Sunday, February 15, 2009
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THE GREEKS AND US
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Whenever I am told to be more positive, I think of Homer who begins his story with a rape and ends with the destruction of Troy. And what do we learn from the ODYSSEY? Only this: even when one is engaged in as innocent an undertaking as going home, one will have to deal with obstructionists.
If you dismiss Homer's testimony as suspect on the grounds that he was an unbeliever, let's consider the Bible: Why did the Good Lord introduce a serpent in the Garden?
There are those who maintain it was not the Lord who did that but the CIA. But I for one don't believe everything I am told, and that's where my troubles begin. When I am told, for example, that we are better or smarter than the Greeks because we no longer believe in many gods some of whom fornicated with mortals, all I can say is that, that's true, we have made some progress in that department. We believe in only one God who is divided into three, and only one of the three, the Holy Ghost, engaged in the business of impregnating a mortal.
The Greeks condemned Socrates to death because he said “Of the gods we know nothing.” Christians, by contrast, persecuted and killed only those who did not share their dogmas, lies, and propaganda.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or, as the French are fond of saying, “Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme merde.”
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Monday, February 16, 2009
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THE ANGEL OF GROZNY
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We are smart, no doubt about that. We are as smart as any nation you care to mention. We may even be smarter than some. But we have been systematically moronized by our leadership. We have been as systematically moronized as any nation under a corrupt and incompetent leadership that has collaborated with some of the most brutal, ruthless, and bloodthirsty regimes in the history of mankind -- and it has collaborated to the point of betraying and murdering its greatest intellects.
If you want to know more on the subject of systematic moronization, I urge you to read Asne Seierstad's THE ANGEL OF GROZNY (New York, 2008), a masterpiece of contemporary journalism that deals with recent developments in Chechnya and the evils of Russian and Chechen nationalism.
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The very same readers who tell me not to open old wounds, never give up blabbering endlessly about older wounds.
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I have never heard a loud-mouth charlatan or fanatic to admit error, which may suggest, the louder they are, the more infallible they consider themselves to be.
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Some of our most ardent nationalists live in self-imposed exile, and when war breaks out in the Homeland, they selflessly allow others to do their killing and dying for them.
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Tuesday, February 17, 2009
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STANDARDS
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To agree in the name of an ideology or belief system is to conspire against the majority of mankind.
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Speech and honesty can be a lethal combination.
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The danger is not in worshiping false gods but in worshiping the devil in the name of god.
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When a loser's dreams come true, they turn into nightmares.
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The more successful you are in fooling men, the less successful you will be in fooling reality.
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Armenian etiquette: If you are wrong you will be corrected. If you are right you will be insulted.
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And now, from the general to the specific:
How to explain the decline of our cultural standards when compared with those of the turn-of-the-century Ottoman Empire and pre-Stalin Soviet Union? The answer must be: the philistinism of our bosses, bishops, and benefactors combined with the opportunism of our academics.
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Wednesday, February 18, 2009
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RANDOM THOUGHTS
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All ideologies begin as belief systems and end as bureaucracies; and all bureaucracies might as well be interchangeable. What failed in the United States and the Soviet Union is neither capitalism nor communism but “the invisible hand” of faceless bureaucrats.
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If so far we have failed to learn from history it's because history and propaganda are mutually exclusive concepts, and our propaganda tells us we know all there is to know and there is nothing wrong with us – it's all the fault of the rotten world in which we live.
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It's unbelievable the number of things people will avoid saying in order to achieve popularity. I could never acquire that particular talent – or is it tactic?
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Smart Armenians are a dime a dozen. Honest Armenians – that's different.
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In our environment, the higher they rise, the more crooked they get.
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A fellow Armenian (a white-haired elderly no-nonsense type) knocks on my door, introduces himself, barges in, and demands to know if I am really an atheist. I tell him I don’t believe in the god of our priests. He is too puzzled by my answer to pursue the matter. What I fail to add is that, the true atheist is he who uses someone else’s crucifixion to make a comfortable living.
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Thursday, February 19, 2009
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PERVERTS
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God is the Unknown and the Unknowable. Truth resides not in places we have seen but in inaccessible dimensions about which we know nothing.
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After defining military defeat as moral victory, we feel justified in identifying ourselves as perennial winners. Ah! The magic power of words and the irresistible temptation of confusing propaganda with reality.
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One man's terrorist, we are told, is another's freedom fighter. One man's believer is another's infidel. One man's hero is another's bloodthirsty barbarian. I may pretend to understand these things but I am as confused as the rest of mankind -- except of course the heroic freedom fighter who believes he is following the Guidance. Or is it the brainwashed dupe who will believe anything that flatters his loathsome little ego?
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To speak in the name of God and do the Devil's work: it takes perverted logic to reach such abysmal depths of moral degradation.
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The greater the cultural achievements of a nation, the greater its depths of moral debasement. After Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, Hitler, Goebbels, and Himmler. After Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, Stalin and Beria.
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So you think I stress the negative and ignore the positive? Suppose you are hungry. You walk into a restaurant and order a big bowl of your favorite soup; and as you are about to enjoy it, you notice a fly in it. When you point that out to the waiter, he tells you 99% of your soup is fly-free. Why concentrate on the negative and ignore the positive?
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Friday, February 20, 2009
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AS I SEE IT
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To know better does not always mean to know the truth, and what's the use of knowing better if what you know is a lie?
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The lower they sink, the higher their opinion of themselves. Psychologists have a word for this abnormality: they call it compensation.
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Even people who hate doctors are glad to see them when they are in need of their help. The same does not apply to critics in an environment where everyone has somehow managed to convince himself that God is on his side, he is in good hands, and he never had it so good.
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There will always be a demand for our weeklies if only because Armenians love to see their names in print. Our editors know this and they cram in as many names in every issues as they can.
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One should never speak well of oneself it smacks of boasting, and to boast is to confess a weakness, namely one's dependence on flattery, even if the flattery is self-administered.
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Some comedians specialize in insulting their audience, and these comedians become popular because most people would rather be insulted than ignored.
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In a letter from an Armenian poet: "After writing for Armenians all my life, I am beginning to hate Turks less."
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Most people are careful not to make the same big mistake twice. The same does not apply to small mistakes which are classified as habits.
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Saturday, February 21, 2009
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ON FORGIVENESS
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To forgive does not necessarily mean to forget. On the contrary. To forgive sometimes means to remember forever after and to wonder what the hell was it that cornered you into such an unArmenian act as forgiving a scumbag who doesn't deserve to live.
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To forgive in order to appear magnanimous or to assert moral superiority is closer to vengeance than to forgiveness.
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Forgiveness, real forgiveness, is rooted in the realization that you are not much different from your enemy and that you may even be worse.
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ON CONTROL FREAKS
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When control freaks speak of freedom, they mean their freedom, your subservience.
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SMILE
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In a convent:
I will ask you two easy questions and a hard one. What's the name of the first man?
That's easy: Adam.
What's the name of the first woman?
That's easy too: Eve.
What did Eve say when she first saw Adam?
O my! That's a hard one!
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I saw six men kicking and punching my mother-in-law. My wife said, Aren't you going to help I said, No. Six should be enough.
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