“Aasif” In My Class?

Today in my history class we had a guest speaker, whose focus was African history, particularly in her native country of Liberia. While discussing the civil war in Liberia, she also broached the topic of child soldiers and Kony 2012 and how they related to her research. After class, I went up to her and told her that I’d recently published a short story titled Aasif (here’s the link for those new followers who haven’t read it yet: http://mobiusmagazine.com/) and that I thought it was interesting that she’d mentioned child soldiers and Kony 2012, which were the inspirations for Aasif. Not only did our guest speaker ask for the web address, she also gave it to my teacher, who also happens to be her advisor in the graduate school.

As we were all leaving the classroom, both my teacher and the guest speaker said they’d take a look at it…and possibly discuss it in class. Discuss my short story in class? Now that’s some exposure! And in history class too! What’s next?

Has anything like this ever happened to you?

Aasif is Published in Mobius Magazine!!!

Oh, happy first day of Septhember! The Buckeyes are preparing to kick Miami of Ohio’s butt, the sun is shining, and a certain little short story got published! The web address for Mobius Magazine is down below. Once you get to the website, you’ll find my short story on the left under fiction. I hope you enjoy reading it.

This story was inspired by the Kony 2012 video that came out back in April, and you can definitely see the influence there. The story itself may have taken me a week to write, but I credit the fact that I had great inspiration behind it that it didn’t take longer.

Please feel free to tell me what you think of the story. Did you like it? Hate it? Was there a particular part that stuck with you? Did you think a certain character may have been a racist caricature of some ethnic group or another? Whatever your thoughts, please leave me a comment and let me know.

So, without further ado, here’s the address for Mobius Magazine. Hope you like what you read.

http://mobiusmagazine.com/

Aasif: Getting Published In September

That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, another one of mine is getting published! Oh my god, so happy right now! The illustrious magazine Mobius, which deals with literature involving/revolving around social change, has decided to publish a short story I sent them, and it’ll be coming out in their fall edition in September (I’ll do a post then when it comes out).

“Aasif” was inspired by the Kony 2012 video, which I’ve covered before on Rami Ungar the Writer. I thought about doing a story involving child soldiers and the warlords who force them into killing, and then I started writing. What resulted was “Aasif”, and I’m so happy it’s getting published.

If you want to visit the website for Mobius, maybe see if you have anything that matches their criteria, the link’s below. Gotta go, I’m dancing in my kitchen.

http://mobiusmagazine.com/

Cover The Night: Raising Awarenes

Volunteers for Cover the Night. I'm the guy at the very end of the top left.

On Friday night at 8:oo, about twenty people, most of them students, gathered together behind the Ohio Union to Cover the Night, an awareness raising event to bring attention to Joseph Kony. Among them was me. And I had an excellent time, if I do say so myself. We basically covered the edge of south campus and went all the way into the very heart of the Short North, Columbus’s artsy shopping district. All told, we must’ve handed out at least 200 fliers and talked to nearly as many people, trying to get them interested.

Because that’s the whole point of raising awareness, right? So that people get interested and do something about it. And this was going on across the nation, if not the world, so I’m really happy that I was able to be apart of it.

I hope to turn this into an article for the Pulse, even though I told my editor my next article will be about something else (hey, nothing says I can’t do two articles, right?).

A very good way to spend a Friday night.

Winter Quarter Wrap-Up

I know, that title sounds like something after a NCAA basketball game, but I’ve already used “update” twice in relation to winter quarter, and I don’t want to be redundant.

Now on to the news. Well, I had a slightly lower GPA this quarter, a 3.1, but I’ve got less classes next quarter and despite the reviews of some of them, they don’t seem too difficult or terrifying to me, so hopefully I’ll have a higher GPA than this quarter. I’ll even be taking a class on the search for extraterrestrial life and ways of going about it (yes, my school offers a class on that, you can take it to fulfill a science requirement). Although I don’t believe in alien visitations, I still think the class will be interesting to take. Though if we’re going by what our book teaches, it’ll mostly be what allows life on Earth and how we go about looking for that on other planets.

And as for writing, I’m still working on the final edit for Reborn City, but I hope to get some more of that done. I also wrote a new short story based on the Kony 2012 video I mentioned in my last post. I hope, after that story’s been edited, that a certain magazine I know might want to take it. Fingers crossed, right?

I’m looking forward to spring quarter. More flexible schedule, more time at work, what could go wrong? Wait, don’t answer that.

See ya next post, when it strikes my fancy to write one. Have a good spring break.

Kony 2012: I’m In

I just saw the Kony 2012 video on YouTube. You know, it’s one thing to hear about kids being put into armies like that. It’s another thing entirely to be confronted by the evidence like that, all in your face, and want to do something about that. And you know, I do want to do something about that. Heck, I’m now writing for The Pulse, I start my first assignment this week, I’m all about the social activism now.

So, I’m in.

Joseph Kony has kidnapped nearly 30,000 children and forced them to become soldiers and sex slaves for his private army, the LRA. He is wanted by the International Criminal Court, the Ugandan army, and human rights groups for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

 

I’ll do what I can to help spread the word and bring Kony to justice, because no child should be abducted from their parents and forced to be a soldier or slave, and no parent should have to suffer their child going through that. On April 20, 2012, I’ll even go out and do the Cover The Night, an event happening in nearly every major city where we put up posters, stickers, you name it, to spread the word. I don’t care if it’s the Jewish Sabbath, God would want me helping people.

Finally, I’d like you to check out the website and the video (I’ll be putting them down below at the bottom of this post). If you don’t like what you see, spread the word. You may be an individual, but when an individual is motivated to do something big, all they need is to find others who feel the same way, and they can change the world.

So let’s change the world together, and nab Kony by the end of the year.

Thank you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc

http://www.kony2012.com/