early one morning
A mighty king was ceased by an urge
To see his realm
To visit and inspect
Every town and hamlet.
Orders than he issued
And with him arose
A retinue of servants,
Soldiers, carriages, and horses.
*
A few days later,
As the crowds roared
And as his Majesty
Made his triumphal entry
Through the gate
Of a distant town,
A humble townsman
Made a sudden exit
Through another gate
And he ran and he ran
Like a hunted beast he ran
Through forests and valleys
Through dark and uncharted regions.
*
“Hold it right there!”
Cried out a stranger
Standing in his path.
“What are you running away from?
Is it the law by any chance?
Are you perchance a bandit?
And if not a bandit, a murderer?”
“I am innocent, I swear,”
Said the townsman.
“Whatever bread I have eaten
I have earned with my own sweat.
I beg you let me explain
What I am running away from.
His Majesty the king, you see,
Is visiting my town.
Now then please understand
What I am about to say.
His Royal Highness
As everyone knows
Is a man of great might
But his brain alas
Is that of a child
I have heard it said
That the farther away
From such a king you stay
The better off you are.”
*
After hearing this
The stranger let him pass.
And the townsman once more
Took to his heels and ran
Through forests and valleys he ran
Through dark and uncharted region.
(1935)
#

[arabaliozian]

aurora

Sunday, July 22, 2012
******************************
AURORA
**********************
Why do some so-called normal individuals
go unhinged and commit massacres
on unarmed and innocent civilians?
The simple answer is and must be,
an accumulation of injuries inflicted on them by others
in the name of this or that
moral code or educational system, or law and order.
All I have to do to reach that conclusion is
to examine my own life – and by that I don’t mean
only the injuries that have been inflicted on me
but also the injuries that I have myself inflicted on others.
#
Monday, July 23, 2012
*************************************
HEAVEN AND HELL
******************************
There are so many lies parading as truths
that truth has become a synonym of lie.
*
Power, real power, means
the power to kill and steal
and get away with it.
*
When the 99% do something wrong,
they are punished.
When the 1% do something wrong
they give themselves a fat bonus.
*
Kings, statesmen, popes, imams, rabbis:
they are as habitual and compulsive liars
as murderers and thieves.
Most of them are in fact murderers and thieves.
*
Heaven and hell are predictable places
we are told. But in life, heaven may change into hell
and vice versa without notice.
#
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
************************************
POWER
*******************
Absolute power creates morons.
Sultans, commissars, popes, imams:
the great their power,
the greater the number of dupes.
*
The number one concern of all power structures is power.
This is as true of America as it is
of Russia, China, Syria, and the Vatican.
The Pope has probably devoted more time,
resources, energy, and personnel
on his propaganda against contraception
than against child molestation.
*
Who understands Armenians?
Not even Armenians.
If Armenians can’t understand Armenians, who can?
Only God and He is not in the business
of sharing His understanding with us.
*
My advice to our enemies:
“You don’t kill a man who is committing suicide.”
#
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
****************************************
ABOUT INTERMARRIAGE
**************************************
Dedicated to my good friend Hagop Jelalian
************************************************
In the Armenian ghetto
where I was born and raised,
I was brainwashed to believe
intermarriage meant sleeping with the enemy.
I know better now because
I appreciate the positive aspects of mixed marriages –
namely, the introduction of racial and religious tolerance.
And sure enough, some of our ablest and most progressive intellectuals,
from Abovian to Zarian,
and from Arlen to Saroyan,
married odars.
*
How to explain the popularity of intermarriage? –
about 80% in the United States, I am told.
A man is a man,
a woman is a woman,
and when the two meet, everything else –
moral and esthetic values,
political orientation, financial status,
religious and ethnic prejudices,
fly out the window.
What remains are a man, a woman
and the instinct to be fruitful and multiply.
#

[arabaliozian]

parallels

Saturday, July 26, 2012
***********************************
PARALLELS
**********************
When it comes to moral progress
(as opposed to technical progress)
mankind has not advanced a single inch.
That may be because
every organization, movements, or power structure
develops its own 1%.
This is as true of the Kremlin
as it is of the Vatican.
The reason why the Vatican has victimized
fewer innocent civilians than the Kremlin
is not moral superiority but military inferiority.
When the popes had the power
they were as ruthless in their persecution of heretics
as Stalin was in his treatment of dissidents.
*
Lenin said, “A bourgeois is a bourgeois
regardless of nationality.”
So is the 1%.
#
Saturday, July 28, 2012
*************************************
PARALLELS (II)
*****************************
Belief systems (from Capitalism to Communism
and from Christianity to Islam) are symptoms of collective insanity.
Which is why a far wiser man than myself
once remarked that Planet Earth
is the insane asylum of the Solar System –
or is it the Galaxy?
*
The phenomenal ease with which
the 1% has been successful
in deceiving and misleading the 99%!
*
Organized crime and organized religions
operate on similar lines.
Fear is their most important ingredient –
fear of hell, fear of Siberian exile, and in the case of the Mafia,
fear of assassination.
*
When I committed my greatest blunders
it didn’t even occur to me to question the logic of my actions.
#
Saturday, July 28, 2012
***************************************
COMMENTS
****************************
Everything and everyone has a price,
including the worthless.
*
Disgust defies eloquence;
that’s why the worst on man has not yet been said.
*
It is the fate of men who are more like women
to meet women who are more like men.
*
In thinking a moderate, in action a fanatic –
that is, if you want anything done.
*
We don’t make an effort to understand ourselves
but we expect others to understand us,
or rather, to misunderstand us favorably.
#

[arabaliozian]

diary

Wednesday, August 01, 2012
*******************************************
OUR GREATEST MISFORTUNE
*******************************************
The aim of thinkers
– be they scientists, philosophers, or intellectuals –
is not to entertain the public
but to solve problems.
To say therefore
we need solutions, is to imply that
all our thinkers were no better than mental masturbators.
*
In the eyes of fascists
the only way to qualify as a thinker
is to recycle their propaganda.
*
One of the greatest misfortunes that can befall a nation
is political and religious control of its educational system.
Which amounts to allowing compulsive and habitual liars
to tell our children what’s right and what’s wrong.
*
I have no illusions about democracies.
The Americanized American is as brainwashed
as the Sovietized Russian and
the Anglicized Englishman.
#
Wednesday, August 01, 2012
*************************************
IN THE NAME OF PATRIOTISM
*****************************************
Patriotism teaches us to love our fellow Armenians
and to hate Turks, to which I can only say
I cannot be a patriot because
I love good Turks
and I hate bad Armenians.
*
Like all –isms, patriotism creates more enemies than friends.
Capitalism created communists,
and communism created
crooks, cannibals, and “crocodiles” (Chekhov).
*
There is a type of patriotic reader
who operates on the assumption that
he knows better,
he understand more,
and his belief system is morally superior.
Whenever informed by such a reader
that I am no better than a purveyor of bullshit,
I am reminded of a saying popular in Hollywood:
“It may be shit but it has integrity.”
#
Wednesday, August 01, 2012
*********************************
CURIOSITY
***********************
When asked by journalists
what had made him to devote several decades of his life
to the writing of his 12-volume STUDY OF HISTORY,
Toynbee is said to have replied: “Curiosity.”
In his fascinating little book, PHNATOMS ON THE BOOKSHELVES,
Jacques Bonnet writes:
“In Victor Hugo’s play MARION DELORME, the king asks:
‘What is your reason for living?’
L’Angely replies: ‘Curiosity.’”
*
To our sermonizers and speechifiers
who preach love of God and Country I ask:
“How many Armenians have you alienated with your double-talk?”
And if you were to say my kind of writing may also alienate some Armenians,
all I can say is, “Good riddance!”
*
I am suspicious of Armenians
who after centuries of subservience to alien and bloodthirsty tyrants
assume subservience to be an integral part of the human condition.
*
I am suspicious of Armenians
who preach love but practice hatred.
Saroyan comes to mind.
He too preached love but hated his own children.
*
Above all I am suspicious of Armenians
who praise Armenian culture
but practice davul zurna, shish-kebab, and pilaf.
#
Wednesday, August 01, 2012
****************************************
DIARY
***********************
A sad day for American literature:
Gore Vidal is dead.
*
Saw a lovely Chinese film, THE ROAD HOME.
Unforgettable.
Most of the time I had tears in my eyes.
*
We cannot agree with one another
but we expect our enemies to agree with us.
Figure that one out if you can!
*
Armenians who are pro-Assad
on the grounds that he is pro-Armenian
should not be surprised at Turks
who raise monuments to Talaat and Kemal.
*
After assessing themselves as morally superior,
they assert moral superiority
but they succeed only in speaking with a forked tongue.
The malady of all sermonizers.
*
In one of his essays Aldous Huxley says
too much singing damages one’s critical faculties –
something to do with lack of oxygen in the brain.
He may have a point.
Beniamino Gigli was a fascist,
Pavarotti was blinded by his American success,
and Maria Callas by Onassis’s wealth.
#

[arabaliozian]

questions

Thursday, August 02, 2012
*************************************
POWER AND PROPAGANDA
******************************
Dissent also means
refusing to recycle a tyrant’s propaganda.
*
The hardest challenge a writer confronts
is to speak with his voice.
Until then all he can do is speak with someone else’s voice
or recycle someone else’s propaganda.
*
Writers come in all sizes and shapes.
But no writer in the history of mankind
has ever silenced a tyrant.
*
When tyrants go about their murderous task of silencing writers,
they invariably target the best.
*
After persecuting, terrorizing, torturing, and killing countless heretics,
popes assert infallibility.
*
The ruthless cunning of the 1%
is rivaled only by the ignorance, stupidity, and cowardice
of the 99%.
#
Friday, August 03, 2012
*********************************
GOD IS GREAT
************************
No one gives up power without a bloody fight,
Hegel tells us.
And so it is.
Consider what’s happening today in Syria.
And if the Popes of Rome
no longer persecute, torture, and burn heretics
it’s not because they saw the light and became non-violent;
but because it took countless massacres and wars
(one of which lasted a hundred years) to stop them.
But that’s not all it took.
It took powerful reformers
like Luther, kings, emperors, and dictators
like Henry VIII, Napoleon, and Mussolini
to check their abuses of power.
It took dissidents like Voltaire, Gibbon, Renan, Marx, and Nietzsche.
As a matter of fact, the Popes had many more dissidents
than Stalin, Hitler, and Mao combined.
If they continue to have followers today
it’s because men need belief systems
as alcoholics and drug addicts need their poison.
Man, it has been said, cannot create a single worm
but he has created ten thousand gods.
The very same people who rejected Jesus
believed in Madoff.
Figure that one out if you can.
Allawa akhbar!
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Saturday, August 04, 2012
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QUESTIONS IN NEED OF ANSWERS
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To our bosses I say:
Don’t tell me how much you have accomplished.
Tell me instead how many you have alienated.
To our fund-raisers I say:
Don’t tell me how many millions you have raised.
Tell me instead how much of it ended in the wrong pockets.
To our benefactors I say:
Don’t brag about the number of schools you have built.
Tell me instead what’s being taught there.
To our academics I say:
Don’t tell me how many books you have published.
Tell me instead who reads them?
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In Chekhov’s UNCLE VANYA I read:
“The ganders will cackle a bit – and then they’ll leave off…
They’ll cackle and leave off…”
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