Motley Kamuka

Woke up in the middle of the night and looked at the news. Trump convicted of 34 counts of falsified business records to conceal a sex scandal that could have hindered his 2016 campaign for the White House. ( NY Times ) People are happy that there's some external objective evidence of something we've always known. I can't imagine the people who were going to vote for him will be swayed by this, they see everything negative against him as false anyway. More fake news. The people who wear golden diapers will just be sold t-shirts with 34 on it.  The new territory isn't actually very exciting. He can still vote for himself because Florida follows the laws of the conviction and in NY you can still vote as a felon. What is the sentence? We shall find out. 1 in 10 cases of fraud lead to imprisonment. ( NBC ) They say he drives up clicks and attention, but I avoid him. He does provocative things for the attention. Whether or not his fascist rhetoric is sincere or attention get...

First thing, a well armed militia doesn't have guns at home, they have their guns at the gun club. Let everyone keep their guns, but no more buying guns as individuals. Gradually fade out. Humans are limited by their life spans, but we need to start thinking beyond our lifespan. The plague of gun violence, only in America, needs to be address. The 45 children that die each year for the supposed right must end, that is not a fair trade. Only militias. Tax gun companies for all the medical costs they create. ( California thought of the idea too) I grew up shooting guns, my grandfather taught me to respect guns. I had BB guns, but when I took it home to my parents, I never shot it. The culture of my parents wasn't about guns.  I shot skeet with friends in high school. My friends had guns. My uncle had a gun. I like shooting guns, it's a rush. I went hunting even, but never got anything. The hunting culture in Wisconsin is strong. Just go to the militia to pick up your guns. P...

Look, I don't find jazz musicians, somehow they break through my obviousness, and I suppose losing some obliviousness is mildly good thing to share.  After looking at the history of jazz, like Miles Davis , I like to look to the present and see who's happening now. (Recent past: Molly Miller , Russell Hall ) Lakecia Benjamin (b. October 20, 1982) is a saxophonist who grew up in Washington Heights.  Mary Halvorson  (born October 16, 1980) is an avant jazz composer and guitarist from Brookline Massachusetts. I suffer through the commercials on Spotify, and YouTube. Find your own streaming service. 

(Tommy Potter, Charlie Parker, Max Roach, Miles Davis, Duke Jordan in August 1947) Miles Dewey Davis was born in Alton Illinois on May 26th 1926, raised in East St. Louis. He went to Julliard but dropped out to join Charlie Parker's band, which he was with 1944-1948. He would die in 1991. In that time he created a lot of great and revolutionary jazz and jazz fusion music. He was also addicted to many substances throughout his life, so like with Bill Evans or Charlie Parker, he traveled to great heights in music, and was a pretty mean junkie. I read his memoir in a writing class, I think to just shake up the possibilities for people. He swears a lot. He has lots of resentments. He's buried in the Bronx at Woodlawn. My favorite album of his is Birth of Cool (1957), and Kind of Blue (1959). My favorite song is Venus de Milo. Milestones and Bitches Brew are revered, and they have something, but I don't enjoy them as much. He worked with many amazing jazz musicians, John Col...

I've started using blogs as a place to collect information. Like I have a post about female painters, and every time I read about one, I add them. I have been adding and adding information on pigeons on my nature blog . I've added images endlessly to my Buddhist blog. I've been trying to watch French movies . I review Everton's season . My blogging notebooks are files to file away information. Popular: My most popular blog post is this: Ten Precepts of Buddhism 5,250 people have visited that, Blogger tells me. 

Talked to a neighbor today. Read the NY Times headline that Trump owes over $100 million back to the government for double dipping, taking the same write off twice.  All the prosecution of Trump is political. I think he's making it political. I think if anything he's under prosecuted for all the crimes he's done. He's violated his gag order, and Rikers' Island is ready for him, but the judge doesn't give him equal justice, he gets to avoid. Trump makes it political by running for president to avoid prosecution.  The economy is down. The economy is up. It's democrats who are prosecuting him. The Colorado people were republicans. It's hard to keep track of all the people, but most of the people holding him accountable are republican. His stacking the court overturned Roe v Wade, got him favorable overturning in Colorado. Non-comprehension.  It's all false media reports. I point out every time he says something that was in the media.  This guy is a ret...

There was a Reddit post asking for top 10 French films. I developed my top 12 based on the ones I've seen, but I created a list of the ones I haven't and went on a French film odyssey to catch up. I also gleaned some movies off a Wes Anderson list and a Richard Ayoade list.  Here is my top 12 The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) Amélie (2001) Blue is the warmest color (2013) Jean de Florette (1986) Les Enfants Terribles (1950) The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) Shoot The Piano Player (1960) Irreversible (2002) Betty Blue (1986) Hiroshima mon Amour (1959) Persepolis (2007) A Very Long Engagement (2004) The Red Balloon (1956) My friend asked me if I read summaries to see if I wanted to see the films, but I'm going into most of the movies blind. I think if I read about the movies, I wouldn't see them. I added The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) immediately, even though I hadn't seen it before my list because it's just such an amazing movie. #1 When I did my reading t...

"James considers the possibility of "over-beliefs", beliefs which are not strictly justified by reason but which might understandably be held by educated people nonetheless. Philosophy can contribute to shaping these over-beliefs — for example, traditional arguments for the existence of God, including the cosmological, design, and moral arguments, along with the argument from popular consensus. James admits to having his own over-belief, which he does not intend to prove, that there is a greater reality not normally accessible by our normal ways of relating to the world, but which religious experiences can connect us to." I was reading the above paragraph in the Wikipedia entry on Henry James' The Variety of Religious Experience (citations removed), and it really struck me. I was thinking about the movie Benedetta (2021), and that led me to read the entry, and then this idea of over-belief, which fascinates me today.

I read his New York Trilogy and almost every book that came out after it. I saw him read once at a bookstore. I recently just read his latest novel Baumgartner. I didn't read his novel about his dog. And I looked over the list, and I haven't read Man In The Dark.  I read his poetry, and his wife's novels, even a book his sister-in-law wrote about hysteria that was brilliant. You can listen to his daughter's music on Spotify. I've seen his movies Smoke (1995) and Blue In The Face (1995). We lost a great man today. I'm learning about his today, it's a shame we wait till people die to talk about them. I didn't know he was next to someone who was struck by lightning and died. Links: NY Times  (Obit) Reddit  (r/TrueLit):  "...he got this combination of postmodern games and simplicity of language from the French nouveau roman, especially from Michel Butor and Alain Robbe-Grillet. All the books in the New York Trilogy are basically nouveaux romans in Engli...