So, you’re chatting, over dinner with the most powerful guy on the planet and you get pissed at him, and stick your finger in his face, right? That’s what anyone would do, right?

It’s April, THAT time of the year again. As if we needed one, the Kessab fiasco is running full steam as a reminder of the Genocide. It even helped Erdoghan’s party pull off a come-back win in Turkey’s local elections.

A friend posted an article on Facebook that included one of the leaked audio recordings (with an English translation appearing on the screen) of Turkish ministerial level discussions of, not to mince words, invading Syria.

Well, maybe it’s more than a week’s worth of craziness, but it’s still heartening, maddening, and plain old time-energy-attention consuming, all in one.

Did you see the LATimes’ Sunday March 16 hard-copy edition? The front page of the main section of the newspaper was half covered (vertically) with what I understand is called an “ad wrap” which then fully covered the back of the paper, too.

We are buffeted by social, political, and economic winds that impact not just what we do, but even what we are inclined, or have an interest in, doing.

We make much of our efforts to “preserve” our culture. Preserve is probably a bad word for what we do, since it implies immutability, stasis, and that means death for culture. I’m reminded of my high school chemistry teacher, Mr. Walker, who would say “the only thing in static equilibrium is a dead body.”

Shakespeare, in Macbeth, writes “(Life) is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” All parts of this quote are keenly applicable to Azerbaijan and its blood-oil money fueled propaganda offensive we’ve been witnessing of late.

It’s unfortunate that some people are stupid. This stupidity can be intellectual, political, or integrity-based (i.e. lacking it).

With all this talk and microscopic (on an atomic scale, if not sub-atomic) progress on our Turkish front, it seems to me we ought to be thinking about, discussing, and putting forth actual steps that can be taken.

For some two decades I’ve snarled, ground my teeth, and bewailed to myself about the great positive publicity Turkey gets from all the write-ups and advertising in the LA Times Travel section.

No doubt you read that Abdullah “Apo” Öcalan called on the Turkish government to recognize the Armenian Genocide. You might not have thought much of it, but here’s why it’s so amazing.

An ever-increasing number of testimonials, or reports, or essays, or travelogues, or… are appearing from and/or about Western Armenia, written by Armenians, Kurds, or Turks.

Dink, Bonk, Bling, Crash, Smush— the sound effects you might see in the emphatic bubbles in the panels of a comic book are what the news from Turkey is starting to sound like lately, a farce of ego, filth, and conflict.