We're a surprising race: first we starve our writers to death, only then do we start celebrating them. I know there will come a time when you will praise and laud me, but sadly, I'll be dead by then....
Aug 09, 2021
Comedy Always Punches Down!
In boxing, the taller fighter always has the advantage because punches that are thrown downward hit harder. The shorter fighter, on the other hand, is always fighting two fights: one against his opponent, and another against the heavy weight champion of the universe, gravity, which is undefeated, with a record of infinite wins, zero losses, and one draw against Jesus… In war, the side that occupies the higher ground has the upper hand because not only are they aided by gravity, which makes their position easy to defend, the elevation allows them to see farther in every direction and...
Aug 03, 2021
An Armenian Philosophy…by a Comedian
I argued in previous articles that satire is a subcategory of ethics and, by comparing Armenians in America in 1981 and Armenians in Armenia in 18 A.D., showed conclusively that Armenians don’t have now nor have ever had an ethic. Therefore, to do what I want to do, which is write satire, and to do it in the right way, I’m forced to create an ethics. But ethics in turn is a subcategory of philosophy…If ethics answers the question “How should one behave?” then philosophy answers the question “What is real?” It’s obvious that a person who doesn’t have...
Jul 28, 2021
Is Truth Beautiful?
Everyone would admit that the truth by nature is naked, but is it really beautiful? ...
Jul 22, 2021
“What is Woman?” by Hagop Baronian
Since the creation of the world, this creature alone has never changed its primordial nature....
Jul 20, 2021
“Woman” by Ler Kamsar
Translated here for the first time, a hilarious and haunting article by the greatest Armenian writer you've never heard of, Ler Kamsar....
If questioned, the satirist should be able to say "This is wrong because________" or "That is stupid because________"; and then generalize....
Jul 07, 2021
An Ambiguous Blur: Ethics and Satire, Part 3
When author Jack Antreassian, writing in the year before I was born, astutely observed that the image of Armenians in the U.S. was “a blur, and even the amorphous shape of the blur is without readily identifiable characteristics” (251), he attributed this to the following causes. Most Armenian Americans at that time were thrust there violently due to massacres and deportations at the hands of the Turks. They were few in number in a vast land, and they never fully invested in the new country because they were still psychologically tied to the old, even entertained hopes of one...
Jul 02, 2021
The Rule of Feasting: Ethics and Satire, Part 2
From the beginning until now, the only consistent principle I can find governing Armenian behavior is feasting. The ubiquitous banquet halls and their glut of food and drink that spring up wherever Armenians settle, far from being a new development, extends as far back as the available historical record. Herodotus in the late 5th century B.C. calls Armenians πολυπρόβατοι (polyprobatoi) that is, “rich in sheep”...
Jun 28, 2021
Of Laws and Laxatives: Ethics and Satire, Part 1
In the following series of articles on the relationship between ethics and satire, I touch on the nature of laws and ethics, often using these terms interchangeably. While ethics and laws are not the same, they both fall under the category of human behavior. Ethics poses the philosophical question “How should one behave?”, while laws are the answers proposed to this question backed up by force. Thus one is the theoretical, the other the practical aspect of the same problem. It’s unimaginable, for example, for a legislator to create a law that he deemed unethical, while actions that are...