The war...

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Originally uploaded by zimbablade

The war is about the impact of our foreign policy...no President has the courage to tell the American people this truth...our country will not survive the Empire...our future is in our hands...the terrorists center of gravity is our foriegn policy...if we change this, they will have nothing to stand on...unfortunately, we lack the leadership to express this vision...

In the city...

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Originally uploaded by zimbablade

In the city at Jeff's waiting to pick my parents up....was thinking about walking over to the gymn but it's really cold outside...the words they keep coming like being in a proustian narcotic dream...words signposts to my reality...words that extend all the way back to April 1978...the words of change and the words of being...it's not my style to pay lipservice to words as I smile with satisfaction as the old elite ways of authority and business crumble since I never had any stake in that paradigm...I saw an old mistake walking down the street...we walked right on by each other like we had never had met...oh the cold winds of reality and adult being but these poetic words they keep me warm here in this cold day a few days before the new year...

Talking about My Generation...

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Originally uploaded by zimbablade

The next generation is growing up with insane tools to disseminate and digest information...we are so primitive in comparison but that's how it always works...I always felt like the people I grew up were in a generation lost in space...the one's that proceeded us had the acute ideological battles of the 60's to define them, whether they were liberal or conservative...by the time we reached maturity there was none of that passion...the freedoms that we took so much for granted were handed to us...you know, like dope smoking, pre-marital sex, rock n' roll...we didn't have to fight for it all...there was peace and good jobs abounding...we were the crew that put Reagan in power...

And we are nothing like that is coming today...although we have stayed alive to play around with these toys are consciousness are radically different than the youth of today who grow up with broadband, social networking, digital music, cell phones...it is night and day from where we were...

Christmas Today...

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Originally uploaded by zimbablade

Christmas today and meditating on popularity while I watch my videopoem on ralph nader...there's no sex in it but I still think it's sexy to say fuck you to the man....and the rain falls down outside as the pale light shines against the white walls of my room...words, my friends....attentiion span gone in America but not for me...reading Miller's Nexus and those old words rang true...I see the light and it's very promising in the future...

News...

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Originally uploaded by zimbablade

News in 2010 will blur the lines between audience and creator more than ever in an era of social media.

Winter Solistice...

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Originally uploaded by zimbablade

Winter Solistice today...the longest night of the year....made it to a power yoga class toiday...my body is still brmming with the energy of that class...took a walk and got some delicious pictures of the light gorging itself on the snow streaking mad shadows...another year into the night...thousands and thousand of picture taken...videos made...shows produced...what will this year bring?

down n' out...

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Originally uploaded by zimbablade

down n' out in the wax musuem....when american reality has strung you out you can always go there...a Cheers from the darkside although not that dark if you look at it right...it's like Burroughs in the Drugstore Cowboy where he's playing the priest in prison and he mentions how there was a thriving stable drug trade that operated just fine and then they passed the Harrison Narcotics Law so they could make it into the money game and then violence and the crime ensud....before Reagan tore up the social contract which allowed the bankers to come steal us deaf dumb and blliind and the corpporattiions to mainline homogenization into our veins colorful characters abounded with colorful places to hang out...now we live in the walmart of existence, a penny arcade of cheeseburgers with the sample beats of glen beck inducing a jingoistic rush papered over by the thin veneer of the obama brand....

In the late night...

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Originally uploaded by zimbablade

In the late night working on a book of a photoshoot I did of Diane and Donna...coffee moving through veins, occasional cigarette...Videopoem on with Ralph Nader Part 2....outside in the dark night the wind howls mad and light shimmers up from the empty bedroom town...strong now from the connection I made with the earth during a yoga class in the later afternoon...it's all in my head, the obvious...the words spin on and Nader is punk...it's about not selling out to the coporation...I had that CONVERSATIION in the smoking area thirty years ago...oh boy, the shit I have taken for that position....the good, the bad, the ugly...during the morning listened to a show on WBAI on publishing...this group of individuals created a niche for themselves making children's books for minority kids..one book they created was saluting nina simone for wearing nappy hair...apparently it was a brave stance back in the day..well in this niche they have also partnered with medgar edgars college which is a community college in Harlem and they teach these books in the courses...it was and is all about self empowerment...now hear's Nader ON MY TV SHOW. talking about how colleges instruct kids in the way of corporate power...I think of one of my cousins who is gonna make five million dollars this year working for the man hustling a hedge fun...and I feel the strength to soldier on to make my own books, my own media, my own art, my own madness...

Too a walk down to Donny's bench...

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Originally uploaded by zimbablade

Took a walk down to Donny's bench...the winter doesn't scare me...smoked a cigarette and a one hit too...went into the vision and felt the spirit...sat down on the bench and observed the brilliant streaking light that you can only see during the winter and at this time of year...

sitting here now listening to democracy now's take on the climate council in copenhagen...comparing that to Fox..it's like yin and yang...and you've the left wing mafia and the corporate mob...meet the new boss same as the old boss..ruminating on human nature and thinking I might go buy a twelve pack...

Thelight...

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Originally uploaded by zimbablade

the light at the end of summer the first week of fall...the American Empire has fallen but the bankers party on...

Ralph Nader on growing up Corporate

Nader telling funny anecdotes about his Harvard Law experience...

Ralph Nader on the Obama Girl

Nader commenting on how the Republicans and Democrats create minority positions on how the internet dehumanizes politicians...

Ralph Nader on the exagerrated terrorists threat

Ralph Nader addresses the exagerrated terrorist threat and how Obama has bought into this...

Ralph Nader on student apathy

Nader addressing the students on student apathy. He talks about how the legacy of protest from the 60's was lost as students gravitated towards making money in the 80's and beyond...

Ralph Nader at Fordham

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Originally uploaded by zimbablade

Ralph Nader spoke to the students and the faculty at Fordham University on December 3, 2009. He delivered a lecture on gaining control in the marketplace where we grow up corporate. In a subtle analysis of culture Nader offered insights into how citizen's imaginations are constrained by corporate power restricting their possibility for action. For Nader, it's all about action which makes his outlook existential in essence. Existence for him is defined by the conflict between the consumer and the corporation where at evert possible turn the corporation seeks to upsurp the rights of the consumer to promote it's vested interests and deny citizens their lawful rights for the possibility of action.

In Mr. Nader's view, American society is thoroughly corrupted by the all pervasice interest of the corporation. This means that all the institutions of society reflect the will of the corporation. To support this view he offered several personal amusing ancedotes which made the young audience laugh. Despite the serious nature of his talk, Mr. Nader has a very comical demeanor at times which belies the crusty image fostered on him by the mainstream corporate media. Regarding the field of education talked about his efforts in vain to learn about laws for food safety and the rights of tenants. Students are taught the skills that are handsomely rewarded by corporations so during his days at Harvard law tax law was a big field of interest because corporations require the talent to circumvent tax law. Making a subtle point Mr. Nader remarked how students are not don't any consumer or civic skills. Hence we politicians selliing their services to high bidding lobbyists to enact laws which are agaiinst the interests of consumers.

Evoking the English poet William Blake, Mr. Nader made his probing point on how the lack of imagination restricts our actions and hence our possibilities as individuals humans to realize our true potential.

Faith..

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Originally uploaded by christophershamus

Faith comes in many forms and guises...Grace Slick said anytime she laughed she had religon...bobby is singing preacher is calling me a sinner but his little girl is calling me a saint...first snow in the qua and as a beatnick hobo richest homelessman in america I took snapshots of the holy temples of worship in the light of the early morning...

Winter in the qua...

since the world has no attention span I'm making videos under twenty seconds in the hope people will actually watch them...

Look at how far we have traveled...

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Originally uploaded by zimbablade

Look at how far we have travelled since the fat pregnant summer...here now in the cocoon of cold dark winter holed up beneath the covers...changes that inch up gradually now seem so dramatic...had the chance to have front center seats for Hot Tuna but Tuna hasn't changed with the new media times and although I can understand why they want to protect their copyright it's not where I am att...I am for thre free flow of information and letting the changes come gracefully on...

Tradition...

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Originally uploaded by christophershamus

No matter how I might criticize America deep down at heart I am American....I place myself in the tradition of Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Allan Ginsberg, Anne Waldman and Patti Smith...that is the transcendental tradition where the individual finds themselves alone by themselves deep in nature. I've lost many a hard drive over the years either from driving them to hard or being fucked and fucking up but here's a few that survived from a set that got fried...it was from a walk on a cold winters day down into the gorge to drink a twelve pack with my ipod and a pack of smokes...nuts, hell yeah but in the insanity is found deep beauty and I think this picture testifies to that...

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Here in this moment living in the present the spirit may show up in many forms and guises...I was tweaking the Xlr 2 to get it ready for my taping of Ralph Nader when the two hawks who hang here showed up...they come every day for their food but usually I can't get them on camera because I don't have such a powerful zoom but xlr2 does so bammo I got it because Diane Nickerson's old man who passed on is represented by the symbol of a hawk and she has done a lot of cool things for me so I wanted to represent...

The terror...

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Originally uploaded by zimbablade

We spent 200 billion on war last year...not a cent on New Orleans...that is the real terror...it reflects the failure of neo-liberalism...the speech that obama gave yesterday could have been given by truman, kennedy, nixon, carter, bush, clinton, bush...It's the narrative of American exceptionalism...

and now I'm listening to a rap about how slavery has always existed in America from the beginning to the present...so much for American freedom...let's go drop a bomb on some sand niggers...

Still lifes..

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Originally uploaded by zimbablade

Still lifes are about the study of light and being in the moment...sometime the most simplest things can reveal the most complex sublime emotions...