Uncle Garabed’s Notebook (Dec. 24, 2016)

Doctor’s Adage

Without pains,
No gains.

Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia, 1735

 Double Entendre

A haughty matron was looking at a proof of a photograph of her that had just been taken at a swank photography studio. “This is an outrage,” she exclaimed; “now I ask you, does this picture look like me?” The suave photographer replied, “Madam, the answer is in the negative.”

An Acute Observation

So many Armenian organizations bestow awards on prominent individuals in order to honor themselves.

From the Word Lab

He wears a Wooden Sword: Said of a person who rejects an offer at the early part of the day, and sells the article at a lower price later on. A euphemism for a fool; the fools or jesters were furnished with wooden swords.

Coal Miner’s Maxim

It’s not the cough that carries you off,
It’s the coffin they carry you off in.

Omni-herbivores

Customer: Say, waiter, these flowers on the table look artificial.
Waiter: That’s the worst of running a vegetarian restaurant; if we use real flowers, the customers eat them.

 What’s in a Name?

Azmelian revisited: Arabic in derivation, identified as a descriptive title, aziz is defined as glorious, and melik as king; therefore, glorious king.

CK Garabed

CK Garabed

Weekly Columnist
C.K. Garabed (a.k.a. Charles Kasbarian) has been active in the Armenian Church and Armenian community organizations all his life. As a writer and editor, he has been a keen observer of, and outspoken commentator on, political and social matters affecting Armenian Americans. He has been a regular contributor to the Armenian Reporter and the AGBU Literary Quarterly, “ARARAT.” For the last 30 years, Garabed has been a regular contributor to the Armenian Weekly. He produces a weekly column called “Uncle Garabed's Notebook,” in which he presents an assortment of tales, anecdotes, poems, riddles, and trivia; for the past 10 years, each column has contained a deconstruction of an Armenian surname. He believes his greatest accomplishment in life, and his contribution to the Armenian nation, has been the espousing of Aghavni, and the begetting of Antranig and Lucine.
CK Garabed

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