Absolute Random Nonsense

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...