Absolute Random Nonsense

When I was in the second grade, one time at a gathering at our house, a teenage boy asked another one if they were a girl. When the girl responded yes, the boy asked that she prove it. Everyone snickered although I didn't quite understand the punchline. When I went back to school I tried the joke on a girl in class. The first one just brushed me off. The second one, Liz, held her face in her hands and pretended to cry. I told her that did not prove it. I'm not sure what response I would have found acceptable.  

Sahar Delijani is an Iranian author. Her internationally acclaimed debut novel, Children of the Jacaranda Tree, has been translated into 32 languages and published in more than 75 countries. She was born in Evin Prison in Tehran, while both her parents were detained as leftist political activists. Delijani, her older brother and her cousin were raised by her grandparents and aunt until their parents' release. "I was born in Iran in 1983, four years after the revolution. Both my parents were secular, leftist political activists. In 1983, my parents were arrested, along with my uncles and aunt. My mother was pregnant with me when she was taken. I was born in Evin Prison, in a hospital affiliated with it. My mother kept me with her for about a month before I was handed to my grandparents. They raised me, my 2-year-old brother, Rouzbeh, and our cousin, Siavash—who was also born in prison—until our parents were released.  " I think that there is probably no difference, from th...

During the 2026 World Cup group play, teams entered the field as Alan Parsons' song Sirius played. My introduction to the song was in the 80s and also for a sports program as it frequently would be used in sports clip montages. At the time I imagined it would be good music to the scene in The Omen where the father is sifting through Damian's hair and discovers the 666 birthmark.  

Two faculty members at Central Washington University recently promoted an outdoor camp restricted to black, Indigenous, and people of color, reasoning that they haven’t had the same opportunities to experience the outdoors as other races. A video posted to X by Libs of TikTok features the two faculty members, Assistant Professor Hannah Shamloo and Science Outreach and Education Coordinator Nicolaus Zentner, promoting the “Rock and Role” event. Professor Zentner is shown saying, “So is this open to everybody? Not really.” “There’s a growing number of people who are younger and are from much more diverse backgrounds who typically don’t go to those events for a bunch of reasons, so this is a BIPOC community event,” Zentner added. Professor Shamloo said The Bronze Chapter, the host organization for Rock and Role, aims to “increase participation of BIPOC members in the outdoors.” "There is always a part of me that wants to reveal this other side of my culture—the culture I was raised w...

Mr. Ghavami was our biology teacher. He was old and seemingly harmless and other than the fact that when calling a student to the board he would ask them to retell not some but all of the previous day’s lesson, no one had any issues with him. He would occasionally get angry and yell at us although he rarely beat anyone. Nima and I became the exception to this rule. One day as we were sitting in class I brought Irene’s old biology book instead of mine. Most of the content was the same and the differences were mainly the pictures with hijabless woman removed and men or covered up women replacing them. As I leafed through my book I pointed out each picture to Nima and he showed me the one from his book as we compared notes. With Putra sitting in between us we had to either call out or make a hand gesture to get each other’s attention. After about 15 minutes of this Mr. Ghavami had had enough. He approached me, probably because I was at the near end of the bench and began smacking me at th...

Kat, a mononymous mommy blogger and former model, has racked up millions of views on videos that expose stark and alarming differences between clothes made for boys and girls. “This is what Old Navy thinks your five-year-old little girl should be wearing to go down the slide,” she said in a recent video, holding up a pair of tiny denim shorts that resemble underwear instead of play clothes. For comparison, she holds up a pair of much longer “quick-dry” khaki shorts created for boys the same age. Licensed clinical psychologist Dr. Shahrzad Jalali agreed that uncomfortable pants can create unnecessary friction between a child and their environment, curbing learning and peer-bonding opportunities and creating stress and anxiety instead. “A child who is thinking about whether her clothes will ride up, expose her or restrict her movement has less psychological freedom to simply move,” Dr. Jalali told The Post. The California mental health expert added that freedom of movement supports explo...

In the second grade there were 4 females that I found attractive. One was Darla from the Little Rascals. One was Cindy from the Brady Bunch. One was a cartoon which I think was either Penelope Pitstop or Tinkerbell. The last one was the only one that I had seen in real life. She was a girl named Diane who was in my class. I liked the fact that she was honest because when we played Seven Up, sometimes I would press her thumb down and later if she correctly guessed that it had been me I would deny it and thus not lose. Actually thinking about it now this speaks more to my own dishonesty.  

Maryam Rahimi is an Iranian writer, screenwriter and director. she works alongside Rai cinema with her work “Yalda”. She has won many national and international awards for her works. She won Mibact MigrArt from the ministry of culture in Italy in 2016 for her short film “Mare Nostrum”. Soraya, directed by Maryam Rahimi, touches on heavy subject matter, exploring the harrowing experience of an Iranian woman seeking an illegal abortion while deciding to immigrate illegally with the help of smugglers. "I had to go to Iran and in the same days I received a proposal to make a short film. This is why I decided to talk about one of the many problems of Iranian women."

Having obtained a few issues of the magazine Soccer International in 1990, I wrote them a letter in 1991 shortly after the US had won the Gold Cup. I asked for more information about the team and particularly about the Gold Cup games. I did not have high expectations of getting a response. For starters I couldn't see why they would send me anything for free. Even if they did send me an issue of their magazine, there was no guarantee that the mailman wouldn't keep it for himself. At best I thought I would simply get a subscription form back. I received nothing. In 1993, once in the US and college, I subscribed to the magazine and saw that one could also order prior issues. I ordered three issues from 1991. When they arrived I flipped through them. In one of them, in the section covering letters to them, one of the titles read "A US Fan in Iran." I wondered how I never came across this person when living in Iran as the two of us would have definitely stood out from the ...

Samantha Tajik is an Iranian model, actress, and a TV personality. She was crowned Miss Universe Canada 2008 in Toronto, Ontario on April 28, 2008 and went on to represent Canada at the Miss Universe 2008 beauty pageant held in Vietnam in July 2008. Samantha had the honor of being the first Persian woman ever to win the title of Miss Universe Canada. She has also excelled in the world of modeling, winning the title of "International Model of the Year" in 2007. She has also excelled in the world of high-fashion modeling. Samantha has been featured in many magazines, commercials and has walked the runway for numerous international designers. Samantha also trained and continues to train many aspiring models for different pageants and judges at many shows as the "guest of honor". At just two years old, Tajik left Tehran with her family, settling in Canada. Samantha grew up in Vancouver with her parents and younger brother. She then moved to Toronto, where sh...

In 1995 a girl in college gave me a book called "My Secret Garden" that dealt with female sexual fantasies. The book wasn't a novel but rather a collection of women's fantasies obtained through letters, tapes and personal interviews. I read the book and then for the most part put it away. A year of two later a friend of mine had to take a long train ride and requested some reading material. I gave him the book. He never returned it. The girl who had given me the book passed away in her 50s.  

Leila Bela is an Iranian avant-garde musician, writer, photographer, actress, multi-instrumentalist, playwright, and recording artist from Austin, Texas. Bela was born Leila Bela Kousheshi, in Tehran to a family of Persian female singers and musicians such as her great-aunt Monir Vakili as well as former Persian royalty, descendants of the Qajar Empire but was not raised by them. Her mother abandoned her at age four and she lived in several foster homes and with family and strangers all over the world growing up. In her early teens she was very active in the punk and underground music scene. She began attending Nightclubs and gay bars such as Numbers and Rich's in Houston, Tx. Despite her teachers urging her to pursue an acting career, Bela decided to start writing a concept album of experimental music after school and soon left the theatre world for music with a theatrical twist. After releasing her first album, which she recorded at home on a small recording device, she started p...

My introduction to the Ivory Coast was a story posted in a 1981 Keyhan Bacheha about a whale who had to make a delivery there. In the late 80s I saw a picture of the Ivorian soccer player Youssouf Fofana who at the time was playing for Monaco. In 1992 I read that Ivory Coast won the African Cup of Nations. In 2026 I attended their game at the World Cup where they defeated Curacao 2-0.  

Pirooz Kalayeh is an Iranian American filmmaker, writer, and professor whose formally adventurous, hybrid cinema interrogates institutional power, displacement, and the boundaries of non-fiction storytelling. A solo practitioner who often serves as his own cinematographer, editor, and sound designer, Kalayeh blends cinematic disciplines to create deeply intimate, politically urgent visual essays. His latest feature film, My Room in Tehran Was Called America (2027), epitomizes this form-shattering approach—weaving bedroom diaries, cross-border histories, and choral critiques of Western structures into a singular cinematic tapestry.  "I was born in Iran but raised in America. My whole life has always been split between these two worlds. Inside the house, was gormet sabzi, Persian rugs, and eating on the floor. Outside, was hamburgers, Star Wars, Scooby Doo, and America. I grew up like this all my childhood — and when I found myself in other communities, whether it was Hollywood...

I was never known for my beautiful handwriting and the many “S-satisfactory” marks I got on my handwriting assignments confirmed this. Even so, every now and then I would perhaps inadvertently turn out a brilliantly written handwriting assignment for which my usual satisfactory comment would be replaced with “O-outstanding”. Heading towards the end of the year, I had accumulated three of such scores. Alex, who at that point sat next to me and was equally horrible when it came to legible writing, somehow went through a metamorphosis. Almost as if a switch had been flicked on, his handwriting tremendously improved and it did not go unnoticed by Mr. Yowell. When he received his first outstanding mark I simply shrugged it off. With his second one I wondered if he was going to catch up with me. His third one, which also included a footnote of “excellent” had him bragging that he would beat me with our last assignment. I hardly doubted his prediction. Our notebooks were distributed bac...

It’s 9 p.m. on a Sunday evening. Westwood Boulevard is quiet, the hustle and bustle of the day a distant memory. At first glance, the Naab Café – a popular hotspot with the locals – seems equally desolate. But walk through the terrace, and the air comes alive with laughter, smoke and drifts of Farsi-laden conversation. There isn’t a single non-Persian in the place. “It’s like a scene from Iran,” Anahita Aminpour says. “Or at least, how I imagine it.” At 25 years old, Aminpour belongs to a new generation of L.A.’s Persians. Her parents, like many of those from the community, made the move from Iran to Los Angeles in the 1970s following the Islamic Revolution of Iran. L.A. is now home to around 600,000 Persians, the largest diaspora in the world. In 2010, the city of Los Angeles officially designated Westwood Boulevard as “Persian Square.” It’s also known as “Tehrangeles” on Google Maps – a portmanteau of Tehran and Los Angeles. “I’m definitely Persian.” Aminpour says...

The year 1995 was truly horrendous. So many awful things had happened, particularly at the end of the year, and as such I was looking forward to 1996. On New Year's eve, I sat in my room listening to the radio and the New Year's countdown and when the year changed I literally got up, jumped up and down and celebrated 1995 ending. Little did I know that every horrible thing that happened in 1995 would present its consequences in 1996.  

On March 15, 1981, Ali Limonadi launched the first television broadcast representing the Iranian diaspora from a small Los Angeles studio. He named the station IRTV, short for Iranian Television. In a recent conversation, Limonadi described the feelings of the newly arrived Iranians in Los Angeles: "At that time, we thought we would return to Iran after six months. We thought the situation would settle and that people could resume their lives back home. Some of us did not even fully unpack our bags." Archived footage of the first broadcast validates his description. I watched an interview from that 1981 broadcast in which Limonadi spoke with an Iranian psychologist who provided advice to viewers on how to raise their children in the United States. The psychologist said, "Remember to speak Farsi in the home with your children. Do not speak English with them because they will have plenty of exposure to it in school or outside the house while in America. This ...