Absolute Random Nonsense

Forouzan Jamshidnejad is an Iranian actor. She played in Ali Abbasi’s Holy Spider. Forouzan started with acting as a five-year-old and has been in several plays and TV series. She has been living in Norway with her family for over 14 years.  "My mother had a deep passion for acting when she was young. In her teenage years, she began to pursue it professionally. At that time, she and her family were living in Khorramshahr, a city in southern Iran. Then the war between Iran and Iraq broke out. My mother and her family lost their home during the bombings, and they became displaced. In those days, there was no real support for families who had lost everything, so they were forced to move and rely on relatives in other cities. My mother left behind not just her home, but also her dreams. And in a way, the part of her that was never able to fulfill that passion came alive in me. She always supported me, together with my father. I must say my father played an important role as well. At t...

When the Dudley Boys debuted in the WWE, Bubba Ray had a stutter. Whenever he would get stuck mid sentence with his stutter, Devon would smack him in the back of the head and he would be able to talk normally again. I didn't like this particular gimmick as it seemed like it would encourage people to smack stutterers in order to have them get over their stutter. Perhaps the WWE also realized this. Or maybe they received complaints. The gimmick was dropped shortly after its debut.  

Babak Parviz is the CEO and founder of NewDays.ai. From 2023 to 2025, he was a venture partner at the Madrona Venture Group primarily focused on venture capital investments in artificial intelligence, healthcare, and deep tech. Before joining Madrona, Babak was a vice president at Amazon for eight and a half years. He founded and led Amazon’s Grand Challenge — the organization responsible for identifying, investing in, and operationalizing substantial new areas for the company. During his time, Amazon grew by nearly 10X to become a trillion dollar company. He is a graduate of Sharif University. "My chemistry teacher in high school, Mr Arasteh, and my physics teacher, Mr Faripour, were amazing people that dedicated their lives to teaching children. They opened my eyes to the beauty of science, esp physics and for sure changed my life. The best part of being at Sharif University was meeting and making lifelong friendships with a remarkable group of people–mostly classmates but also ...

After parking my car and walking (or rather running) to the stadium, I bought my ticket and found a seat. Another game from Tehran’s League was being played and was within its final stages. It suddenly dawned upon me that perhaps my ticket was only valid for the game in progress and that I would have to leave after its conclusion. Looking at the size of the crowd and the difficulty of removing everyone, I reassured myself that the ticket was probably for both games. The worst scenario would be that I would have to leave the stadium in which case I would simply buy a ticket for the second game. The first game finally ended and everyone stayed put as Pas and Keshavarz entered the field and began their warmups. I already knew many of their players although this was the first time I was seeing them in person. I was seated on the side closer to Pas’s goal in the 1st half and as such witnessed Zarrincheh repeatedly charging down the flank only to overhit his cross. In one instance Keshavarz’...

Mitra Azizirad is Corporate Vice President of AI and Innovation Marketing at Microsoft based in Seattle. A 27-year veteran of Microsoft, Mitra has held key leadership positions at Microsoft across a wide array of technical, marketing and sales functions, both in the field and corporate.  Mitra leads Microsoft’s vision to help individuals and organizations put AI into action to innovate, transform, and deliver lasting positive impact on people, industry, and society at large. " We all come from different backgrounds and experiences. I have mixed Iranian and Scottish heritage and I’m proud to live my values openly.  After Microsoft, I'm totally leaving the industry to do art. I've already had offers to decorate my co-workers' houses, so I could do that, or design or be a fashion illustrator. "  

Kurt finally made it to his apartment and stepped into the barely lit corridor. Walking towards his apartment he spotted a silhouette in the distance. With every step more details were uncovered, yet still not enough to give away the identity. Kurt kept his eyes on the face wondering if he could solve this meaningless game of clue until he reached a point where he accepted defeat. It was only then that he realized the lady approaching him had caught his stare and was staring back just as hard, perhaps playing the same game. As they were about to pass one another Kurt gently nodded his head and was faced by the same reaction by her. He mumbled a weak hi as they passed and thought he heard the same from her.  But after a few more steps she suddenly called back at Kurt, “Oh I’m sorry, I think I confused you with someone else.” Kurt glanced at her briefly and continued his march to his apartment. “Just because you don’t know me didn’t mean you had to take your hello back, jerk,” he tho...

Two years ago, Arsalan Saleh Fard had never heard of this Latin American metropolis. He would have been lost if asked to identify it on a map. But it is here, at times sleeping on a mattress on the floor, where the Iranian-born Saleh Fard was living a life in limbo. With no legal right to work and no permanent place to stay, the 25-year-old picked up under-the-table shifts at a barbershop to pay for his insulin injections and rent. He arrived knowing no Spanish and had picked up only a few phrases by earlier this year. Virtually all his in-person conversations, he said, came translated through a translation app on his phone. “I don’t know what to do,” he said in a June interview in Farsi, his native tongue, speaking to The Washington Post via an interpreter. “I am really lost here.” Saleh Fard, who was among the very first migrants deported to a nation he didn’t know, has spent longer in a third country than virtually anyone else. After he was sent to Panama by the U.S., the Panamanian...

I remember years ago I had to drive a friend of mine who was heavily into substance abuse to a clinic to get clean. She was very opposed but thankfully couldn't put up much of a fight because she was cooked out of her mind on the way there. It was when we finally got there that it dawned upon her what was happening and she voiced her objection. "I don't need this." "Yeah you're fine."  "I don't need to go." "Stop whining." "I don't belong in there."  "You sleep an hour a night for like the last 3 months."  "I don't need to go."  "You're only going to be there for 2 months."  "I don't need this, you know I don't need this. Look at me, I'm fine."  "I'm doing it for your own good babe, I promise you. It's like school. You just got out of school like 6 months ago. It's like a year. It's like you were on a holiday for a year. It's okay. I...

"It doesn't matter to me. I don't care if I know him and I don't care if I don't,"says T.J. Houshmandzadeh of his father. "At the end of the day, if I had done that to my kids, would I want to get to know them? Yeah, I would. But I wouldn't expect them to put the effort in. They know of me, but they don't know me. You chose to leave. I didn't choose to be born. If I get to know him, cool. But I'm not going to put in the effort. I don't call people back when they call me." Houshmandzadeh talked to his father for the first time this past summer, making the call to Iran, but he's not making any appointments for another one. His uncles liked the original Touraj, a college student when he met their sister, and over the years have encouraged him to reach out. "His dad was a nice man; he treated my sister well," Anthony Norman says. "He got called back to Iran. He had to go. His dad got sick. He wanted my sister to go ...