PERSONALDEBRIS  

Jennifer Garner, that chick from Alias is plugging for the CIA! Check out what she has to say. All you “creative, innovative, flexible men and women from diverse backgrounds”, the CIA wants you.

an article in the guardian: Ireland is on the move - but where to?

and in light of the upcoming citizenship referendum:

Labour says citizenship proposal ‘deeply flawed’

you know i never really bothered to look at how the U.S. deals with this, but a bit of checking reveals that we (the U.S.) actually have no law that forbids the deportation of non-citizen parents of children who are U.S. citizens, but it rarely happens. also if a child is born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants, judges usually allow the parents to reside legally in the U.S., or simply do no initiate deportation proceedings (they keep an undocumented status, but are not persecuted for it.) (more…)

had dinner with a group of people very recently, among them a visiting writer from new york. in almost disbelief the writer commented that this was “the whitest city” he’d ever been to.

interesting, i thought, since it reminded me of several months back when another visitor from new york spoke about some of his work in art and technology, and his comment afterward while relaxing in a pub, in an incredulous voice, “there were only what, two people of color in the audience…?” (more…)

critical art ensemble needs your help. from the Interactivist Info Exchange:

Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) collective member Steve Kurtz was already suffering from one tragedy when he called 911 early in the morning to tell them his wife had suffered a cardiac arrest and died in her sleep. The police arrived and, cranked up on the rhetoric of the “War on Terror,” decided Kurtz’s art supplies were actually bioterrorism weapons.

Thus began an Orwellian stream of events in which FBI agents abducted Kurtz without charges, sealed off his entire block, and confiscated his computers, manuscripts, art supplies… and even his wife’s body.

CAE Defense Fund

the caltrans site has a great photo gallery - it hits me high full of longing… there are some great images… like the st. vincent thomas bridge - which is also visible from the view at my grandmother’s house (but obviously from quite a bit more distance than in the photo) and the harbor freeway. one of my favorites - the famous four-level interchange in downtown.

Closer, by Alison Lewis

Alison Lewis has released the link to her thesis website: Closer - garments that respond to touch. reminds me of Francesca Rosella and Rikako Sakai’s work on F+R hugs, though upon closer inspection the two projects function in different ways. (more…)

ugh. just read in the irish times about some old geezer in county clare who has started a filipino mail order bride service. the 64 year-old found his 22 year-old bride as the first customer! how gross, not to mention disturbing as the exploitation of women in developing countries is making its way to ireland!

of course it doesn’t help that in this part of the world (UK and Ireland) the only representations of asians in the media are BANZAI or “Orchid” from Coronation Street. (more…)

“there is nothing to match flying over los angeles at night. a sort of luminous, geometric, incandescent immensity, stretching out as far as the eye can see, bursting out from the cracks in the clouds. only hieronymus bosch’s hell can match this inferno effect.”
– jean baudrillard

saw naked world on TV last night…. pretty amazing stuff… spencer tunick, running around the world, looking for participants for his landscape nudes… the interviews with his models is what made the documentary. their personal stories, backgrounds, and reasons for posing nude in public were diverse, personal, touching… and so human. it made me really appreciate the photographs more… not for their own sake but as evidence of a process - documentation of a transformative experience… a way to materially quantify, to give concrete symbolic form to something deeply personal and innately intangible.

been listening to the NPR piece on chang-rae lee, author of aloft. i’ve read ‘a gesture life‘ - i found it deeply engrossing and finished it in a matter of days… aloft isn’t yet available in the trinity library (amazing, since everything else seems to be) but i’ve got it added to the list of books i’ll be picking up when i swing through los angeles again at the end of summer…