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arabaliozian · December 28, 2013

BAH-HUMBUG

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

Where would the 1% be

without the full cooperation, dedication, and hard work

of the 99%?

*

To be a good Armenian it is not necessary

to be a bad human being with a closed mind.

*

Crooks have their uses:

they make us appreciate the importance of honesty.

*

Being smart also means not repeating idiotlc blunders

like dividing the community

and abusing children by brainwashing them

to brag about our genius for survival.

#

MEMO TO A WRITER

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

If you say the opposite

of what your average reader wants to hear

you can’t go wrong.

*

ON POPULARITY

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

Popularity is an American aberration

and best-sellers the surest symptoms of mediocrity.

*

A CRITIC SPEAKS

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

“You have been writing for thirty years now

and you have changed nothing,”

a reader writes implying

either shut up or change your tune.

Change begins in the heart

and what happens there doesn’t make headlines,

neither does it penetrate the hick skulls

of those in a position to change things,

especially if the status quo has been good to them.

*

WHY ENGLISH?

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

I write in English because 99% of what I write

would be considered unprintable by our 1%.

#

My greatest liability:

I never mastered the art

of flattering the powerful and the rich --

i.e. the scum of the earth.

#

Was Santa good to you?

*

Both capitalism and communism

have been good to their 1%.

What does that tell you

about ideologies and belief systems?

*

My own answer:

They introduce meaningless divisions

even when they know the result may be

the slaughter of countless innocent victims;

even when they have been warned

“a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

#

TO MY CRITICS

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

Gentle reader:

Unlike you, I don’t pretend to speak the truth,

the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Think of me only as the voice of another school of thought.

*

Knowledge and understanding are not your enemies.

There is no need for you to defend yourself against them.

*

To think that you can speak the truth

and be popular is an American fallacy.

*

So many first-class literary works

have been rejected by publishers

or ignored by the public that

one is tempted to define writing

as composing music for the deaf.

#

A HISTORY OF DECEPTION

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

Turks have been successful in convincing the Yanks

(a) we are their Red Indians, and

(b) whenever we don’t get our way

we engage in acts of terrorists;

which is what happened in the Ottoman Empire

at the turn of the last century and more recently

all over the world including America.

*

DUPES

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

We are born dupes.

First we believe in the friendly disposition

of the Young Turks and now

we believe our own leaders

when they tell us with our financial support

they will have the Genocide recognized by the Yanks.

*

DUPES (II)

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

Where would tyrants be

without cowardly dupes?

*

Q

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

“Melonsmellonous osculations.”

Can you guess what’s being said

and the identity of the author?

#

LESSONS

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

If history teaches us anything it is this:

we can be wrong;

we can be wrong even when we are right;

we can be dead wrong even when

God and the Great Powers are on our side.

*

The #1 concern of our 1% is not to solve our problems

but to defend and protect their powers and privileges,

which means Plan B only for themselves.

*

My ideal reader is one who hates to read;

which means he has been at the mercy

of speechifiers and sermonizers and is thus

virgin territory easily impregnated with new ideas.

*

When I was young, unemployed and unemployable,

two senior members of the Party came to see me.

Someone had told them I love books and reading.

“We are willing to subsidize your university education,”

they said, “provided you agree to work for us.”

Meaning: We have no use for your garbage;

we have our own.

Which may explain my present status

as an abominable no man.

Mart bidi ch’ellank!

#

arabaliozian · January 4, 2014

POLITICS**********************

There are two kinds of politics:

garden variety and mafia.

You may now guess our kind.

*

AS A RULE

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

Great countries produce great writers;

small countries ghazetajis.

*

WHAT'S YOUR ANSWER?

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

Between honest men who deal in facts

and idiots who flatter egos,

guess who will prevail.

*

FAILURE & SUCCESS

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

You think success is better than failure?

I think, not always.

I have been a failure for such a long time

that success would be the kiss of death for me.

*

TRIBES & EMPIRES

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

To those who ascribe our defeats, disasters, and misfortunes

to our location, location, location, I say,

all empires begin as obscure tribes in the middle of nowhere.

*

Cavafy is right: the way to Ithaca is not a one-way street.

*

OBAMA

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

One of the very best things that happened to America

in my own lifetime is Obama.

You don’t agree?

Make a short list of his adversaries:

Trump, Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, and a wealth Mormon.

#

SPEAKING OF WRITERS

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

Is a writer’s function to enlighten or to entertain?

Neither? Both?

In my view the first and most important function of a writer

is to be readable.

#

ON WEALTH

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

Someone like Obama could never be as wealthy as someone like Romney because, according to Plato, an honest man will employ only honest means and a dishonest man will employ honest as well as dishonest means to amass his fortune. I am not saying Plato speaks the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but. All I am doing is paraphrasing an opinion and an opinion is not a dead end but only a tentative beginning.

*

ON MORMONISM

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

Shaw says somewhere all professions are conspiracies against the laity. Likewise, all religions may be said to be conspiracies against all other religions. The same applies to ideologies and closed systems of thought.

*

MORE ON OBAMA

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

He made many mistakes?

Maybe. But had he done the opposite of what he did,

he would have been impeached.

Who wants a pope in the White House?

#

FROM MY NOTEBOOKS

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

If you speak the truth you will be contradicted not only by liars but also by dupes and idiots.

*

I don’t understand everything. Only god does; and if god wanted me to understand everything he would have created not men but gods.

*

For every truth there is a lie and sometimes a thousand of them.

*

A man who is his own worst enemy cannot be anyone’s friend.

*

The closer I get to the final answer the more certain I feel of my final failure.

*

Two mosquitoes may achieve more than one; a thousand of them may inflict serious damage.

#

Wednesday, January 01, 2014

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

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!

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

...to one and all!

*

ON LEADERSHIP

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

Political leaders hate to admit error. Hence the existence of hirelings – meant to say, nationalist historians – and the importance of patriotism which is easily confused with loyalty to the leadership even when the leaders happen to be swine.

*

ON COMFORT & JOY

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

When told I am a comfort to our enemies, I say, we are a greater comfort when we divide ourselves.

*

ON HUMAN NATURE

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

No matter what you say, you will get on someone’s nerves. Consider what happened to Socrates and Jesus. You say that was then and this is now? I say: technology may change but human nature stays the same. There are as many violations of human rights today as there were in the 5th century BC and 1st century AD.

#

INTOLERANCE

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

Intolerance makes men stupid. You can guess a man’s IQ fairly accurately by the manner in which he welcomes new ideas.

*

At least once every day we should remind ourselves of the vastness of the universe and our own insignificance in it.

*

Inaction can create as many problems as wrong action.

*

Some of the greatest men in the history of mankind were persecuted, even executed, for daring to challenge the authority of the 1%. What does that tell you about the IQ of mankind?

#

ON POPULAR MUSIC

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

Popular music is incapable of achieving greatness.

*

There is something fundamentally wrong in a culture whose musical standards are set by teenagers and the CEOs of the recording industry.

*

I am reminded of the king who, after visiting America, said he was impressed by the manner in which parents obeyed their children.

*

One of the things that I love about America is the readiness with which they acknowledge their “ugly” specimens. There is even a best-selling book titled THE UGLY AMERICAN and a movie based on it with Marlon Brando in the title role.

#

NOTES & COMMENTS

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

As a child I don’t remember an adult saying “I don’t know.” What they said was “You’ll find out when you grow up.”

*

I don’t write for readers; I write against them beginning with myself.

*

As a failure I am free; as a success I may be a slave to my success. Isn’t that what happened to Arlen and Saroyan?

*

When we divide ourselves the message we send to our enemies is: “No need to kill us; we are committing suicide.”

*

Armenians may be said to have a Turkish problem. I am that rarest of all Armenians: an Armenian with Armenian problems.

*

In a disagreement, you cannot defeat your adversary by insulting him; you can only expose your own limitations and inability to entertain new ideas.

#

ON WRITING

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

The best opening line is the one you delete, according to Chekhov who probably wrote more opening lines than any other writer.

*

I remember to have read somewhere, as soon as you write a brilliant line, delete it. As far as I know, Simenon, one of the most successful and prolific writers of all time, never wrote a single brilliant line in his life.

*

Q

**********

Who benefits from wars, volcanoes, earthquakes, and tsunamis? Surely, not God. Who then? Is Mother Nature in cahoots with the Devil? What else?

*

ON PROFIT

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

If you are in the business of making money, your greatest assets are the ignorance and stupidity of the masses. Something similar could be said of politics.

*

PARTY DISCIPLINE

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

It has happened to the best of my childhood friends. On their own they were more like wolves; but after joining a political party, they turned into sheep. Were they emasculated by party discipline?

#



arabaliozian · January 18, 2014

Sunday, January 12, 2014

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

THOMAS MANN SPEAKS

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

Where there is too much talk of love, there will be very little love.

Who will dare to disagree with Thomas Mann (who probably wrote more about music than any other major modern writer) when he said:

“The past half century has witnessed a regression of humanity, a chilling atrophy of culture, a frightening decrease in civility, decency, sense of justice, loyalty, and faith, and of the most elementary trustworthiness.”

#

ON MARRIAGE

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

Even if you marry the most beautiful woman in the world,

sooner or later she will stink of garlic.

Richard Burton on Elizabeth Taylor in his recently published diary:

“She stinks of garlic – who has garlic for breakfast?”

He probably stank of booze morning, noon, and night.

#

AS I SEE IT

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

There is no such thing as a lovable nation.

For every American who loves Armenians

there will be at least two or more who love Turks.

*

I was the most disappointed man on earth

when I met my first Turk.

He was short, skinny, and timid.

No fez. No yataghan. No shalvars. No bloodshot eyes.

*

When a face in the crowd smiles and says hello,

the chances are it’s to the fellow behind you.

*

Books changed my worldview

but music changed my life.

I became a church organist.

*

Where the art of advertisement is developed,

the brain will be underdeveloped.

*

There is an Armenian Christian heresy that believes

the world was created not by God but the Devil.

The evidence is overwhelming.

*

A generation of dupes will be followed by another.

#

FAMILIAR QUOTATIONS

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

“Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn!”

“I could have been a contender.”

Can you identify the following two? “Gee, I wish we had one of those doomsday machines!” and “The cat is in the bag and the bag is in the river.”

#

ON COWARDICE

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

If you speak in the name of patriotism, do so only in time of peace.

Attack only individuals who are in no position to defend themselves.

Attack anonymously and from a safe distance.

*

ON BEING AN ARMENIAN WRITER

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

As a failure you will be despised. As a success you will be hated unto death.

*

TWINS

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

To be corrupt and incompetent are Siamese.

*

MEN AND WOMEN

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

On their own they can be good; it’s when they get together that the excrement hits the ventilator.

*

YOU WANT TO BE POPULAR?

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

Recycle a fashionable propaganda line – like Bolshevik shit under Stalin and Nazi crap under Hitler…

*

POLITICS

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

To be in politics means to expose the double-talk of the opposition and to cover your own triple-talk.

#

CONSPIRACY

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

Ever since I was born as an Armenian,

there has been a carefully orchestrated conspiracy

to convince me that being an Armenian

is a rare privilege and I should consider myself

the luckiest of men.

The question that I cannot answer to this day is:

Are members of this conspiracy

our saviors or our grave-diggers?

*

If “a man is another man’s wolf,”

is not an Armenian another Armenian’s Turk?”

#

arabaliozian · February 1, 2014

Sunday, January 26, 2014

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

THE BLAME GAME…

AMONG OTHER THINGS.

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

If you master the rules of the blame-game

you can easily represent yourself as a statesman of vision

and the opposition as a cesspool

of corruption, incompetence and stupidity.

*

When in doubt

I always do that which is against my own interests.

*

Whatever I have done,

I have done out of necessity and under duress.

The choice was thrust on me

the way subservience is thrust on the 99%.

*

Bishops, imams, rabbis:

they share a common wish to be trusted and respected,

but they neither trust nor respect one another.

*

If a single man can be wrong,

so can two or two thousand or two million,

especially when they speak of

the Incomprehensible and the Unknowable.

*

The Scriptures tell us to turn the other cheek

not to drop our pants...

*

We are midgets perched on the shoulders

of lesser midgets.

*

We are told there are two kinds of statistics,

lies and damn lies.

What about belief systems?

#

ALPHA MALES

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

Bosses, bishops, benefactors:

alpha males whose #1 concern is #1.

The rest is propaganda.

*

PATRIOTISM

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

There are Armenians – and I know some of them myself –

who view intolerance, ignorance, and stupidity

as authentic expressions of their patriotism

and moral superiority.

*

DIALOGUE

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

In dialogue there are no losers

because both sides learn from each other.

Which may explain why dialogue

happens to be quintessentially un-Armenian.

*

WRITING

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

I write.

It’s an inexpensive hobby – the cheapest I know.

It costs me nothing.

#

ON WHAT WE KNOW

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

Nobody knows everything about anything.

Some of the worst blunders in the history of mankind

were committed by very smart men

(self-assessed, of course) who thought

they knew all there is to know about the enemy.

*

We know now that even Wall Street

doesn’t know everything about Wall Street.

*

The 99% hate the 1% -- their secret role models.

*

The 1% are at their best

when it comes to deceiving and exploiting the 99%.

*

We like to pretend we know more about ourselves

than anyone else until we are cornered, assaulted and defeated

by our own irrational impulses.

*

Once upon a time we were ruled by kings.

We are now ruled by moneyed morons

with the charisma of apes.

*

There are always two schools of thought

and we tend to favor the school

that is more favorable to our vanity.

*

We say “shit happens”

even when we micro-managed the catastrophe.

#

AS I SEE IT

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

Leaders: Blind men who pretend to have 20/20 vision.

*

There are two kinds of failures:

(a) those who make less than minimum wage

(Armenian writers come readily to mind) and

(b) those who make a million a day (guess who).

*

In the eyes of the 99% the 1% might as well be Turks.

*

Speaking of Turks:

We know what they did to us.

My question is: What did we do to them?

If something, what?

If nothing, why not?

*

You tell me I simplify complexities?

Am I then the only one?

*

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