Dead Iraqi children

41 people today were killed in an insurgent attack in Baghdad today, including 35 children who were being given candy by American soldiers during their summer vacation. Bush and Kerry have their first face-to-face debate tonight, so I hope to God they mention or discuss these horrible specifics . . . . What did we get ourselves into?!?

Want to Fight?!?

Hey,

My friend Ana just brought this to my attention: Congress is about to vote
on a bill that would REQUIRE every man and woman between the age of 18 and
26 to serve at least TWO YEARS of military service as part of homeland
security, to make sure we can all fight, shoot the horrible invaders, or
invade other countries that might have monsters in them. SOOOO, if you want
to read the actual bill go to http://thomas.loc.gov/  and type in "HR 163".
If you feel so inclined to do something about it, go to
http://www.congress.org and put in your zip code and then a form will come
up which you can email your senators and reps. asking them to make a bigger
deal about it in the newspapers, oppose it if you think they might, etc.
This all takes about 5 minutes.

I did and I hope you will too. I don't want to go into nine-weeks of boot
camp followed by ninety-five weeks of military service. Thanks!

Private Nix

P.S. If Kerry wins, Edwards has promised no draft. If Bush wins, he can
extend the service terms well past two years.

My friend in the Army

So, here I am drinkin a few beers with Dave, a roomate with one of my roomates in college, Leith Edgar. Last time I checked, Leith was one of the most intellectual, but subversive to-the-point-of-anarchy friends I've had. The books I last remember on his bookshelf mostly consisted of anything from Mafia accounts to Howard Zinn.

Another friend, Lydia McCoy, who barely knows Leith calls me up about two weeks ago to inform me that Leith has left our hometown of Denver for Fort Jackson, South Carolina as a new soldier for the United States Army in nine-weeks of basic training.

While I'm not too sure what this post is about, I will say this: Having visited Fort Jackson's website, army.com, navy and air force's websites, and finally, GOARMY.com, I've come to realize how much our government has recently fought to turn us into the giant we currently are . . . and there will be no other direction than this. From higher rankings via college degrees to a section titled "Careers & Jobs" with a category titled "Arts & Media," under which civilians might notice the job "Guitar Player." This job, as well as my forte, graphic design, still requires the nine-week training camp, including sections called "Nuclear biological gas chamber training." Hmmmmmm.... Now when a GUITAR PLAYER's main goal is to keep up musical tradition for this fine armed force and general morale, what does the potential gas bombing drill have to do with it?

THEY WILL ALL GO TO WAR, KILL, OR DIE THEMSELVES, if our leaders decide so. "Multimedia Illustrator" means nothing if we go to another country, nor "Percussionist."

I trust in my friend Leith's choice to join the Army, I just hope he wasn't among the thousands of other Americans duped into this violence masked in cotton candy.

NIX

IndieNix Hurricane Blog

Hello all... all zero of you that read my blog.

It's 1:40 AM on Wednesday, September 15, about 18 hours away from Hurricane Ivan crossing over my beautiful home of New Orleans. The hurricane about to rail the living beejesus out of Mobile and Gulfport is still for some reason reading in national headline news as a potential million-person disaster in this city. Here are some of the headlines:

DIRECT HURRICANE COULD SINK NEW ORLEANS - Apple and Netscape TOP NEWS story
BIG EASY BECOMES BIG QUEASY as ""The Big Easy became The Big Queasy as the usually laid-back party town worried about deadly Hurricane Ivan..." - CNN
NEW ORLEANS EMPTIES AHEAD OF IVAN - ABC News, mentioning the 1.2 million evacuees

Once you check the following link, is it possible that these experts paid by these media giants are simply asked to focus on the absolute worst, the absolute negative, when it is obviously much more likely (75%+ more) that this hurricane will not directly hit New Orleans? Make the judgment yourself based on these charts (updated every four to six hours), and if they're not-up-to-date, refresh or click back to their main link. Here it is:

http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_astorm9+shtml/150318.shtml?

The only solid source of information I can currently find is this National Hurricane Center info which offers straight-up, unbiased information via military aircraft and satellite imagery of approaching storms. Educated meteriologists at CNN, ABC, FOX, and anyone at the Associated Press have the right to their own interpretation, but I urge you to take your own to see why I specifically stayed here.

Funny that no news station offers this direct informational link. Either way, keep track of this monster, because if it doesn't hit New Orleans, it will hit other victims regardless of population, AND it could make some chaotic turn and this be my last email . . . for a few days while I rescue children and tiny baby kittens I may end up having to barbecue. :)

Thanks,
Mike Nix