To Patriotism

Spent hours today trying to force Pro Tools M-Powered down my computer's throat. Eventually the gag-reflex subsided and persistence triumphed, but let's give a round of applause to the runners up: the evil forces of Windows and M-Audio. Tomorrow, we'll see if a $50 M-Audio USB gadget is enough to make crappy recordings, or if second-rate quality takes a greater investment. Best case scenario for tomorrow - I'll be OD-ing on tutorials - worst case - Mom will be pestering me about fixing the M-Audio-box-shaped hole in the wall.

Before I tuck myself in every night, I usually read for a while. It tends to be something I've already read and that's easy to read. The aim isn't to knock myself out into dreamless sleep, but to treat myself after a tough day of searching for motivation. Currently, I'm rereading the second book of the Vasiliy Yan trilogy chronicling the formation of Genghis Khan's empire. Genghis Khan has already died long ago and his grandson Batu has taken over the reins. I'm at the point where Batu is about begin a Russia-wide epic beating. For the next two hundred pages, he's going to be ripping off Russian heads, boiling Russians alive, pretending he wants to be friends with the Russians and then ripping off their heads and boiling them alive, etc. Here I'm getting to feel like a bit of a traitor. This Batu guy, and especially his commander in chief are so cool, I want them to take over everything - Russians, Americans, Atlantis - whatever will prolong the crusade. I have discovered I have absolutely no patriotism, or in the case of Russia - matriotism, as long as conquest is described in sufficiently romantic language.

I'm beginning to think that these kinds of books are a horrible idea. Romanticizing hundreds of thousands of people getting murdered by Mongols isn't going to teach America's children a damn thing. The government needs to do something about this - this book needs to be rewritten with Americans doing the romanticized killing. The dead Russians may also require some dilution - perhaps a couple thousand dead Iraqis and a couple dozen British corpses - the former for realism, and the latter because they're probably starting to forget who won the Revolutionary War. I somehow doubt Independence Day is as big a holiday there as here.