Absolute Random Nonsense

Arsham Parsi has two birthdays: one when he was born in Iran, and the other when he arrived in Canada on May 10, 2006. Growing up in Iran was not easy for him. Early in his childhood, he recognized that he was "different." When he realized during his teenage years that he was attracted to other men, his life became even more complicated. "I’m from Iran, and I’m gay. Back then, I thought I was the only person on the planet with these feelings. I thought I was a sinner and that something was wrong with me. I felt very alone with my feelings and didn’t know what they were until I was able to access the internet, where I found others like me. "Years ago, after I left Iran but before I came out as gay to my family, my mom asked me why I was helping with gay rights. “There are lots of causes you can be an activist for,” she said. It was a big question for them." - Arsham Parsi 

Whenever I eat M&Ms, I like to hold two M&Ms between my fingers and squeeze them as hard as I can until one breaks. I eat the cracked one, and the one that didn't crack becomes the champion. Then I take another M&M and force it to compete with the champion in this deadly gladiator game of  M&M 's. I do this until I run out of  M&M 's, and when there is only one  M&M  left standing, I send a letter to the  M&M 's brand with the  M&M  champion and a note attached that says, "Use this  M&M  for breeding purposes."  

On February 10, 2015, Negeen Sadeghi-Movahed was one of four members of the UCLA Undergraduate Students Association Council (USAC) who voted against a student’s appointment to USAC because she was Jewish. The student, Rachel Beyda, had been nominated to the council’s Judicial Board. At the February 10 USAC meeting, one of the four council members, Fabienne Roth, asked Beyda: “Given that you are a Jewish student and very active in the Jewish community, how do you see yourself being able to maintain an unbiased view?” Once Beyda left the room, the council debated “about whether her faith and affiliation with Jewish organizations… meant she would be biased in dealing with sensitive governance questions that come before the board.” Sadeghi-Movahed said: “For some reason... I’m not 100% comfortable, I don’t know why… I definitely can see that she’s qualified, for sure, but I just worry about her affiliations, obviously.” After a faculty member interjected that “belonging t...

When I was 12 I was convinced that Fibrinogen caused blood coagulation. In a way I was correct.    

Nilou Rastegar was on Wheel of Fortune. She is a trilingual lady (she speaks Farsi (her native language), English and Spanish) who’s single and ready to mingle and her all-time favorite sitcom is “I Love Lucy” from San Diego. She won $20,630.   

I enjoy my job as a janitor at a school so that I can save up enough money for medical school what I am building out of popsicle sticks.  

"One time as a child I pretended to be Italian because I was ashamed of being Iranian. In year 5, we were asked to give presentations about our cultural heritage. I didn’t want to speak about being Iranian. I was embarrassed. This puzzled me because wasn’t everyone from England? What was the point? I didn’t want to speak about being Iranian. I was embarrassed. I didn’t even like speaking Persian and I dreaded going to Persian school on Saturdays. I found it weird that we celebrated the New Year in March.When my mum made kebabs for dinner, which became my lunch the next day, kids would say, “It looks like poo!” My dad would eat dates after every meal and again, at school, “They look like cockroaches!”   I’ve changed so much since that time that I simply don’t remember. But I feel it’s beside the point. That summer, I travelled to Iran with my dad. On this trip, I shared my feelings with an uncle who was a history teacher. One night he asked me about life in Australia and I s...

I remember when Ali used to be really big and one day he went outside on the street and became very small and then came back home.  

When Iranian writer and food photographer Saghar Setareh moved to Italy at the age of 22, she was enchanted by the rich food culture of her adopted country, and this inspired a curiosity in the cuisine of her homeland and the surrounding countries of the Levant and Eastern Mediterranean. "I have four uncles in Sweden who have been living there since the mid ‘70s and then sometime in the very early 2000s, one of my aunts moved to Germany. So this is a very common idea, especially for young people to go abroad for study or for other things. We would dance and have a drink, which is illegal. We would do all of those things which outside we’d be punished for. So it was very easy to go out and just not do it anymore. "Well, now is a very particular moment in my life because I’m not cooking at all, but something I’ve noticed is that Iranian food for me has always belonged to a big group of people, whether it was a cooking class or my Italian friends for whom I wanted to coo...

In the early 2000s I worked at a company that played songs from the 60s. Our boss was a no-nonsense guy who always had a serious demeanor. One day the radio was playing Del Shannon's song Runaway. When it got to the part where the singer sings "I wah-wah-wah-wah-wonder" in a high pitched voice, our boss suddenly sang along with him in a similar high pitched voice that made by burst out laughing. He was genuinely surprised that I found this funny. A few months later I was laid off. i always wondered it was because I laughed at my boss's singing.  

Charli XCX has dropped the remix of “Guess” featuring Billie Eilish, alongside a music video featuring both artists. The Aidan Zamiri-directed video for the song sees Charli and Billie taking the lyric “You wanna guess the color of my underwear” literally — with both climbing up a mountain of lingerie and Eilish driving a bulldozer carrying loads of laundry.  

If I clone myself completely and pick a fight with myself, who would win in a cage match till death?  

Season two of The Night Agent offered a dramatic shift from Gabriel Basso's FBI Agent Peter Sutherland and Luciane Buchanan's cybersecurity expert Rose Larkin's journey to unravel a government conspiracy from within the U.S. government to the grander global focus with the introduction of Iranian nationals seeking asylum. Among them is Noor Taheri, a New York-based aide to Iranian Ambassador to the UN Abbas Mansuri (Navid Negahban), played by Arienne Mandi (The L Word: Generation Q). The actress spoke to Bleeding Cool about the rare opportunity to use her Iranian background to help bring authenticity to the role, working with creator Shawn Ryan, thoughts on the original Matthew Quick novel, and physical challenges on set.  "I was excited by the action and suspense it gave the audience. I breezed and binged the hell out of it and was excited to join season two as part of the Iranian cast because, one, I am of Iranian descent. That was exciting for me to tap into that ...

One day I took the minibus back from school. It was completely packed yet I somehow managed to squeeze myself in. I knew sooner or later some people would get off and per the unwritten rule of busses and minibuses everyone would gradually move towards the end of the bus and thus save me from getting crushed against the door. We had only travelled a short distance when the minibus stopped to let some passengers off. Another passenger and I stepped down to allow them to pass and as we stood there the passenger suddenly exclaimed, “What happened to my wallet? Did someone just steal it?” I wasn’t sure if he was serious or just making a not-so-comical scene about not identifying which pocket his wallet was in, however, it soon became apparent that his wallet was indeed missing. Initially I briefly considered the possibility that he might have suspected me as the pickpocket and thus directed the earlier conversation towards me. Once we were back on the bus though he repeated his commen...