Quote of the Day

"We usually short roped them. We wanted them to suffer."

-- Allen Keller, Memoirs.
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Quote of the Day

I'm thinking of doing another experimental chapter of Shadow of the Great Bear. The following lines came to mind during this process:

We're supposed to thank your god for an extinction event that killed off ten billion people? Why don't we rip out some beating hearts for him while we're at it?

-- First Lieutenant John Allen March, Ursa Major Confederation Marine Corps (2292)

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News of the Day

Mr. Welch is up to 1375.

I've found that using a glowing-hot false grail in the Monty Python and the Holy Grail adventure for Dungeons and Dragons did not score me any popularity points as a dungeon master.
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It's Up To 1350

Mr. Welch is up to 1350 things that he cannot do in a role playing game.

1329. The M203 is not for long range bocce ball.

1332. Even if silence is required for the entire adventure, we are not naming the Black Ops Operation: Mimecrime.

1333. I will tell the noob the game is about post nuclear Europe and not love struck vampires before we start.

1335. I can not filibuster in the middle of my dying speech to buy the cleric more time.

1336. Even if we are told to pick a manly name for the game, Genocidicles is a bit much.

1339. If unsure of what side of the road we drive on, the middle of the road is not a healthy compromise.

1341. Even if the rules allow it, I cannot become famous for not being famous.

1342. There is no god of Wombats, no matter how much I pray.

1344. No matter how cool it would be, we can’t use the time machine to loan Ike a few A-10 squadrons for D-Day.

1349. I will not program the medical droid for “aggressive dentistry.”

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I've Just Updated My Flickr Page

Hitting The Woodline

Something I did for the Minicon artshow.

The guy in the commander's hatch is more a Gallaci canine than a Traveller Vargr.



The Wild Turkeys

This is an incomplete strip I did for an incomplete project I did with Dave Semkow.

We see a bunch of Traveller mercenaries in a scene from Apocalypse Now calling on a character from Dave Sim's Cerebus The Ardvark. The Ranger Roach of course tends to externalize his internal dialogue.

I actually wrote two versions of the Roach's dialogue for the final panel.


Early Version of UncleDenny

Troops In The Field

The Freyan Armed Forces

Another early incarnation of Uncle Denny in a blatant rip-off of a work by Phil Foglio.

(I had more hair back then too.)

Quote of the Day

"A copy of a Human Being is a Human Being. Period. To deny the Rights of Human Beings to a Human Clone is simply irrational and despicable. Those who created and voted for this appalling act of legislation are morally unfit to hold public office, and they should resign. Immediately."

-- President John Andrew March, Veto of the Clone Act.
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A Fictional Person's Thought For The Day

A sure sign that a civilized nation is in deep trouble is when a higher value is placed on the proper use of a salad fork than on the proper use of the weapons of a citizen-soldier.

-- Alice Keller March, The Path of Life

It came to me when I was working today.
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Thought for the Day

"When your primary instrument of policy is a fusion warhead your problems tend to end up looking like Moscow, Mecca, and Mexico City."

-- Captain J.M. Stark, Ursa Major Confederation Navy.

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Statement of Policy

Those individuals who believe that they have a right to use other people without their consent as subhuman livestock or as any kind of resource, whom I usually sarcastically refer to as Self-Appointed Superior Beings^TM, are by their own choice a clear hazard to human life and must be identified and dealt with as such. And because physical isolation does not prevent such individuals from acting to regain the power over other persons that they persist in believing is rightfully theirs, the only truly effective way to deal with such individuals is the eliminate them altogether.

That is, to kill them.

Such an act is no more an act of murder than putting down a rabid animal. (Of course the rabid animal had no choice in the matter.)

Those individuals, and their willing followers, who assign an inferior legal and moral status to their victims in order to use the victims as a resource for the achievement of their own goals are nothing less than Enemies of Human Kind. Is is not possible to reason with them. It is not possible to negotiate with them. And driving them off or isolating them is not a permanent solution. Such individuals and their willing followers can only be killed. Such an act must be performed in defense of ourselves as individuals and of Humanity in general.

Ayn Rand once said this in regard to one group of Self-Appointed Superior Beings^TM: Better see the Reds dead.

I wrote this statement in response to an anonymous idiot who refuses to see the difference between those who subjugate and murder human beings and those who exercise force in defense of Human Life and Human Liberty. Those who refuse to see this distinction are for all practical purposes a willing part of the problem and thus need to be included in the solution.

Furthermore, I will not tolerate their insults in the comments section of any of my blogs.

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The Keller Memoirs

December 9, 2059
March City, Mars


One thing an assassin should avoid is calling attention to himself before striking the target. I've actually broken this rule twice, but those were special cases.

I spent a good part of my 99th birthday giving a statement to the Federal Marshall in March City after some self-appointed superior being tried to stab me with a improvised plastic dagger. A badly made dagger at that.

Seriously, that idiot actually announced his intention to execute me for crimes against the People and the Earth while holding up the shank in the air with his right hand.

He apparently didn't think, or more likely, feel that I would actually fight back, let alone get in the first blow. I'm old and weak, but I'm not that old and weak.

I was in the process of rearranging the would be assailants face with my right fist when some good citizens of the Martian community pulled me off of him and others placed him under citizen's arrest. This did not stop the idiot from screaming out that I was a murderer.

Yes, I've personally performed a small number of homicides. And every one of them was a self-appointed superior being who looked upon and treated us mere mortals as nothing more than livestock. What I did was not murder, it was morally necessary.

Of course the assassination attempt is causing no end of consternation for the judicial system, both here and on Earth. No one has ever committed a capital crime here. Even though there is no shortage of personal weapons, including firearms. (This is, after all, a colony of the United States of Earth.) Which means no one has ever been executed here before.

And the investigation Earthside thus far has shown that the assailant could not have paid for the ticket to Mars and the repatriation bond on his own. He had a sponsor. The Director of CIS in Omaha has declared the search for that sponsor to be priority one.

Granted, anyone who would blow a major amount of money to knock off an old bastard like me, on another planet, is going to be a problem. But is he really, objectively speaking, that big of a problem?

If nothing else, I got some good exercise today.
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The Keller Memoirs

January 24, 2009
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Saturday was a bit busy. (You didn't think we'd take the weekend off, did you?)

On the day of the inauguration we formally took over the Bishop Henry Whipple Federal Building down by the airport. We evicted every agency that had gone over to The Zero and his crew. Which is to say all of them. We did give the individual local workers the chance to work for us. We didn't get anyone from the EPA. (Fucking Gaianists...)

At about 0900 on Saturday a Marine Corps KC-130 came into the airport from the east coast. We counted seven bullet holes on the aircraft. To no surprise to us the media drones supporting The Zero didn't report any fighting in the DC area.

On board were the Chief of Naval Operations, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, the Deputy Chiefs of Staff of the Army and the Air Force, their aides, and their immediate families. We set up new offices for them in the Whipple Building for the time being. We also told them that if they order pizza for delivery to NOT call it the Whipple Building. It confuses the delivery drivers. (We had to learn that one the hard way.)

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Chiefs of Staff of the Army and the Air Force went over to The Zero. Three nine-millimeter pistol rounds were duly set aside for them. (The nine-millimeter pistol is an acceptable weapon for (**COUGH**) administrative purposes, but anyone who reasonably expects to fight with a pistol prefers a .45.)

Around Noon a T-38 (that's a two seat supersonic trainer) came in from Offut Air Force Base.

In back seat was the governor of Nebraska, in the pilot's seat was the Commander of the what we used to call the Strategic Air Command. (Yes, I know general officers aren't supposed to fly airplanes by themselves.) They had an interesting proposition for us.

Oh, and we now own the U.S. nuclear arsenal too.

At about 1400 hours our time the United Nations Security Council voted to recognize The Zero and his crew as the legitimate government of the United States.

We expected that.

President March signed an executive order terminating our membership in the United Nations and repudiating all treaties sponsored by the U.N.

What we didn't expect was that the British Ambassador to the U.N. voted for the resolution.

The problem was that when FU died the Conservative Party didn't elevate his chosen successor to premiership, but instead voted in a very well polished dolt instead. Seriously, that idiot couldn't pass a mirror without preening himself in it.

John and I spent about an hour on the phone with his Aunt and FU's former chief henchman.

Things are going to get a bit hot for the Prime Minister in the next week or so.

And then Mom called.

My Mom. On the phone. She lives about a mile north of Wadena, Minnesota. So she's out of the way for now.

Unfortunately she still has a serious problem with the concept of lawful authority.

I spent the better part of an hour explaining to her that under the terms of the Twelfth Amendment that John Andrew March, that kid who used to give me a ride down to the Little Tin Soldier shop for Friday Night gaming in his Triumph TR-6 three decades ago, is the lawfully elected President of the United States. And that The Zero, the Speaker of the House and her clique, and the rest of The Other Party caucus in the House of Representatives, are now criminals with absolutely no legal authority whatsoever.

Oh, and the United Nations has no authority either.

After Mom hung up I ordered a pizza from Dulono's on Lake Street.

Yes, that's how I deal with stress. So how was your day?

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Alternate History

The Inaugural Address of President John Andrew March, given on the Twentieth day of January in the year of Our Lord 2009 in the City of Saint Paul, Minnesota.


Ladies and Gentlemen, Citizens and Soldiers of the United States, Honored Guests,

We as a nation face a crisis that is unprecedented, but was not entirely unpredictable.

It is with great sadness we find that the majority caucus in the House of Representatives of the United States has consciously rejected the will of the actual, living and breathing, citizens of our Republic, and has maliciously defied the ruling of the Supreme Court. Instead of acknowledging the will of the actual electorate through the Electoral College, the House of Representatives violated the supreme law to which it is subject and has elevated to the highest office an individual who is clearly unfit to hold any public office in any civilized nation.

Senator Laurence Null of Illinois, who wrongfully claims the Office of the President of the United States, is a long standing adherent of an ideology which openly denies the Value and Right of Human Life. An ideology which has repeatedly proven to have brought about the deaths of not less than a hundred million human beings throughout the last century. A fact that the ladies and gentlemen of the press, in willful dereliction of the duties assigned to them by the Founders of our Republic, have refused to report.

Instead of the Chief Executive lawfully elected by the actual living citizens of the American Republic, the apparatus of the United States federal government is now headed by an individual who is for all practical purposes a primitive stone-age god king. An individual who is now worshiped by a personality cult we not seen since the darkest days of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao.

In fact there is no federal government of the United States. There is now only an apparatus of violence which enforces the whims of what is for all practical purposes a barbarian chieftain.

The actual living and breathing citizens of the American Republic will now be denied their God-given right of Liberty and their Sovereign Authority. The working citizens and legal residents of the United States are now reduced to the legal and moral status of livestock, to now be used at the whim of a clique of self-appointed superior beings, or to be destroyed as if they were a diseased animal should they refuse to obey the self-appointed masters.

All Senator Null and his supporters have to offer the citizens of the United States are chains and death. This is an offer that we as Sovereign Citizens and as Human Beings must refuse by any and all means necessary.

We are now on the brink of a Second American Civil War, but there is still an opportunity to advert the coming storm.

To this end we call upon Senator Null and those who unlawfully elevated him to publicly acknowledge the fact that they are in violation of the Constitution. We furthermore call upon Senator Null and his supporters to resign from public office, and call upon them to leave this nation and go into exile.

Should Senator Null and his supporters choose instead to enforce their whims by violence then we will have no alternative but to reply in kind. In doing so we shall grant them no quarter and show them no mercy.

By rational persuasion or by open force we the sovereign citizens of the American Republic will take back our nation and we will restore the rule of law under the United States Constitution.

Thank you, and God bless the Republic.
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From the Unpublished Memoirs of Allen Keller.

Saint Paul, Minnesota
January 20, 2009


There were two inauguration ceremonies in the rotunda of the State Capital in Saint Paul.

The first was the elevation of the Lieutenant Governor to Governor of the state of Minnesota.

Then at eleven in the morning, local time, we did the president.

John Andrew March took the oath of office and then gave a short speech. It wasn't really inspirational, but there were definite Randian elements to it.

First, John never mentioned Socialism or Communism by name. He did mention Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, but that was in reference to the personality cult that emerged around The Zero.

Second, as Rand did throughout Atlas Shrugged and her later writings John described the actions of The Zero and his followers as manifestations of primitive or barbaric behavior.

The look on The Beast's face when John said all that was priceless.

Yes, the Junior Senator from New York was there. I'm sure virtually everyone there had the same thought I had

What. The. Fuck?

I had yet to talk to the Junior Senator or any of the staff people that came with her but I do have a theory.

The Junior Senator (I shall refrain from calling her The Beast or The Bitch for the time being) still wants to be president and I don't think that she wants to go down on the Speaker of the House to get the job.

That's my theory for the time being.


Minneapolis, Minnesota
January 23, 2009


The Hennepin County Jail was getting a bit crowded.

The Zero ordered the arrest of President March and everyone else actively involved with the Provisional Government. (Oddly enough, he didn't order the arrest of the Junior Senator from New York.)

Believe it or not, someone actually tried to carry out that order.

The first were a bunch of idiots from the local office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in their SWAT Team "cool guy" gear who tried to storm the March family residence in the Kenwood area of Minneapolis. They were stopped by Military Police from the Minnesota National Guard.

There were one hundred percent fatalities for the BATF agents. (I didn't bother to ask our guys about the nine millimeter holes in the backs of three of their heads.)

Then the Major of Minneapolis, a partisan of The Other Party, got into the act.

He called up the chief of police and ordered him to make the arrest. Prisoners were actually taken this time. His former Honor, the now former Major, the Chief of the Minneapolis Police, and five of the officers who were stupid enough to follow orders are now in the Hennepin County Jail. Three more police officers are in hospital under armed guard. Four officers are in the Hennepin County Morgue.

Everyone else in local law enforcement got the message. Don't fuck with us.

The Special Agent in Charge of the Minneapolis office of the FBI tried to put a call through to President March. I took the call. First, he pledged loyalty to President March and the Provisional Government. Not surprising given all of the National Guard and Army Reserve Humvees parked around the Federal Building and City Hall (they're across the street from each other) in downtown Minneapolis after the BATF and MPD incidents. Second, he passed on a couple of pieces of information from the Bureau's Chicago office.

Then there was the fun (I'm being sarcastic here) we had with the local media.

We called a meeting of the managements of the local newspapers, television, and radio stations at a convenient location. Not everyone we summoned showed up.

The folks from KLMN-TV, KLMN-AM and KLMN-FM, which were the local branch of the Lackland Media empire were one hundred percent with us. Everyone else was to one degree or another being a problem.

I had to stomp on them. Hard.

"Senator Null and the caucus of The Other Party in the House of Representatives have by their own actions repudiated the Constitution of the United States." I said. "Without the Constitution there is no First Amendment, and without the First Amendment you are all dead meat. And anyone who opposes the Constitution simply cannot claim protection under it. Have I made myself clear?"

There was still a lot of grumbling, especially from the editors of Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the local rag of The Other Party. I originally wanted to hang the entire reporting and editorial staff of the Star-Tribune, minus the token conservative columnist and that Lileks guy, from the Third Avenue bridge in Minneapolis, pour encourager l'autres. But we had to tread carefully at the
time as there were still too many people, especially in the armed forces, who were sitting on the political fence.

Then there was the fun we had with the two radio stations that didn't send anyone to the meeting.

One was the local FM-affiliate of the Pacifica network. The other was the AM-affiliate of the former Air America network.

On air personalities on both stations openly called for riots and the assassination of President March.

We didn't shut the stations down. We simply seized them and put some radio geeks from Our Party in charge and had them play "What's The Frequency, Kenneth?" By R.E.M. on continuous loop. The station staffs joined the other supporters of The Zero in the Hennepin County Jail.

The level of restraint we showed to the opposition lasted for about a total of ten days.

_

From the Unpublished Memoirs of Allen Keller.

November 22, 2008


I had to do an Urquhartcide today.

Al Stein was by his own claim and the opinion of the morally and esthetically dysfunctional members of self-styled intellectual class a comedian. In fact he was a boring old socialist drone with delusions of talent. He was also a political commentator with delusions of credibility. His most recent misadventure prior to standing as a candidate for the U.S. Senate from Minnesota was as a talk show host on the Socialist talk radio network known as Air America.

I recall when Air America -- more properly labeled as Radio Pravda -- started up, the local affiliate put up posters at bus stops proclaiming that it was "talk radio without the lies." Something that could only be achieved by a Socialist radio station by the broadcast of dead silence.

So anyway Comrade Stein ran for the Senate against the incumbent Republican Norm Colman. Norm is a nice guy, but like most Republicans he's too nice. He won but the margin of victory was close enough under state law to mandate a recount.

This was where the problem really became apparent.

Local election officials, all Democrats of course, began reporting misplaced ballots or other forms of counting errors to the state election board. All of these so-called corrections favored Comrade Stein. It was very readily apparent that this senate seat was about to be stolen.

On top of this some of Comrade Stein's supporters were camped out on the front yard of his residence in Minneapolis. This had the effect of severely limiting our other options for solving the problem.

However an opportunity opened up when the owner of a new Italian restaurant, who wasn't terribly fond of Marxists, tipped us off that Comrade Stein had made reservations for Saturday night. I asked the owner to reserve a table for two on the same night.

My companion for the evening was a junior secretary from the local British consulate. She was in fact one of Corder's people, sent here to support JM and I in our plot to "dominate the world." I sat with my back to Comrade Stein and his party.

La Gondola, the new restaurant, had opened in the space formerly occupied by a Tex-Mex eatery on the southeast corner of Seventh Street and Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis. While waiting for the opportunity to solve the Stein problem I spoke to my dinner companion about the history of the building.

"Right over there," I pointed to the corner of the building on the intersection, "was one of the two Fanny Farmer candy shops I worked at after school."

"What did you do?" She asked.

"Light janitorial stuff." I said. "Two days a week here. Tuesday and I had the choice of working on either Thursday or Saturday. I picked Saturday."

"Well...why Saturday?" She was puzzled.

"I didn't want be dragged up to my family's lake place on the weekends... boring as Hell."

"I didn't know you were that well off?" She was surprised.

"We weren't" I replied.

She looked over to Comrade Stein's table.

"Some of those people are making obscene gestures at us," she said.

"Being a Superior Being means never having to behave like a civilized person." I said. "Marxists are funny that way."

She looked over there again.

"Stein's up. He's going to the rest room," she said.

"If you will excuse me." I said as I stood up.

I removed a stainless steel ball point pen from a pocket and placed it in my left hand as if it were an unlit cigar. Comrade Stein was alone and preening himself when I entered the rest room.

"Al," I said, "we need to talk."

"Fuck off!" He replied.

I ignored it.

"You know," I said, "FU could get pretty rough on his opponents, but there one thing he never did, and that was to fuck with the ballots."

Comrade Stein's image in the mirror glared at me.

"What part of 'Fuck off' did you NOT understand?" He growled.

"Nobody steals an election in this state." I said. "JM's going to appoint a special prosecutor after the inauguration. You will be removed from that seat and Lieutenant Governor Pawlenty will appoint Norm to finish out the term. You can walk away from this and save us all the fuss and bother. All you have to do is concede."

Comrade Stein turned towards me.

"We WILL take the White House!" He snapped. "And we WILL snuff out you FASCISTS once and for all!"

He was referring to the ongoing effort of his party to lawyer their way into the White House. And of course he also referred to the well documented homicidal tendencies of the Left toward those who refuse to submit to their will.

He returned to the image in the rest room mirror.

Of course the basic difference between Comrade Stein and a proper old-school Fascist was the silly uniform. But mentioning that would do no good at this point. I consciously decided to emulate JM's late uncle, Francis Urquhart.

"You may very well think that," I said, "but what you're moving towards is a civil war, and I seriously doubt that the United States Army will obey the orders of a Chicago Marxist who has obviously stolen the election, like the Big Zero. You will lose."

Comrade Stein snarled one more time.

"You're going to a supermax!" Which was the worst type of prison in the United States. "You're going to get raped and die of AIDS you piece of shit!"

It is simply not possible to reason with someone who believes that you have no right to live.

There was one thing that could only be done at this point. I switched the pen from left hand to the right and jabbed the point into Comrade Stein's back. I clicked the stud that would normally extend the ball point for writing but which instead extended a tiny needle into his back.

I pulled the pen out and put it back into my pocket.

Comrade Stein spun around.

"What was that?!" He yelled.

"A nonpersistent neurotoxin." I replied. "It won't show up in the autopsy."

Comrade Stein tried to leave the rest room. With my right arm I stopped him and shoved him back into the wall. The toxin was already weakening him.

"Comrade Lenin once said that the ends justify the means." I spoke softly. "You didn't really believe that we would be any less ruthless?"

Comrade Stein tried to speak one more time as I held him to the wall with my right hand.

"Mother...fuck..."

I replied.

"It's not personal Al, it's politics."

Comrade Stein collapsed to the floor and ceased breathing.

It was at this point that I stepped out of the rest room and raised my voice as if I were still a sergeant in the Army.

"Al Stein just collapsed on the floor, someone call nine-one-one!"

All of Comrade Stein's dinner companions, regardless of their gender, entered the Men's rest room while I returned to my table.

Our meal for the evening had not arrived at the table yet. I gestured to our waitress and pulled out a credit card.

"Is there a problem, sir?" She said.

"Apart from the commotion, no." I said as I handed her the credit card. "Could we have the check please?"

Two of Comrade Stein's companions, one of each gender, stumbled out of the Men's rest room. The female was moaning something about Stein being dead. The male stared at me for a moment and then began to look around for something. I placed my right hand on the Glock 36 that I carried concealed in a belt holster, ready to draw on the thug. He grabbed a wine bottle off of one of the tables when two Minneapolis officers entered the restaurant.

The waitress returned to the table with the check and my credit card just as the cops were placing the agitated Marxist goon in handcuffs. I wrote in a substantial tip and then handed the pen to my dinner companion.

"Your pen madame." I said as she accepted the pen and placed it in her purse.

With that gesture the instrument of my latest homicide was placed beyond the reach of the police.

I had to give a statement to the local cops. I said that Al Stein had collapsed when I told him that he would be prosecuted for election fraud.

"Some of his people are saying that you killed him." Said one of the cops.

I replied.

"Only if 'President-March' is a killing word."

I had to explain the reference.


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