Palazzo di Medici Ricardi—

And then off to the Academia dell’ Arte. Which houses a lot of Michelangelo. The fucking statue of David is what is going on in here. 

The real deal. it really is fucking unbelievable. It is mammoth. And it is perfect. Like better than any picture. You just stare at it for a long time because it is so perfect.

Then rode into the center of town. Sat and had a cold beer and finally finished reading the history of Italian government and politics. Two thousand years in two weeks. Their history? Crazy. insane. A mess. Never stable. Always paradoxical. They have twenty straight years of peace and they name it, like it is some kind of a miracle. Unbelievable. From an objective perspective they really should have ousted the catholic church thousands of years ago. You read this history and its like, “the allied armies of the city states were a few days away from defeating the invaders after five years of hardship and finally uniting Italy once and for all but the Vatican or pope such and such went behind their backs and decided to side with Austria (or France, or Germany, or the Lombards, etc etc.) the fucking church has always just been fucking them over as a people and they not only let them stay here, but they let them control things. Now I don't know how much they do that anymore. But for two thousand years the popes really fucked everything up. that would never happen in America. We’d be like, “you're going to get involved in our fucking wars now are you? well out with you then. Haven't you ever heard of separation of church and state? Go on get out of here. go be a church for some other people.” “But the force of God has empowered us with the holy Roman blah blah blah...” “and we’d be like “well we don't believe in that God anymore, so please seriously get out of here. we have a war to fight. for God sakes, take your big hats and that weird cane thing you carry around and get the hell out of here before we hurt you. we have a country to save.” 

That's America. But here in Italy you seriously read about two thousand years of this fucking church and all these mean and greedy popes getting involved in the business of the country and the government and the politics and the finances and everything else. having people killed and stabbing their once allies behind their backs. creating total havoc for centuries. And the Italians God bless them--just stand around and wonder what the fuck is wrong with the picture when the rest of the world ousted the catholic church centuries ago. And they are still tolerating it. but this just shows that God is a very powerful weapon... it can be a  wonderful thing, but its also very dangerous. 

The beer in Italy is delicious. I have taken quite a liking to it. 

Tonight I rode all over the city with a camera and a tape recorder getting footage for the album. I taped and photographed lots of cool stuff. I wish they would make one device that did this exceptionally and was very small. Maybe a very small digital video camera would be all we need. 

Last Movie:  the American president documentary. the last one in the series—Washington, grant, and Eisenhower. I brought a bunch of DVDs with me. It is cool watching this now after some time studying Italy’s government and political history. Gives perspective on American political life. we are very lucky to live in America. Our government is fucked up. Has been since the start. I'm not going to back down on that. Since its inception it has been a veritable testament to how a country can still thrive in spite of its political leaders constant lies greed deceit and corruption, but I think what is liked about America still is that maybe its not as fucked up as a lot of other countries, at least it has not been. And we as a people are just very strong and willful and kick ass and we will only take so much. I think this is one of the greatest assets we have. how kick ass we are, how strong, how willful. I wish in my heart because I love America so much that we would turn it up a notch and be even stronger and more vigilant and more willful and even more demanding of our leaders. One thing you get from studying our presidents, not all of them, but a few of them, especially the first few, is this immense awe at how lucky we were to have had these very intelligent and very pragmatic and very open minded and liberal minded and humble and revolutionary men start our great country. Washington seems like such an honorable person. if it were not for these men, we wouldn’t have the country we now have today. I enjoy studying it immensely.