Ziggy
Principles!

The American flag is in bloodshot eyes. And I’m, I’m going to drink everything. No, not because I want to. I certainly don’t want to my friend for I have drunk enough. I have drunk more than my fair share in this life. O.K. Alright! I’m drinking because you can hardly even see the remnants of what was once something great.

I drink for two reasons. The first reason is I just don’t care anymore; I don’t care to fight. I don’t care to try to think. They take that away from us at a young age, and we try to fight them to no avail. We try to think for ourselves, to formulate our own ideas and opinions, but it’s useless man. They only show us how we are incorrect, or how we should think in another fashion. I can’t even begin to tell you O.K. Alright! I can’t begin to tell you all the obstacles one must overcome in order to come to the truth. The ultimate truths O.K. Alright!

You know kid the pain of the flesh is nothing! O.K. Alright! The pain of the flesh can’t even be compared to the pain of the soul. Do you get what I’m saying? Everyone feels physical pain instantly, but they don’t feel their souls lamenting. The human soul becomes atrophied as we age, and eventually nonexistent as we reach adulthood. I guess people don’t feel their souls because they never really used them. Hell, I’m going to drink it all tonight, O.K! Alright! Because of principles man! It’s all a matter of principles. It’s always because of principles. To principles, structure, and the non-existent human spirit.

And I’ll tell you the truth. You’ve got to be realistic. I’ve got to be realistic. Principles are unfathomable. Un-fucking-fathomable! Can you believe what people do because of principles? If you are full, and you cannot eat another morsel, but you have two morsels on your plate, they tell you, eat, eat, O.K. Alright! It isn’t right to waste food—especially when people are starving. Or, or, I can’t apologize because it’s a matter of principle. O.K. Alright! It’s better to keep all kinds of negative shit bottled up inside of us because of principles! No one uses their mind because of principles and philosophies man!

So, it is better for me to be uncomfortable, it is better for me to eat and throw up, than to just fork the two morsels of food that would put me over the edge into the garbage. You didn’t dare waste food ever in the service. You could take as much as you wanted, but you could never waste anything! We could waste away people, but God forbid you had a few peas left on your plate. I had to do it. I had to reprimand soldiers for stupid shit all of the time. They had to learn to fucking obey! O.K Alright!

And God forbid you give human food to a dog, that’s crazy, you can’t do that anymore—it’s no good for the dog. So, a piece of red meat, O.K. Alright! A piece of chicken that is good enough for me, I can’t give to a dog? Will someone tell me why?

Even if it is no good for the dog, and even if it takes a few months, or a year or two off of the dogs lifespan, so what? When I had dogs, my dogs were always happy, and you wouldn’t believe the quality of life they had. O.K. Alright! My dogs were part of my pack, part of my clan and they ate what I ate, they slept in a spare room on a real queen sized bed, and they loved every minute of their life!

Holy shit! Holy shit man! What do I have to do to keep my drinks coming! You know O.K. Alright! Sometimes I do say things because I want someone to do something. Sometimes I say things because I want someone to do something for me! O.K. Alright! When I had to tell the guys over and over again to get a good nights rest because tomorrow we were going to see some action—you understand what some action is! Do you understand why I told those guys to get some rest? Action is kill or be killed man! There is no place to go, no place to hide, no place to curl up into a ball, no place to shed a tear, or show any emotion. I’m getting emotional in an angry sense! When my glass is empty fill it. O.K. Alright!

Emotions, what are those? I was conditioned. Even before that, I was a three star General in the U.S. Army. Three stars, O.K. Alright! You got that—you want to see pictures of me wearing them! I was also a trained assassin man! I can’t even tell you how many times people were coming at me from every single direction. I have no idea. Out of the darkness, they just kept coming and coming and coming, and for every one of those fuckers I killed, another three would appear. It was ridiculous—there was an endless supply of enemies emerging out of the calm and silence of the darkness. You can never kill all of your enemies. You can’t kill anything!

And, I killed every one of those poor fuckers I could, and do you know why? Do you know why? O.K. Alright! Those bastards were conditioned just as I was, to kill or be killed! I didn’t want to kill them, so I didn’t. I had to stop thinking of them as people, and that’s what I did. That’s what we all had to do. That’s the only way—to be a killer.

But the difference between me, me and my enemy is—they would have mutilated my remains. Made a mockery of my remains, and I wasn’t going to die in a goddamn jungle! O.K. Alright! It’s one thing to desensitize oneself during war; but it is another thing to torture the enemy.

That’s what Hitler did, that crazy son of a bitch! I wish I could have killed that bastard O.K. Alright! And it’s not because I would enjoy killing him, but because I would have liked to have been able to stop him. I would have wanted to stop him from torturing a race of people. What he did to Jews is unthinkable—you wouldn’t do those things to pigs in a slaughterhouse. And that’s also why O.K. Alright! I never let my men call the Vietnamese ‘gooks.’ There isn’t a thing you couldn’t do to a gook because what is a gook? It’s less than human, less than an animal—it’s just something you were conditioned to destroy. A gook is a fucking ant. And to others America is perceived as the devil! What would you do to the Devil? O.K. Alright.

No sir, and I wasn’t going to be a telegram, or a package of neatly packed unrecognizable limbs sent to the States on ice for my loved ones to see. Fuck that! I wasn’t going to die and hear some asshole say, “judging by the dental records these are the remains of Arthur Kelly.” Could you imagine that? So many people were only recognizable by their teeth, or what was left of them, and this Arthur wasn’t going to suffer that fate. O.K. Alright.

Hell, we still have over 75,000 Americans missing form WWII. We don’t know what the hell happened to them. Ha, they just vanished! Vanished into thin air, and you know who cares about them? Only the families; and not even so much anymore because anyone who could have remembered them is dead or close to it, or if they aren’t, the missing was one of their siblings they vaguely remember because they were so young. People become myth, and myth is forgotten—you know this man!

The soldiers missing in WWII O.K. Alright! These soldiers will be only be remembered by their respective families as the relative who disappeared in WWII and was never found! O.K Alright! So many people just seem to disappear from the earth and our memories. And so many people since the beginning of time, it’s almost as though they never existed because we don’t remember them, and they don’t remember. Never existing or nonexistence is impossible and probable.

Besides not wanting to have my teeth found, I knew I had to come home. I had more to say to her, more to tell her. What about my mother man! What about my mother! I like you a lot kid, but only I talk about my mother. Don’t even ask a question about her. O.K. Alright! Don’t even say mother to me. No body talks about Ziggy’s mother except Ziggy—end of story.

So, I said to my mother before I left O.K. Alright! I promised my mother before I left that I wasn’t going to die. I swore to her on everything she believed in that I was not going to die. I promised her, and I never break a promise. People today don’t understand what a promise is. Promise has become a word man, but that’s not what it is. O.K. Alright! A promise is sacred, a promise is everything—if you don’t keep your word, well, then you have nothing at all. You keep a promise man, even when there are things going on around you that are out of the realm of your control. That is irrelevant!

A man without his word isn’t a man; he’s not even an animal. So far, that is the only thing that really separates us from the animals—not our ability to communicate, but the fact we do it with language. O.K. Alright! So I wasn’t worried about breaking my word because I wasn’t concerned with those things out of the realm of my control. I knew I would just role with them as they happened. Adaptation—O.K. Alright! I was going to keep that promise—there was no way in hell I wasn’t coming home, and there is no way in hell this fucking bartender should even be alive! Come on sweetheart! I’m dying over here! Just leave the bottle will you! Johnny doesn’t mind spending time with me. I’ll even tolerate Jack!

One thing you can never do in this life is let a loved one down—especially your mother, your wife, or your daughter. Women never rebound after you break your word, they just don’t, and I don’t blame them. I don’t blame them one bit. We have the biological urge to merge, and although most men don’t give a shit about who they merge with, women, if they aren’t just looking to fuck want to merge with men they can trust and build long lasting relationships with. Women are very conscious of words, O.K. Alright! They remember everything you say, and when you say you are going to do something, or you feel something, they are taking you at your word. That’s why they always use our words against us, O.K. Alright! The problem arises during the interpretation process. Are you really conveying what you want to convey? That’s the question my friend, and that you generally don’t know the answer to. How people, and women especially define and use words is beyond me.

And you’ll see, O.K. Alright! It doesn’t matter what you say, a woman can always turn your words around on you. My mother was mad at me for not coming home from the war sooner. She remembered me saying not only that I wasn’t going to die, but that I wasn’t going to be gone long, and for her I was gone an eternity. O.K. Alright! And I never really thought about it, because I always knew I was going to get back home—but when I was over there it did feel like an eternity. It did feel like it would never end, and I would never get out of there. For most people they are forgotten years, or years existing only in numbers; but for my mother—for me man—I lived an eternity and then some.

Look at this bartender bitch that just came over here—he probably thinks I’m being rude, but am I? Am I! Am I, O.K. Alright! I’ll talk as loud as I want, and I’ll talk loud enough for him to hear my insults because this fucking guy is worse than a stupid woman whore. I rather have a stupid filthy cunt rag of a bitch serve me, than this absent-minded fool. At least she’d be serving me!

Man, I knew from the first second I saw you, and you were wearing a pink and white shirt—I hate you man! Just the sight of you infuriates me. O.K. Alright! You are the absolute worst! This is the type of guy who wastes good oxygen. Are you as bad of a person as you are bartender? Just go back to doing nothing you moron. That’s what you’re good at apparently—nothing!

Vincenzo, this isn’t me right now! This can’t be real? You don’t know me? There was a brief time I knew myself and saw myself, but that time has passed. We go through life, O.K. Alright! We go through life rarely ever seeing ourselves or being ourselves because we don’t know what exactly to look for, or who we are. And if we begin to find ourselves, O.K, alright, something just doesn’t feel right.

And it certainly wasn’t me in that jungle. I don’t know who it was—but who they asked me to be, and who I had to be is very different than me. I can tell you that much, O.K. Alright! Sometimes, I would surface for a moment, and logic would kick in, or I would try to enjoy something beautiful—then I would say what the hell am I doing and know the only way I was going to survive was to suppress everything quickly.

Logic or a craving for aesthetic beauty has crippled and killed many a men my boy. Me in the jungle, you in the jungle, that bitch bartender in the jungle, any of us in the jungle, we are dead men. But, an untamed beast thrives in the jungle, that’s his environment, and that’s what I was. I was a fucking English-speaking lion 99.98% of the time. I was the goddamn king of that jungle. I was no longer human in any way other than my appearance O.K. Alright!!

When I ran out of bullets, when I ran out of grenades, when all my knives were lodged in the dead, and they still kept coming at me, I started running towards them! I started running towards soldiers fully armed to the teeth with not an ounce of fear in my body. You had to see what that did to them. They tried to think! And that’s all it takes if you want to die. Listen kid, fear only exists because we allow it to exist, and I had nothing to fear because I made a promise, and I was going home. I knew it wasn’t my time to die.

I snapped necks, I pulled pins on vests—I started killing those bastards with their own goddamned weapons and hands. Sure I was shot a few times, sure I’ve been stabbed before, but it didn’t matter—I wasn’t going to die. I just couldn’t. I was conditioned to keep going, and going I did. Hell Vincenzo, you can teach yourself not to feel physical pain. O.K. Alright! You can condition yourself man! Rambo—that is all fake and that guy is a fucking pussy. Rambo: First Blood was a great movie; I’ll give you that. But nothing in any move has shit on General Ziggy. If you look around, and if you really start to see the pain, the suffering—no one feels it like they should. No one feels compelled to do anything other than what they deem necessary.

And when it was all over, O.K. Alright! When all was quite and there was no one left to fight, and no enemy to fight—there were three of us. There were three of us left O.K. Alright! There was me, one other American soldier from some unit, and one of the enemies—one of the Vietcong. We all knew none of us wanted to die, and me and the enemy both knew the fight was over, but the other American O.K. Alright! That guy would have never been able to turn off everything that was conditioned into him. My brother man was going to kill the enemy just on principle! He said, “Sir, I guess there’s just one more gook fucker who has to die.” And I said, ‘You know what? You’re right.’

I told my soldiers not to call them gooks—I taught my soldiers to respect life, and my brother man didn’t know. He was trying to bond with me or something in the darkness and death. Maybe he thought I would think of him as more than a man for finishing this poor bastard off. Boy, they really conditioned that word into the minds of our soldiers. So to get back to the story, I did what I had to do, O.K. Alright! I did what I had to do, I did that guy a favor, and I did what was right!

I thought to myself, the enemy is way more of a person than this guy—my brother man is the fucking gook—he’s the fucking animal. There are three of us left, only three of us, and thousands upon thousands of corpses and almost lifeless bodies around us camouflaged and hidden by the jungle.

You couldn’t necessarily see death, but you could certainly smell her in the air, hear death’s whisper, feel her aura all around you. You never heard of Lady Death? Death is a cold bitch. And when she surrounded me, I don’t remember being happy to be alive, I just remember being sad that I had to partake in such a, such a, such a I don’t know kid. I don’t know what to call that situation. I’ve been to hell before, and that was worse—I don’t have the words for you other than to say I knew I wasn’t human at all. Not human in the slightest. I knew I had lost whatever was left of my soul. Something that would I could never get back, and I never have.

There were fathers, brothers, uncles, nephews, sons—little boy soldiers not more than 12 or 13 all dead, and all over the place. So, I killed that mother-fucking American asshole because he was only a machine, a machine killing with pleasure and a big old smile. I killed that mother-fucker and didn’t even think twice.

I sat on the ground, back against a tree, along with the fucking enemy in the darkness thinking to myself I did the world a favor. That was the kind of guy who would never be able to function in society again. Never! His thirst for blood, O.K. Alright! His thirst for blood would never be quenched and eventually he would have become President or killed someone he shouldn’t of—like the Vietcong soldier whose life I saved.

So now, it is only this guy and General Ziggy in the middle of all this death O.K. Alright! We were out in the darkness paralyzed in disbelief relaxing. And this guy pulled something out of his vest; you know what it was? A fucking apple, O.K. Alright! He shared with me, and we ate a fucking apple together, in the silence—in the darkness. I was back in Eden.

It was the most deliciously sweet apple I’ve every eaten, and really the first luxury I had in many many days. And even in the blackest of black, I could see that although our eyes were shaped differently, the message was the same man. He motioned towards his pocket, and even though he had a gun on his belt, I wasn’t alarmed in the slightest. What purpose would it serve for him to try to kill me after having saved his life?

I knew even before I saved his life, he wouldn’t harm me or anyone for that matter—he had no more fight in him left. He knew his soul was gone and he’d never be the same. He knew he was walking dead—O.K. Alright!

You can see how much fight a person’s got in them just by giving a little glance into their eyes kid. I’m telling you, you can see so much from looking at someone’s eyes, and I knew all this guy wanted to do was go home. He wanted to do the same thing I wanted to do, just survive and get through the entire ordeal. He wanted to keep his promise. Yes, we might have been fighting in his country, but the jungle isn’t his home, the country isn’t his family, and the war wasn’t his war.

He pulled out a piece of paper, struck a match, and I saw the paper was actually a picture of his family O.K. Alright! He had three daughters, and a wife. He smiled at me, a tear rolled down his cheek, and we embraced each other. I gave him a cigarette. We both knew what we were smoking for; we smoked a cigarette for our families, our loved ones, and for surviving this massacre. We made our final goodbyes with our eyes, he presented me with his pistol as an additional sign of gratitude, and we both went our separate ways into the abyss. I left that pistol in the jungle because I thought just having the memory of the apple was enough. Besides that, I didn’t want to carry a weapon anymore—I didn’t need one.

Enough of that wartime shit! Enough talking about wars the war masters planned and the fools forced to point the guns! It all stinks of glory! Glory! O.K. Alright! Give me the bottle please bartender. I’m asking you nicely man. Not only am I asking you nicely, but I’m a fucking General man! I’m General Ziggy! You wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for people like me. O.K. Alright! I fought for your freedom! Give me the bottle man! I’m not enjoying myself because you suck and can’t keep my glass full now give me the fucking bottle, or I’m going to destroy this goddamn shit hole establishment! I want to drink it all. I’m going to drink it all. O.K.! Alright!

Police don’t scare me, they can’t touch me man. And I know all the police around here you little shit-bag. That’s right, General Ziggy trained the Williamsburg Police for fun. And even though I’m now a known alcoholic, the government still calls upon me to help with stupid shit I have no interest in sobering up long enough to do. But I’m the best there is when it comes to war O.K. Alright! I’m the best guy you’ll never read about in history books because people like me are shadows.

So who the fuck are you to threaten me with the police? You wouldn’t even have a job if it weren’t for my chronic alcoholic ass in this shit hole all day every day and night. Kid, you have a horrible energy, personality, and you are lazy and good for nothing! And I don’t know what you can do about it? It just might be too late for you.

Thank you. Thank you. O.K. Alright! I said thank you. Was that so hard? Was it so hard for you to leave Johnny in front of me? They should fire you; you are such a bitch sometimes. He’s a twenty sweet heart! You are a man. Men are not supposed to be fucking bitches O.K. Alright! I’m not talking about that asshole. I’m not insulting your sexuality. I’ve seen lots of fags that weren’t bitches. I’ve known lots of fags in the military that you would pick in a heartbeat to protect you because they were ruthless killers.

Because you are such a stupid bitch, and you took so long to serve me, and because the bastards who own this place and bartenders like you sucking my pension away nightly, and because I just gave you twenty buckeroonies, and you never buy back a fucking drink, O.K., alright, the rest of this bottle is on you. O.K. Alright! The rest of this bottle is on you, and I appreciate it. Thank you! If anyone gives you a problem, or you’re boss says something to you—just tell him it was the fucking General. He knows me, everyone knows me O.K. Alright!

You know I never liked you, because you’re a young pompous effeminate looking bitch, but after you gave me this bottle for free—no, I still think you’re a little effeminate bitch and I’m not only saying that because I’m callused and drunk. Make sure mommy washes behind your ears later and you have fun jerking yourself. You should thank your lucky stars O.K. Alright!

If it weren’t for people like me, you wouldn’t be able to be a jerk off, or a fag, or a Christian, or a thespian, or an aspiring anything! Whatever it is you think you are, you wouldn’t be able to be without guys like me who fought for freedom and equality. You should thank your lucky stars that I still have enough sanity to know snapping your neck and putting you out of your misery is something I’m not allowed to do. But would that be wrong? Why the hell is someone like you alive let alone working here once a week? Who do you blow to keep your job as a bartender here? No really, O.K. Alright! I want to know. My friend here wants to know. Enquiring minds want to know.

Do you believe this guy Vincenzo? This bartender is just like those hippy bitches; those pussies in the sixties who chanted baby killer and threw tomatoes at soldiers returning from hell. Those who thought doing drugs and fucking some how made them more aware. His father was probably one of those pussies. His father probably met his mother, and they were all drugged up, and he is the product of their misdirection and lust. O.K. Alright man! Or, he doesn’t know anything because he doesn’t even know who he is—he just knows he needs something to fill him, complete him, or be stuck in him!

I have four purple hearts man, four! Many of my men died—that’s a fact, but I saved countless American soldiers. I taught those men how to survive. I tried always to limit risks, O.K. Alright! And those hippy bastards dodged the draft, smoked their joints, protested, and accomplished absolutely nothing other than contributing to the sexual transmitted disease epidemic that’s plaguing our society. Those hippie draft- dodging sons of bitches—they shouldn’t be allowed to live in this fucking country, and they should all be in jail. They should all be in jail, or at the very least have to pay a substantial portion of their life’s earnings to the government. Yes, I really wanted to kill people. Are you kidding me man? Are you kidding me? Nobody except a sick individual wants to kill anyone, and I’m not sick! I had to train my soldiers to be sick, and I had to be sick, but I’m not sick. My soldiers weren’t sick.

I wanted to go in the jungle and watch all my friends die? I don’t have a single friend left from that fucking war? And the ones that didn’t die over there, died over here. I wanted to spend five years of my life mentally and physically fighting in a war I didn’t even believe in? What stupid bastards! What a stupid fucking war!

And if you call killing fully armed men with machine guns and grenades baby killing, then I suppose you’re correct. What is a man? I would say a twelve year old with a rocket launcher pointed at you must be considered at the very least a real threat. I’m a war hero, and I did what my country asked me to do for over 20 years, and those hippie bastards stained my outfit and my pride with fucking tomatoes. I never forgave them for that. I never forgave them for not seeing me as the victim—not seeing the soldiers and lieutenants and captains and generals as pawns in a big machine, O.K. Alright!

We are thrown into horrific situations, and our job is to survive and come out of those situations alive. I know not everybody agreed with WWII, especially German women, but just imagine if Hitler the man was left to run around until the sixties or seventies. It’s bad enough his philosophies have endured, mutated, and been further elaborated upon—O.K. Alright! Just imagine if America didn’t save the world from that tyrant? Everyone would be living the Nazi philosophies in extensions of the Fatherland. It too horrible to imagine and too disgusting to talk about a world run by Hitler.

Jesus Christ, what it was like to be young and think I had to do things because I just had to do them, or their was no way around it. I sacrifice my life for my country doing all kinds of things I never wanted to do, or thought we shouldn’t do. I tried to protect the people of America from real and imaginary threats. And when I was a General I didn’t have to keep my mouth shut, and was highly regarded because I spoke my mind, O.K. Alright!

The only woman proud of me, the only woman elated to see me after the war was my mother. And although she didn’t say it, I knew she could see I wasn’t her son anymore. She knew I was a different person, but she still loved me, and was happy to see I was safe, happy to see me by her side. You know, you can’t just turn that conditioning on and off. You just can’t become feeling all of the sudden. It’s a gradual process, and you have to want to feel again.

I couldn’t go from killing people in the jungle for five years, to appreciating the latest song by Simon and Garfunkel, having a slice of apple pie, looking at fucking birds, and saying how pleasant today’s weather is, or asking what the forecast for the week looks like. I wished I could take a stupid job. I wanted to take a stupid job, but I couldn’t take a stupid job and try to take my mind off things.

And I wasn’t interested in finding a woman. That’s impossible. O.K. Alright! What about that? All I’m going to say about that now is that I had a wife, and even if she was still alive when I returned, I don’t know what kind of relationship I would have been able to have with her. I’m actually thankful in a way that she never saw what became of me. I’m thankful that the images and visions I have of her are pure, untarnished, and beautiful.

Why do you think to this day there are American soldiers from numerous wars living in the woods and national parks up in the state of Washington? These poor guys are living outside still living like they are in the army or a fucking war. And they are in a fucking war. They are in the worst kind of war, O.K. Alright! They are like most people in that they can’t see anything, but they have been much more so conditioned than the average person. They are in a psychological perpetual hell that we created, but don’t know how to fix. We don’t know how to help these guys forget, or assimilate, so we turn a blind eye. Fuck them right, they served there purpose, and now they’re not doing anything destructive, so we’ll leave them out there and let them die. Those poor crazy bastards!

And you want to know the bitch of this story. I didn’t even tell you about my wife and child, I’ll save that for another occasion, but the bitch of this story is I was home for three days. Three fucking days man! Three days, and my mother died. She died! O.K. Alright! She didn’t even get to really see her son again. I couldn’t bring him out for her.

Sometimes I think she held on for as long as she could, and when she realized her son was alive, she didn’t need to hold on anymore. She believed her unrecognizable son would come back and be all right—O.K. Alright! She was dying with cancer for nine months they told me—for nine months she fought and held on, and she never promised me she was going to be alive when I got back, but she didn’t have to. And when she died, that was it. I had no more family left whatsoever. O.K. Alright! I had no family left, and I wasn’t able to feel the reality of that let alone feel anything. I know I had a mother, but I don’t feel like my mother ever died. I just haven’t seen her yet!

You don’t even know the half of it my friend. You don’t know the half of it. You don’t have an iota of an idea about anything. But I like you. I like you because you listen. You like to understand. You ask questions. You want to know. You want to know the truth, and you’ll know one day. One day you’ll have more than an idea, I’m certain of that. But are you going to be able to do anything with this truth? Do you even want to?

There are many ultimate truths. And if you’re really serious about writing books, which I know you are—write about some of the shit I tell you. You know Ziggy isn’t crazy. You speak the truth, and you can speak for me man. Put some of me in your fucking novels. I know shit that can help people. I’ve experienced life. O.K. Alright! I lived man. I’ve got at least 100 fucking novels of material for you kid, and you better get the information out while I’m still alive and semiconscious. But all of the time, O.K. Alright! All of the time you work on your novels, keep in mind the vision—the ultimate goal O.K Alright! You know what I’m talking about don’t you kid?

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around physically. My being is already dead, and being physically alive but fucking dead is an awful thing. It’s an awful thing I tell you. Once I was close to transcending, but I just gave up on it. I suppose you can say I’m walking dead now just as I have been for most of my life, and just how all those around us are. I’m complacent. I’m content. At least I saw the truth. At least I felt the truths. And that’s what makes me volatile. O.K. Alright!

You’ve been the closest to bringing me out sometimes, I’ve actually enjoyed knowing you, you little fucking bastard. O.K. Alright! You get me to remember, you spark some passions I’ve suppressed, and I know what has drawn us together. As much as I don’t want to admit it, O.K. alright, I’m still alive. I don’t talk to anyone kid about anything because I just don’t have the energy, but you fill my emptiness way more than any liquor ever has, and I appreciate it. You energize me, and I appreciate you getting me all riled up more than this fucking bartender! Do me a favor buddy, next week, don’t come to work and maybe I won’t snap your neck.

You remind me of my son, no, not you asshole. I’m talking to Vincenzo. I’m talking to this asshole; and this asshole knows what’s going on. All night you’re ignoring me, helping people on the other side of the bar. Now, O.K., alright, now I have everything I want, I’m trying to have a conversation with my friend, and you have to stand over here hearing every word I say. Is there something wrong with you? Are you really this stupid? Go stand over on the other side of the bar again—I think the people down there need help you asshole. Don’t listen to what I have to say! You couldn’t comprehend what I have to say.

Vincenzo, I never got to know my son because he never had the chance to grow up. O.K. Alright! It’s like a shitty lottery. If you have a one million to one shot, or a ten million to one shot, there is always that one, and he was the one who lost his life riding his bicycle man! While I’m fucking dodging bullets and throwing grenades doing shit I shouldn’t even be doing as a General, trying to save my boys over there, I couldn’t help my own flesh and blood over here. I couldn’t help my own son man, O.K. Alright! Do you know what it’s like to live knowing I had a son I never got to know and only physically met; I only was in his physical presence twice!
You make me laugh; make me laugh now. I don’t want to start thinking about things that are irrelevant. Oh, shit man! My son, and then my poor poor wife and what she did to herself. Tell me a joke. You want to know the truth, you just started going to college down here—you finished what, one semester? You just started cooking here in this fucking shit hole and I am at the bar of this shit hole establishment everyday, so you’ll always be able to find me. You’re going to get the truth from me, I promise you that. O.K. Alright! We’re going to have a few years together, and I’m going to start remembering things I haven’t thought about in forever, so now, just tell me a stupid joke.

That’s a good one you son of a bitch! That’s a good one. So wait, let me tell it to you so I can tell my buddy. O.K. Alright! A guy dressed in a black Armani suit, gold watch, gold jewelry, slicked back hair, lizard skin shoes says, “I’d like a smoked mozzarella, sopressata, prosciutto, on a baguette with pesto, tomato, and roasted red peppers,” and the guy behind the counter says, “You must be a Pollack trying to be Italian.” The guy in the Armani says, “How the hell did you know I’m a Pollack? What did I miss?” The guy behind the counter says, “This is a hardware store not a fucking Italian deli!” I like that, but I bet you didn’t know I’m part Polish now did you? I don’t give a shit, O.K. Alright! That’s part of the problem. We should poke fun at everything because everything ultimately means nothing.

Do you know how the Pollack broke his nose raking leaves? He fell out of the tree. You like that one don’t you? Listen, O.K., alright, since humans first started to ponder morality, they have always known that the end of the world could come about very abruptly. Something unexpected like a meteorite could fall form the heavens and incinerate everything—and I know I’m not mistaken when I say that already happened before. People in the past O.K., alright, they were afraid of the unknown, but they respected the power of it. They made up stories to explain, but not really explain anything; you know what I’m saying? Now today, we have to be afraid of the known and the unknown. O.K. Alright! We have to be afraid of our own selves destroying each other. The four horsemen of the Apocalypse are among us, and they always have been—it’s just with all this knowledge we accumulate, and all these things we have been beginning to understand, they are starting to ride a bit harder. They feed off of, they are only powerful because we value knowledge.

You know kid, O.K. Alright! Listen to me. I know you are right. The government, those bastards! Those bastard ass bitches! The government, O.K. Alright! General Authur Kelly was the government man! O.K. Alright! The government shouldn’t be controlling us. They didn’t always control us—we gave them that ridiculous power once we started to follow leaders. When it comes to religion and politics human beings ability to reason are no better than a fly’s ability to reason.

Governments now more than ever should be assisting us, and we should be controlling our government. We should be validating our governments. We should have all the power man! O.K. Alright! And I think people need to start taking their governments to courts for crimes against humanity. Even though we shouldn’t, but forget the world for a second. For the sake of this argument, forget the world for a second. Just think of the people in this state.

Right here, right now, O.K. Alright! Right here, right now we have homeless people. We have sick people that can’t afford anything. We have starving people. The government allows people to live in the streets, have nothing, waste away and die, and that’s fucking O.K. man! They’ll spend one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand on tree rolls of toilet paper. Have you been to Richmond, or the shit hole we call our nation’s capital—well that’s not in this state, but it’s close. Look at how we force people to live? Look at the boggie down Bronx? And many people, many people are running out of places to go. You just can’t revert to nature. O.K. Alright! You just can’t live the simple life. The simple life no longer exists. The Amish even have electricity now!

We allow our governments and the global economy to prosper while we destroy and pollute our planet. While we crush the spirits of our citizens and pollute their minds. And forget about crushed spirits O.K. Alright! You wouldn’t believe the pollution in some parts of this country! Well, actually you probably do because you’ve been to Jersey, and L.A., and the air in L.A. is crisp like fresh lettuce compared to parts of China. You can exist with a crushed spirit, but if we cannot breath our own air we have serious problems. Pollution is a serious, serious problem, O.K. Alright!

I think ‘we the people’ should bring our governments to trial. All governments should be put on trial and we should start prosecuting them. The people of the world are stronger than any government or philosophy. And this is coming from General Ziggy. I am a G-man. You can’t kill everyone—well with technology today, I guess you can, but if you killed everyone, you would be killing yourself. Everyone means everyone. There would be no one left to proselytize, hypnotize, and control.

I was a part of the government, I worked for the government, I consulted and worked with other governments—and all governments are evil. All governments are fundamentally exactly the same. O.K. Alright! We have the greatest government in the world—the most successful and longest lasting democracy and look at us? O.K. Alright! We could be America. We should be America. But we are far from a utopia, and we have come to believe that we are living as well as we possibly can be living at this particular moment in time. We have come to believe our own lie, and see exactly what we want to see. We have in many ways become all that we stood against and despised.

We shouldn’t allow our police to ruin lives of citizens for breaking laws that shouldn’t even be laws. I understand that. I also understand that the laws are the laws. Laws once meant something. Only have they become a joke because we have so many nonsensical laws. O.K. Alright! We have so many bullshit laws that people don’t think; people are discouraged from thinking because our laws try to do all the thinking for us.

We shouldn’t allow our governments to go to war and kill people. We should have laws against that. We should have laws for our governments. We shouldn’t allow our governments to continue to sacrifice the environment for the global economy. I know, I know, and I here you man! When I talk to you, or you talk to me—we are preaching to each other’s choir—O.K. Alright! The greatest criminals in the world are the one who work for the system, for the conglomerates, and for the religious institutions. Those who do everything by the book, or those that follow the good books are the ones we should fear tremendously.

Vincenzo, private! Look at me! Listen, you know about Germany and how there is no limit to how much you can drink then drive, but get into an accident and they find out you are drunk, you lose you license to drive forever. O.K. Alright! Now if you are drunk, and you accidentally kill someone, it doesn’t matter. You are going jail for the rest of your life. Look at how black and white that is. But, it is possible to drink and drive responsibly. If you are the average everyday citizen and you weigh 175 pounds, and are an occasional drinker, and you have four drinks inside two hours and you get pulled over in any state you are fucked. Well, as long as you aren’t a cop, a CIA, FBI, ex-military, politician, diplomat, and sometimes even fire fighters. Are you perfectly capable of driving a car with 4 drinks, definitely because if you weren’t and you are a good person, you wouldn’t be driving. A normal person wouldn’t drive unless they were completely confident in their abilities. O.K. Alright!

It’s another animal, and I have no first hand experience, but you are absolutely correct! Anti-depressants, anti-anxiety drugs, bi-polar medications—all those kind of drugs, O.K. Alright! They absolutely are a disgrace to humanity. The entire medical industry—the mental health industry—that’s an entirely different conversation. The FDA should be put on trial—those are some of the biggest criminals on the planet.

I can’t believe not only what we rationalize doing that to people, but how we rationalize helping people. Fuck talking about that! Now they have a pill that they claim helps gamblers—do you believe that? If were going to talk about that then we should talk about the Christian missionaries that have, and continue to destroy Africa. You know Christianity is on the rise in third world nations, or what is now called developing countries because religion, and these Christian missionaries prey on the weak. Since the beginning of time, O.K., alright, religion assisted the weak. Hell, a lot of bastards should fry. Unbelievably horrible shit! Lots of bastards should fry for some of these pills they have people taking. Poor zombies. Lots of people should be brought up on trial for crimes against humanity—or maybe we should force them to take their own kind of help!

Do you know why they sent me into the camps? They sent me because they knew me, and they knew my team would complete the mission and get the hell out! We did what we were capable of doing, and we were the best. We could do anything. O.K. Alright! Now that last mission, everyone dying in all of the platoons under my control except for me, well that I have no explanation for other than I still don’t know what the hell happened. I didn’t want even one of my boys to die, let alone all of them. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about something I should have done, or could have done. None of the wounded were salvageable.

Get the hell away from me, and go talk to some beautiful women! Talk to women I tell you, you can learn a lot from intelligent ladies. Like, look at the ass on that one! Go! Go away from me now! That’s a bunch of nonsense. I don’t want to hear that. You have a girlfriend—good—you just met her Vincenzo and you’re in college, O.K. Alright man! You are young, but sometimes you act like an old man. You are an old man aren’t you? Get away from me; I need to continue my intimate conversation with Mr. Johnny Walker.