MJ Posted September 1, 2001 Report Share Posted September 1, 2001 ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted August 01, 2001 06:52 AM --------------------------------------------------------------------------------…AND THEREBY HANGS A TALE***************************************Once in a while a reader takes it upon himself to remind me that I repeat myself. May I confess that I too don’t much care to be exposed to the same ideas and slogans over and over again ad nauseam and ad infinitum. Which is why I avoid churches and partisan functions; also sermonizers (always against sin) and speechifiers (always for patriotism). My only hope now is that those who find me repetitious, monotonous, consistently negative, will avoid me too; and I can’t help wondering why is it that so far they have failed to do so: I find that wasteful on their part, also irresponsible and thoughtless. And now the tale I promised at the outset:Once upon a time there was a man who lived in a comfortable house in a nice neighborhood. One day, when, after a pleasant walk in the part, he returned home, he saw thick black smoke coming out of his attic window. "Fire! Fire!" he started yelling and running up and down the street, "Help! Help! Please, call 911. Fire. Help. Please. 911!" But nobody did a damn thing. Instead he heard such comments by neighbors and passersby as, "We heard you the first time. Relax. Help is on its way. Don’t be such a pessimist. Be more constructive. Be more optimistic. Things are looking up. You are repeating yourself. You sound like a broken record. Don’t raise your voice, we are not deaf. We can see the fire, we are not blind. You sound monotonous. Such an alarmist! Enough is enough. Shut up! Ignore him…"What happened next is easy to guess. The fire spread and the whole neighborhood burned down. Moral I: If your house is on fire and if you live in an Armenian neighborhood, don’t repeat yourself and be more constructive. Moral II: If you are a neighbor, ignore the message, ignore the messenger, but don’t ignore the context, especially if you are yourself part of it. -------------------- ara baliozian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MJ Posted September 1, 2001 Report Share Posted September 1, 2001 ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted August 30, 2001 12:25 PM --------------------------------------------------------------------------------REPLY*********************Once in a while, one of our phony patriotic imbeciles (of whom we have our share) takes it upon himself to accuse me of anti-Armenianism, and no matter how often I am advised by friends not to dignify such meaningless nonsense with a reply, I cannot resist the temptation of reiterating my position.If you are for freedom of speech, you will be against censorship (and we have more than our share of it, as everyone ought to know by now).If you are for democracy, you will be against fascism (ditto).If you are for honesty, you will be against crooks and charlatans (ditto).I could make a much longer list but you get the picture.In short, I can’t be anti-Armenian for the simple reason that I am anti-many things regardless of national origin. To put it more bluntly, I write the way I write to remind our self-satisfied swine that they are not God’s gifts to mankind and if they continue to engage in charlatanism, they must be prepared to be exposed for what they are.-------------------- ara baliozian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MJ Posted September 1, 2001 Report Share Posted September 1, 2001 ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted July 12, 2001 06:56 AM --------------------------------------------------------------------------------INTERCHANGEABLE UNITS*********************************After reading a nasty comment by a Turk about one of my recent essays wherein the word genocide may have occurred – and when I say nasty, I mean boiling with hatred and bristling with four-letter words…I mean verbal massacre… -- I was tempted to reply and inform him I am personally acquainted with several Armenians just like him and I would be more than happy to introduce him to them. But remembering de Gaulle’s dictum – "Nothing enhances authority better than silence" – I ignored the bastard. But if he writes again, I may ignore de Gaulle…Moral I: Nasty Armenians and nasty Turks: they might as well be twins when it comes to style and content. Moral II: (To paraphrase Lenin): A skinhead is a skinhead regardless of national identity. -------------------- ara baliozian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MJ Posted September 1, 2001 Report Share Posted September 1, 2001 ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted July 03, 2001 06:46 AM --------------------------------------------------------------------------------AS I SEE IT************************A pervert is also someone who perverts the meaning of what he reads.If you want to love a man, talk to his friends.If you want to hate him, talk to his enemies.If you want to understand him, talk to both. To choose America as our enemy amounts to certifying our status as perennial losers. There is an old Egyptian saying (which I just made up): "Tackle the rat in your own backyard before you decide to wrestle with the crocodile in the Nile." A reader writes that my writings give him a headache. I could make a long list of Armenian writers who were starved, murdered, committed suicide, had heart attacks or died of cancer. What’s a little headache? It’s easy to have all the answers if you have not yet begun asking the right questions. A reader once accused me of dehumanizing my fellow Armenians. Whereas one of my most frequent reproaches to myself is that again and again I have attempted to humanize them by trying to reason with them and again and again I have been disappointed, insulted, torn to shreds, and cannibalized. -------------------- ara baliozian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MJ Posted September 1, 2001 Report Share Posted September 1, 2001 ara baliozian Member Member # 271 posted August 02, 2001 06:54 AM --------------------------------------------------------------------------------KILLERS************************I don’t write for the living but for the dead, and I speak in the name of all those writers who were silenced by commissars: Soviet commissars with a license to kill, diasporan commissars (not all of them members of the ADL or ARF) whose words were "sharper than a Turk’s yataghan" (Zarian), and readers who killed with their apathy: the kind of apathy whose message is: "We don’t need you because we know better," or "We have no use for you because we find you depressing," or again "We wish to be entertained and flattered not criticized and exposed for what we really are: murderers of writers and killers of dreams."-------------------- ara baliozian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MJ Posted September 1, 2001 Report Share Posted September 1, 2001 Ara Baloizian Member Member # 271 posted August 13, 2001 07:08 AM --------------------------------------------------------------------------------JACKASSES, LEND ME YOUR EARS****************************************When I express an honest opinion and an honest man agrees with me, I feel good; but when a dishonest man disagrees with me, I feel better. Why should I care to have the agreement of a dishonest man? I am sure, if I were to write like an ape or a jackass, I would have the agreement of apes and jackasses. And if I were to parrot the views of a boss, bishop, or benedefacator, I would have their agreement too...not to say the support of their hangers-on, hirelings and yes-men. Like all nations around the world we too have our share of fools and dupes who have not yet acquired the skill to think for themselves; also bloodsuckers and parasites who praise the nation publicly and bury it privately. On the day I have their agreement, I shall consider myself on the way to the devil.-------------------- [/b]ara baliozian[/b] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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