Welcome to Nice Ashes, I'm Mike.
And I'm Nate.
What are we talking about today, Nate?
Well, jokes on you, this is a cigar podcast, so let's talk about what we're smoking first
and then we'll talk about what we're talking about.
Oh, jeez.
Yes, yes, yes.
What are we smoking, Mike?
We are smoking a Gurka Titan.
Damn.
Yep, I'm hoping that this will be good.
We did.
This is our last one, right?
This is our last of the Gurka series, yeah.
For now.
For now, for now.
Our timing was good with the Titanic submarine, so.
Yes, yes.
I will gladly smoke this in honor of more billionaires dying.
We can only hope.
All right, and I feel this one's similar in size to the other two, like the Centurion
and the other ones that we had might be a tiny bit longer, though.
I don't know.
Possibly.
It's a different shape than the Centurion, but they're all about the same size.
They're like a Toro, not a Robusto.
Yep.
I am pairing this with Heaven's Door double barrel aged whiskey.
It's the Bob Dylan themed whiskey.
I've never heard of it, but it sounds wonderful.
This is the first sip of this one.
I've had the regular Heaven's Door whiskey, which is good.
This one is a little stronger, but very, very smooth.
I don't have any ice or whiskey stones or anything in there.
Just straight, and it is phenomenal.
Oh, good.
I'm pairing mine with lemon water because it is hot here.
Yes, it is.
It's been hot, but it rained today, and the high today where I'm at was 72.
Oh, wow.
That was delightful.
Delightful.
Yeah, it's been raining here for three days, but it's still hot.
Just the hot muggy, huh?
Yeah, it is borderline tropical.
All right, so I've got a story for you.
Before I launch into this story, I feel that we should come clean with our listeners and
let them know about our Facebook page.
If you want to interact with us on Facebook, we're now on Facebook.
We have been for a little bit, but we've been working through a backlog of recorded episodes,
so we hadn't had a chance to share that with you yet on the actual podcast.
We do have some lively discussions over there.
I mean, livelier than my personal Facebook page anyway, so that's a plus.
We check that and get notified on that.
If you want to reach out or give us a like or a follow, share us with your friends or
enemies like we always say, there's that over there.
There's a post on there more recently than my personal Facebook page, because I don't
know when the last time I had a post on mine.
Yes, and more recently than my personal one too.
But now to my story.
When this episode comes out, June will have just wrapped up and we will be in July.
Okay.
It might even come out the day after, because what, the 4th of July is on Tuesday?
Yeah, because the first is Saturday.
Yep, so this one will come out on the 5th, so we'll be happy late 4th of July.
Hopefully you have all your digits from your firework extravaganza, but my story takes
place in June and our topic today takes place in June.
Everybody knows June is Men's Health Month.
Okay.
So my wife and I went and we went to a concert in some unnamed town with some unnamed musician
playing and we met some of this unnamed musician's cohorts or friends as it were at this establishment.
And my wife and I were sitting outside.
We had just had a baby.
So I think we mentioned that on the podcast before that we were expecting a baby boy and
he came and he's here and he's nowhere near the cigar smoke for those of you that are
concerned, but he's doing very well.
So my wife was talking to these friends of a friend, let's say, and one of them had purple
hair and was asking if we were planning to have more.
And she was talking to Sarah and not really to me.
I was on the other side of the table and she said, Oh, you planning on having more?
And my wife said, Nope, we're done having the kids.
We have a girl and a boy.
So we've got one of each.
And the first thing out of purple hair's mouth was you weren't going to try for a non-binary.
Really?
I was not expecting that.
No, it's a twist.
I lured you in and I was expecting something like that, but it was the well, how do you
know what they are until they tell you?
Yeah.
So now I looked it up since then.
One point six percent of the American population identifies as non-binary.
One point six.
Can you imagine how many times you would have to try to get a non-binary child to legitimately
get one?
That stat seems higher than it should be.
See what I'm saying?
Like it's one point six, but I'm saying it's probably more like point zero one six.
Well, so the first stat that popped up was five percent, but then I read on that what
the stat was actually referring to and it was trans and non-binary.
So they were lumping trans in.
So you lump all those two categories together.
It's five percent non-binary one point six percent.
That might be over or under reported.
I don't know.
I didn't.
It wasn't.
I didn't have the time to want to go and dig into it further.
I just knew it was a small percentage.
Yes.
So I think I think it's you have a better chance.
You have a way better chance of being non-binary than you do of making money in an MLM.
Probably yes.
So then the next thing she said, this this woman or whatever they might identify as said
that they had a friend who was raising their child gender neutral.
And she said, nobody knows what this kid's gender is.
And I piped in and said, people know.
And she's like, no.
And I said, I assure you, people know the gender of that child.
And she kind of looked at me and I said, well, OK, I had met previously.
I've met one gender neutral child who was friends with my brother.
The parents were.
And so I went and saw them.
And then I asked my brother afterwards, I'm like, oh, how old is their son?
And my brother goes, how do you know it's a son?
Did they tell you?
And I'm like, no, it looks like a man.
It looks like a male child.
And he goes, well, they're raising a gender neutral.
And nobody's supposed to know.
But you're right.
It is a boy baby.
And I was like, yeah.
I mean, I guess there are some androgynous people.
But the hormones are just different.
At a certain point, you can tell.
Right?
Yeah.
And then, of course, having small babies of your own helps you identify them as well.
So going in with more men's health month, I thought another story might be forthcoming
for you, Mike.
Oh, OK.
So I went to the Pride Festival yesterday down here in Minneapolis at Loring Park.
And I was going to I was conscripted or asked to take photos.
I don't know if conscripted is the right word.
Like I voluntarily did it to take photos of a mutual friend of ours who's a musician.
So I went to go take some photos of them performing at the Pride Festival on a stage.
And as I was trying to find this stage, there was a beer garden, a beer tent.
Right.
And you probably know what this material is.
It's kind of like what do they it's not like it's not like burlap, but it's the way this
very, very course is.
Yeah.
It's not like canvas was like it's like plastic and you can like print on it and things.
Right.
Sure.
Yeah.
It's like a plastic burlap.
I know you're talking about.
Yeah.
And they make signs out of it.
The material you're talking about.
Yeah.
Yep.
Yeah.
And so they put it on the they put it on the chain link fence and they had printed
on it all these signs, you know, like things printed on it.
And I was walking by and they were all pride flags.
And I was like, oh, OK.
Then they also had what each pride flag was.
And so there was stuff for, you know, just regular things.
And then there was like twink and lipstick lesbian and everything else.
And I was like, that's a lot of oddly specific flags.
Right.
And then they have the WP flag on there.
You know, it's a pride in a color that is starts with the letter W.
OK.
No, I don't think they had that one.
Well, I'm saying they had all these pride flags on there.
Yes.
So I thought for our episode tonight in honor of Men's Health Month, we can go and I found
now I found a list of the 36 queer pride flags you should know.
And this was published June 1st of 2023 on Advocate.com.
And I'll link the article so that you listeners, if you want to see all the pretty colors we
can go through and go through that.
So I thought it'd be fun to go through because I had no idea what a lipstick lesbian was
until I looked it up.
Should I look this up on my laptop?
I don't know.
Yeah, I guess.
Why don't I I'll just forward you the link here.
Oh, sure.
I guess like if if Mike and I ever planned anything, he would already have this.
We'd both be looking at it and we both say, hey, that's great.
But I figured we just start at the top.
The first one and this I'm just kind of giving giving Mike some time to pull the link up
that sent to you now, Mike.
The first one on this list is the Gilbert Baker pride flag, which is probably the flag
you're most familiar with if you're not deeply into the I guess they call it the queer culture.
So I guess I can say that I thought at one point here was kind of like a no, no to say
is that accurate or inaccurate, Mike?
It was.
It is for straight people.
It's kind of like other words that certain groups are in groups are allowed to say and
out groups are not.
OK, well, this is this is from an article.
So I feel like I can say it in the context of what we're talking about here in this episode.
And we're trying to raise awareness for these different subgroups within this community.
But the first year and I'll just read.
So if you scroll down to the first flag there, Mike, just let me know when you're ready.
I am ready.
All right.
So this one is Harvey Milk challenge.
Gilbert Baker in 1977, who Gilbert Baker was a veteran who taught himself how to sew
to come up with a symbol of pride for the gay community and Harvey Milk.
There's I think it's a is it a Sean Penn movie?
There's a movie about Harvey Milk out there.
Yes.
But beside the point, I think there's more to that full story than this one flag.
But the original pride flag was inspired by Judy Garland's Over the Rainbow.
And this flag was flown on the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade celebration June 25th,
1978.
There's a little dispute, I guess, that we should mention on whether or not Baker was
the sole creator or not.
But it actually lists out what all the colors mean.
So it starts with hot pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight,
green for nature, turquoise for magic and art, indigo for serenity and violet for spirit.
So the only thing is like sex sounds like that.
But but what have you.
So that was the original one, 1977.
And I guess poor Harvey, if we scroll down to the next flag, Mike, met his end at the
at the end of an assassination attempt that was successful.
And they wanted to change the flag.
So they did.
And they kind of dropped the hot pink because they had trouble getting the hot pink fabric.
But I don't think the rest of these go down through all the colors.
So basically, it's very similar to the flag of above.
But there's a lighter purple instead of the hot pink.
Yes.
All right.
So is everybody still with us?
I know it's kind of hard to do like a visual flag thing on a podcast, but we're going
to be getting into now that we've covered the two main ones, we're going to be getting
into more of the subgroups and things.
I guess there's two more two more kind of like generic generic ish ones.
Yeah, the next one is the one that everybody thinks of as the gay pride flag, because it's
the one that was popular forever.
And it has fewer colors.
It only has six colors.
So it seems like there's a lot of economics pushing the number of colors down.
Yeah, if you if you sorry about that.
I took a big old swig of Dylan whiskey and it went right right to the old back of throat.
Yeah, if any of you have done any kind of graphic design or wanted to get a t shirt
printed, you know that three colors is pretty much kind of like the standard.
And then if you want more than three colors, you get charged quite a bit for additional
color beyond that.
Yes.
The next flag down is well, they're they're including more people, they're being more
inclusive.
So the next flag down is the Philadelphia people of color inclusive flag.
So it says here that they made this flag because queer people of color are often not fully
included in the LGBT community.
So the city of Philadelphia specifically added two colors black and brown, the pride flag
in their honor.
The city had previously faced accusations of racial discrimination in its gay bars.
So I feel like this is probably a response to backlash, social media backlash or social.
I don't know what it does.
It doesn't say when this flag came into this.
But no, it doesn't have the date at all.
Yeah.
All I know is, is somebody who sometimes dabbles in graphic design and the things I'm not I'm
not hugely thrilled about the black and brown with the rest of the rainbow color, but to
each their own.
Well, you know, anytime that there's a controversy, instead of addressing whatever the underlying
issue is, you just kind of slap some paint on it and continue rocking and rolling.
So yeah, it's the American way.
Yes.
So this next flag, then I don't know if you want to take this one, Mike, this next one.
Oh, the progress pride flag.
Yeah.
Sorry, guys.
This is like a traditional gay pride flag on the right.
And then it's got white, pink, light blue, brown and black on the left coming in as like
an arrow. Yeah, an arrow or like a square tilted at a 90 or 45 degree angle or something.
Yeah, something like that.
We're really trying to, you know, understand all these different flags and the different
like sub subgroups that they represent.
Some of the graphic design, though, is.
And yeah, and this was supposed to have all the transgendered colors and black and brown
people and people with AIDS.
And it's the same thing that's been happening with this community in general, where it's
like they can't just have a group.
It has every individual subgroup has to be named in the flag.
And it's a lot going on.
It is hilarious.
Oh, my God.
The next one's even better.
OK.
But was there anything we needed to mention about about this one?
Just that they're adding adding in the more transgender.
Oh, a guy named Daniel Kawas are identified as queer and non-binary binary designed the
flag.
OK.
So, yes.
All right.
So now this next one.
And so some of these words, I think we're going to have to look up some of these things
because I honestly don't know what this means.
And maybe you do, Mike, because you're a lot more progressive than I am.
But this next one here, I'll take this one.
If you thought the last one's graphic design was bad, just hold on.
This is great.
No, I saw this.
What is the intersex inclusive progress?
Pride flag, which is a tongue twister in and of itself, just to say.
But this one was designed in 2021 by Valentino of a Chetty of Intersex Equality Rights UK
to include the intersex community represented by the yellow triangle and closing the purple
circle.
It's one of the most up to date LGBTQ plus legs available today.
I don't know what intersex is.
Intersex is kind of like non-binary or it's like non-binary, but I think that the intersex
people move between sexualities and genders.
If I'm up to date with my understanding, which I'm probably OK.
So yeah.
So here it says, and this is according to PlannedParenthood.org, intersex is an umbrella
term that describes bodies that fall outside the strict male, female, female binary.
So there's lots of ways someone can be intersex.
It's a general term.
So I feel like we're kind of with these flags and subgroups, we're kind of like we're starting
all inclusive, right?
Like the whole subset of the queer community.
And then we're kind of working our way down and down.
So that's good to know that intersex probably encompasses a fair number of terms that are
more more commonly used.
I would say sure.
And see now this LGBTQ plus is not the term that I've heard is the common one now.
It's LGBTQ plus 2IA, no 2SIA.
Yes.
OK.
Sorry.
I think this stuff is also good to know.
Yes.
I think a lot of this stuff is it's going over the top and because it's so over the
top, it becomes very funny.
You know, they took something that was pretty serious and now they've made it silly by going
by jumping the shark, so to speak.
Yes.
But we're still going to go through because as ridiculous as some of these flags may be,
I was curious, having seen that, seen that printout on the chain link fence with all
the different flags.
And I thought, hey, it'd be fun to kind of go through this with Mike on our show.
Absolutely.
Smoking a Stoge and at least learn a little bit about the communities that they're representing,
despite the fact the flags look like they were designed by maybe a kindergartner with
a full box of crayon colors.
Well, other than the six colored flag, I'd never seen any of these.
So I guess we're all getting my initial genuine reaction.
Yes.
And you know, one of the one of the pride flags we're not going to talk about on this
episode is the I'm proud to suck cop dick flag, also known as the thin blue line flag.
We're not talking about the fascist, the fascist of America flag.
Yeah, the fascist appreciator flag.
I also like the conservative pride flag.
I think I showed you that one, didn't I?
I'm not sure.
It's like the fascist flag, except it has or yellow and green and red and blue and all
these other gate, these other pride colors.
It's supposed to be like cops and first responders and firemen and coast guard and army.
All the what are they called?
The service?
Yeah, all the service, blah, blah, blah stuff.
You know, all the I'm a fascist piece of shit colors.
Yes.
So this next one, and I don't know, like, is this so the article says thirty six queer
pride flags, you should know.
Now we're on to this one called the queer pride flag.
And it's designed it's not even designed by a name.
It's a username from Deviant Art, the website, Deviant, where you can upload, you can you
can create your own digital drawings and things and put them up there.
But apparently this user, Pastel Memer, designed this in 2015 and added some pink and blue
shades to represent same gender attraction.
While orange and green stripes stand for non binary and gender nonconforming.
And the black and white stripes symbolize asexual, aromantic and agent.
And I feel like we'll get into should we look up some of those terms?
Do we need to know some of these terms?
Well, like, OK, so I guess like my question is, how is same?
What is it?
What did it say?
Same gender attraction?
How is that different than just being gay?
It's not.
It's both gays and lesbians.
Oh, OK.
Yeah.
That's part of that softening of language nonsense that we've been doing.
OK.
And, you know, that's fine.
I don't you know, it doesn't I guess I don't care if they want to be same gender attraction
versus a gay man or a lesbian.
No, it doesn't really matter.
I think it's weak sauce because, you know, I don't know.
You know, it's a softening of language.
We're going to see both sides, Mike.
We're not it's not going to be full on softening.
Some of it's going to be hard.
Nice.
Oh, speaking of hard, this reminds me a little pride aside at the Pride Festival.
I had gone maybe six years ago and it was a very different kind of a different vibe.
It felt a little more like I'd say maybe like Woodstock and less like an actual thing.
I mean, not not that it wasn't a thing, but when I was there six years ago, there wasn't
really a whole lot of booths and things.
And it was just a whole bunch of, you know, people, queer people and their advocates or
their supporters, and there was a lot of topless women with the pasties on and, you know, scantily
clad everybody and some music and just kind of like more like party vibes.
And this year there were a ton of booths, you know, like the 10 by 10 tents and things
and tables and whatnot.
And I was surprised how many churches had booths there and they were all handing out
stickers.
And so one was one had the rainbow and said, God is proud of you.
And they're handing out these stickers and another booth, which I should have stopped
and talked about.
It was it was very warm and I had to find the appropriate stage for the for the pictures.
But one was the booth was called Not All Christians Are Assholes.
So I feel like that would have been a very interesting conversation.
But I thought it was interesting to see all of these churches that were willing and wanting
to reach out to the, you know, the queer community.
And I know that down here in the cities, there are a lot of churches that have will put up
rainbows on their LCD displays and say, you know, like all are welcome and whatever.
So there are very definitely some much more progressive churches down here than elsewhere
in the state and elsewhere in the country, probably.
Well, they kind of have to be.
Most of them are losing membership, so they have to find a way to increase their revenue
or a bankrupt.
Yeah.
And beyond the church booths, there's a booth that had a slew of dildos on a board and people
were throwing rings to try and get the rings over the dildos.
So it was really kind of the duality of man.
Right.
That's more of like the gay pride festival type of thing that I imagine, you know, that
you pictured.
Yeah.
But I will say there are far less topless people.
Kind of the trend this year, you know, my take on walking the red carpet at Pride Fest,
as it were, I guess, was there's a lot less like just general, a lot less nudity or implied
nudity.
And the women that were wearing pasties on their nipples were wearing kind of like a
vest or a jean jacket or something that covered, but they was all unbuttoned and they didn't
have any shirt underneath.
So it felt a little more refined or reserved than, you know, six years ago.
So it's kind of nice to see maybe corporatized, maybe it just grew up a bit, you know, all
of these people.
And now that gay marriage has been legal, or same sex marriage has been legalized, you
know, I feel that maybe they feel a little more comfortable and they don't feel the need
to be as outspoken or out going.
Sure.
Or maybe corporatized too.
I don't know.
But I guess, you know, everyone's more comfortable and they don't, and they realize they don't
have to do as much to get support as they maybe had to in the past.
But the whole point of this aside was there was one guy who was wearing nothing but a
cock sock that kind of like wrapped around.
And I think it was like a cock sock thong thing, but it was like fully like hanging
and flopping, you know, it was like a rainbow flopping thing.
And I was like, man, you could put that away anytime.
Was this guy like a twink or was he a bear?
What was his orientation?
You know, Mike, as as fascinated as you are by that, I did not stop him to ask him.
You can tell by looking, Nate.
You can tell by looking.
I saw I saw the bouncy bounce and I said, no, I'm just going to keep on going.
Oh, boy.
All right.
So why don't let's let's do this next one.
You do this next one.
This one looks like it's right up your alley.
OK, well, I will scroll down.
Yeah.
This is the queer people of color pride flag, and it is the gay pride flag, but with the
black power fist on top.
And that is awesome.
It was first flown in San Francisco pride in 19, but became widely popular during the
Black Lives Matter protests of 20.
Flag symbolizes that intersection between fights for racial and queer equality.
So that is awesome.
That is so lazy.
That looks like a middle schooler did that as a 15 minute project in computer class.
Yeah.
And it's weird because they I guess maybe.
Oh, OK, I get it.
I get it.
So it's overlaid of just the standard what six color pride flag.
And the fist has colors in it.
And at first I thought there was muted colors of the color behind it because all of the
lines line up.
But it is actually going from like very, very dark skin to very, very white skin in gradients
up.
And I thought I was like, well, it's weird that they chose like kind of a tan or like
a white or white to be what was showing through from the red stripe.
So it's very confusing visually, I will say.
Oh, this is like they took the gay the pride flag and then they put the black power fist
over the top and then an MS paint.
They just color dropped the different colors.
Yes.
Yeah.
It's I could do this in 15 minutes.
I guarantee it.
Yeah.
So I'm down to the to the the Titan wrapper.
I've taken my wrapper off.
I have maybe three inches left of the cigar.
Yeah.
Am I that far ahead of you?
No, I've got three and a half.
OK, I just measured I anytime I'm so bad at estimating distances and what orientation
people are wearing cock socks.
So what do you think of this cigar so far?
I quite like it.
I feel like and I don't know.
I feel like it's changed a little bit here at the center at the middle.
It has in flavor, which the other ones didn't do drastically.
And this one wasn't drastic either.
No, it's not drastic.
And I was smoking a little fast and I got some sour and I slowed it down and it's not
sour anymore.
It's actually nice.
I got a nice medium, but still got some sharpness to it.
Yeah.
So it's nice.
Yeah.
So I was looking at the side scroll bar.
We're like a quarter of the way through these flags.
Maybe we'll pick it up a little bit.
The pace here.
It will only stop if we if we need something.
We need to clarify some that sound OK with you.
Sounds good to me.
So we may want to touch on some other things that have happened since we last recorded
at the end.
But absolutely.
So the next flag is the bisexual flag.
Actually one of the better looking flags that we've seen thus far, I think it's more traditional.
I mean, it's not we're not saying like I'm saying it's great and going to win flag contests,
but with the other ones we've seen.
So that was the bisexual one.
It's got two big bars and a little bar in the middle.
Now, Mike, you take the next one and I'm going to look this up because this next one I'm
not familiar.
I think I'm familiar with the term, but I've heard it explained, but I always forget the
pansexual flag is created on the Internet.
Of course, it's got pink, yellow and light blue, and it's a three bar flag.
And it represents pansexuality's interest in all genders as partners.
OK, so that's pansexual is a track.
They want to fuck everybody.
Genders not just not just male and female.
So right.
You could be like bisexual.
It represents women, nonbinary, gender nonconforming and maybe.
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
If you were bisexual, it would be men and women.
But you would not then do anything with the nonbinary people and the other groups.
Whereas pansexuality, everybody is sexy.
All right.
Then we got the next one is the asexual flag, which is not a well designed flag at all.
But therefore the asexual people, it OK, represents many ace identities, including gray sexuals,
the fluid area between sexuals and asexuals, the demisexuals, the people who don't experience
sexual attraction unless they have an emotional connection with their partners.
Next flag.
The labrus lesbian pride flag.
This is awesome.
Yeah, this is like the Viking Norwegian.
Yes, I can imagine this flag being flown on the back of a motorcycle with by a guy who
has no hair on his head.
Yeah.
Or like or like a longship or something.
Mm hmm.
Oh, yeah, for sure.
So it's a purple flag with a black triangle and a white axe in the middle.
Yeah.
This is great.
You could have this in like a video game.
This is a good flag.
I like this one.
This is a great flag.
And it's the labrus, I think, is the style of acts that was used by the Grecian Amazons.
It is a lesbian flag.
So but it hasn't gained much traction in the lesbian community.
I don't know why this would be my go to.
I think it's because it was created in 1999 by a gay graphic designer called Sean Campbell.
And I don't think that the lesbians appreciate that.
Well, let's be more inclusive, everyone.
This flag is awesome.
Yep.
No, that is I want a patch.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's great.
OK, the polyamory flag.
OK, yeah, the polyamory flag.
So it's got the symbol for the infinite number pi.
Oh, infinite number pi.
I thought it was like a number pi because it's they forgot a space between number and
pi on the website here.
Yes.
So it shares the first letter of polyamory.
So this isn't a math flag despite them using a math symbol.
It celebrates the infinite selection of partners available to polyamorous people.
But pi is 3.14.
It's not infinite.
Why didn't they just put infinity symbol on it?
Well, I mean, pi is infinite and it never repeats itself, right?
Yeah, but it's 3.14.
We abbreviate it to 3.14.
Pi has more digits than that.
I'm aware.
But why didn't they just use the infinity symbol?
Dude, are you polyamorous?
No, I am not.
Let's not judge.
Let's not judge just because we don't understand.
This is not as cool as the labrus lesbian pride flag.
And that is saving that win for the winner of the pride flag contest.
Yeah, I'm saving that to photos, everybody.
That is incredible.
It will be Mike's desktop background every time we podcast to look at that.
OK, now this next one, we should have known we should have seen this coming because part
of this next flag was featured on one of the other flags earlier up top.
Yes, it was.
What flag is this, Mike?
This is the intersex flag.
It is yellow with a purple circle with yellow on the inside.
And apparently it was designed in 13 in Australia.
So and so intersex, we said is just that is an umbrella term for all non gendered, non
binary people.
Yes.
The next the next one is a transgender flag.
Monica Helms, a trans woman, designed this flag in 1999.
You've got light blue, traditional color for baby boys, pink for girls and white is in
the middle for those who are transitioning.
So transgender is still part of the binary sex culture, gender culture.
Something like the gender fluid, gender flexible flag.
Yeah.
And if we get if we get some of these terms wrong, it's not intentional.
No, we're not trying to make fun of anybody.
It's a lot to accept the some of the graphic designers.
But I was trying to make the designs that are ridiculous.
Yeah, yeah, I don't know.
The designs are ridiculous.
First of all, for those who are not looking at these, they're all copying the gay pride
flag.
Right.
Mostly.
I mean, except for the access, that one's bad ass.
No, the axe ones like that.
That one's unique.
That could be man.
I want to get that flag and fly it on the back of my pickup truck.
You should.
I saw one of those losers this weekend.
First time in a long time I've seen that.
So anyway, I'm in the back.
Oh, they had they had an American flag.
Thank God.
It wasn't like a Trump flag or something goofy.
Oh, yeah.
You know, I even saw one guy he had a flying on his back of his truck, but it was so heavy
that he had to bolt wires into this bed of his pickup.
Hold it up.
It was like an old, you know, POS vehicle, obviously.
I know you're the queer in the queer community gets like a lot of flack for being like extra,
you know, like with their stuff.
But I tell you, some the length, some of these Trump people and like Rara America and cop
supporter people will go to.
That's like more extra than a lot of the queer community.
So it's absurd.
I know I told you the story about the lady in her blazer.
So yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's let's do this gender fluid flexible flag.
Sure.
And this is another knockoff gay pride flag.
It's just got different colors and it encompasses the fluctuations and flexibility of gender
and gender fluid people.
So yeah, so gender fluid, then they kind of depends on the day or the feelings not to
be.
Yes.
I'm not going to be dismissive of it, just to quickly summarize as we still have quite
a few flags to go and not a lot of cigar left.
The next one is gender queer.
The gender queer flag highlights androgyny with lavender, agender with white and non
binary with green.
So this is probably more so the people that maybe don't transition between different genders,
but they don't feel any close association with any particular gender.
Lipstick lesbian flag.
Yeah, that's the one that triggered this whole thing.
I saw this one there and I was like, what?
That is like a Rocky Horror Picture show flag.
You know what?
And this flag is not bad.
This is probably number two.
This is probably running out for number two.
Yeah, no, this could be out of a movie or something.
It's pretty good to design.
What is it, Mike?
If you want the most feminine pride flag, here it is.
It's not widely used celebrates the fems who are lesbians, also called and so lesbians.
Yes.
And so I had no idea what a lipstick lesbian was and I know back in the era when I was
growing up, any, it didn't matter if it was a lesbian couple or a gay couple, any same
sex couple, the question was always, well, who's the man in the relationship?
Who's the pitcher and who's the catcher?
Yada yada, all that stuff.
So this flag is then specifically designed for the lesbians who are the feminine lesbians
and not the more masculine, not that any of the lesbians has to be masculine.
This is all shades of pinks and reds and stuff like that.
It's a very nice flag.
Oh, that's got the lesbian flag.
Interesting.
The lesbian flag, which looks not as good.
No, nowhere is good.
I don't think we need to go on that.
So apparently there's a narrative about this lesbian flag that this flag is more inclusive
of butch and trans lesbians.
But apparently there's a debate.
So not only can you make really terribly looking flags, but then people get upset if the certain
color's not on there.
So we don't have to get into that.
This next one is interesting because it really, really kind of harkens to the Blue Lives Matter
flag.
This is the leather latex and BDSM flag.
So this is for the kink community.
I guess there's a debate on whether kink communities should be added to the LGBT communities.
I don't know about that.
Whatever.
It's got a big heart where the stars and stripes would normally be if this were an American
flag, but it's mostly blue and black.
It's kind of gross.
Bear brotherhood flag.
Oh, yes.
He likes bears.
I think it's awesome.
It's so funny.
So it's a brown and yellow and orange and gray and black gay pride flag with a paw on
it.
And I thought it was going to be for something else, a bear paw.
And then it's basically just supposed to be for bears, I guess.
It was designed in 1995.
Which are what, the heavier set, the hairier.
Yes.
They don't have to be heavier set, but they're usually the masculine, hairy guys.
Okay.
Yeah.
I'll take this next one.
It looks like it came from the Flash comic or something.
That's the rubber pride flag.
So this is another fetish fetish one, similar to the leather and BDSM one.
It's for members who have a rubber and latex fetish.
I don't know if that fits.
The next one.
Yeah, go on.
Go on, Mike.
I kind of like this next flag.
It's hot pink and then very bright like grass green and then sky blue.
And it's the polysexual flag.
And it's only three colors.
So I think it's a pretty good design.
Yeah, no, I think it's a great design as far as that goes.
And it's unlike pansexuality, polysexuality is attraction to multiple genders, but not
all.
So I don't know how that's different than bisexuality, but it is.
Well, yeah, I mean, so I guess it just says even though it has masculine, masculine, feminine,
and then no gender or like other gender, you could be man, woman, and you could fall in
love with a gender fluid, but not a gender flex.
So it's kind of like this is getting very complicated.
I know.
Yeah, I'm not very complicated.
I'm just to wrap my head around it as well.
The next one is a gender.
Well gender, people bend the rules of gender, a gender reject gender completely.
So they've got black and white stripes for absence of gender and then green, which is
the inverse of the gender heavy purple represents non binary genders.
Easy said, I don't I don't know.
It looks like a like a beach towel.
Like you would probably bring this to the beach.
Yeah, looks like a shitty beach towel, be honest with you.
But whatever.
Yeah, you'd get it at the Walmart bin for eight bucks or something.
Yeah, this is what you'd get in an emergency if you forgot a beach towel and you were at
the dollar.
You'd go in and this would be the thing you got.
Exactly.
So a romantic flag.
This one's marginally better than the last one, but not by much.
It's got some green on top and black on the bottom.
Yeah, I'll go ahead and whatever.
I was going to say like a romantic the description here they put was the a romantic flags use
green to celebrate people who live without romantic attraction.
So the way they word it sounds kind of depressing and maybe it is depressing.
I don't know.
But I guess a romantic is you don't you don't get romantically attracted to people.
I guess so.
All right.
The next one is non binary.
We know what non binary is.
We talked about that earlier.
This one would kind of have a place here in Minnesota because it's purple and yellow and
Viking colors for the NFL team.
I thought the same thing.
It looks like a Viking flag.
You know, and OK, this next one, you take this next one.
This is oh, wow, should should should fit in here.
But the pony flag.
This is way too much.
It's got some horseshoes and the green in the middle and there's black and blue stripes
like the cop flag.
Yeah.
So this is for people.
It's a fetish where people are treated like horses by wearing hooves, ears and saddles
and pulling carts.
Again, I feel like this is kind of like the the the rubber and the leather like pinks.
Like I don't know that this is really this is, you know, I mean, there's there's not
a flag for missionary sex.
This is I don't I don't think this is unlike the others.
Even even the BDSM flag is all different than pony.
Yeah, I would say I would say at least at least this one doesn't have the isn't like
a direct rip off of the just a standard pride flag.
Right.
That is true.
Actually, it is a little different with it.
It looks like a collegiate football team flag is what it looks like.
Yeah, yeah.
It could just be a small collegiate football team flag and we would never know.
Yeah.
I think the one that this next one is the the one Mike and I fly all the time straight
ally flag ally flag.
So it's the flag equivalent of I support LGBT people, but no homo.
I don't know that that's I don't I don't know.
This is very nice.
Yeah, I know.
This one makes everyone feel included at pride marches, but no homo, even if they're celebrating
other people's sexualities, but no homo.
It's a weird I don't know why they put that in there.
The no homo thing.
Yeah, they're not recruiting.
Right.
So here's the inverse.
This next one is the inverse of the lipstick lesbian.
You take this one, Mike.
Oh, the butch lesbian flag.
And this one's kind of lame.
It's just blues and purples and some grays.
And it's created in 16, you know, because everybody's got their own flag.
And it's very similar to the lipstick lesbian flag, but not as clever, I don't think.
So there we go.
Yeah.
Oh, two-spirit.
So this one, we might have we might have a bit of unpack here.
The two-spirit flag.
So the two feathers, that's the basic pride flag.
And then they put some feathers on there from the native tribes, as you think.
So the feathers represent masculine and feminine.
In the circle is the combination of both into one.
And it says before Europeans colonized indigenous lands in North America and enforced a gender
binary, many Native American tribes recognize the third gender, which is today called two-spirit.
So I guess I don't know if that's historically accurate or not.
It wouldn't surprise me.
It seems it's more complicated than that because like the Pueblo Indians had seven recognized
genders and we don't really know a whole lot about a lot of the tribes because they were
destroyed before their society started writing down their cultural heritage.
You know what I mean?
So we know about like the Pueblos and the Navajos because they had a written language
before European colonization and they saved a lot of their culture.
So we know that at least there they recognized more than two genders.
Okay.
And I do know kind of going back to the European colonizers and things and written language
is that we know quite a bit about some of the northern and eastern tribes because the
French missionaries and the French people would go and actually kind of like study these
tribes and kind of write down what they learned and then sent that back to their king because
the people back in Europe were very interested, especially the king, because some of these
chiefs were just kind of described as kingly or being kings even though they really weren't
in terms of like practice and everything.
But you know, they also weren't writing about their gender politics.
No, they weren't.
They weren't writing.
So we have an imperfect snapshot of some of these tribes and we have very little snapshots
of some of these other tribes.
But I think what we do have, and this will be a topic for a different episode, but I
think what we do have shows that they were maybe a lot more progressive than anyone was
led to believe or gave them credit for.
They're probably a lot more progressive than the Europeans at least.
Yeah.
They were just in gender things.
I mean like how they governed themselves and things like that.
But that's neither here nor there.
So this next one is the twink flag.
And so it's got the two Mars signs intertwined representing gay men and it's got a pink on
top, a yellow on bottom and a white in the middle.
The term refl...
Jesus.
I'm going to get this.
The term refers to slim, young, handsome hairless men.
Yes.
So that's that.
It's basically the opposite of the bear.
There we go.
Yes it is.
And the flag's actually a really good design.
It's not bad.
It reminds me of Easter.
Yeah, it's not.
Yeah.
That's when all the twinks come out and leave eggs in the yard.
Hell yeah.
The demigirl flag.
I don't know what that means.
Okay.
Let's look it up.
Yeah.
The demigirl flag is a symbol for those who identify as either demigirl or as a demigirl
or demigender or as a demigirl.
Demi girls are those who identify partially as women.
Okay.
The flag was created by Tumblr user Trans Rants and 15.
So this is another variation of the gay pride flag.
And then we have Demi Boy, which is the exact same except pink is blue.
Of course.
Yeah, of course.
And it was the same person at the same time.
Ooh, the Detroit flag.
This is people who are represents those who identify as gender neutral.
Okay.
Yeah, there's some politics with gender neutral and a gender.
This one's white, green and black that easily could be a country flag.
Yeah.
All right.
The next one is by gender.
I think it's by gender.
They didn't hyphenated.
It could be big ender.
I don't know.
By gender.
The by gender pride flag represents those who identify as two genders, whether male and
female or some combination of non binary genders.
Interesting.
And that's just another smorgasbord of colors in the same pride configuration that we're
used to.
The trans inclusive gay men's pride flag is another variant on the traditional pride
flag except they added a lot more bars or lines in there.
So gay men that want to also be inclusive of non cisgender gay men.
And I think that wraps up our flags.
So we'll put this link in the episode description like we said earlier.
So you can go through and look at that or if you're curious or interested.
I don't know how many of these flags are actually used in practice.
Some of them sound good in theory, but I don't know, because I haven't seen a lot of these.
Either of I I've only ever seen I might have seen the two spirit flag.
Maybe I can't remember.
But the only one I know for a fact is that just traditional gay pride flag for sure.
Yeah.
So one last story from Pride Fest that I wanted to share.
And this is one of the things that kind of kicked a lot of this off was one of the best
shirts that I saw there.
Because you know, you go and people wear graphic tees and it's like end homophobia and and
you know, everyone's welcome and different things like that.
There's one guy and he was wearing this shirt and it said in real big letters, I like my
whiskey straight, but my friends can come as they are.
Right.
That's very that's a very cute shirt.
Yeah, I like that one.
No, it's good.
And that's partly why I broke out the whiskey for this episode.
Oh, yeah.
But yeah, I mean, I had no idea there that many different kind of like subgroups or subcategories.
No, most of them are very recent flag designs.
You know, there for 20 years, there was only the gay pride flag, you know?
Yeah, because like the first one was like in the late 70s.
And then a lot of the other ones are kind of like 90s, late 90s.
And then and of all these other ones with more trans and inclusivity or whatever, we're,
you know, 2015 and newer.
Right.
Yeah, yeah.
They get more and more and more specific as time goes on, obviously.
So yeah, interesting, which is interesting, because generally when you're when you have
a cause and you're trying to rally support for the cause, you want the most inclusive
thing to rally everybody together under.
Right.
And then you're not going to have an idea or banner or or whatever, because if you get
too fragmented out there, then there's, you know, like fighting between groups and it's
a less clear message.
Right.
Well, we just have to consider that early on, everybody had all the non heterosexual people
had to get underneath one flag to get their rights.
And then the Supreme Court made decisions and allowed protections for homosexuals and
allowed protections for transgender people.
The more they the less they had to fight for and the more they started to splinter off,
you know, and I'm sure that once gay marriage was legalized, which would have been what
year was it?
I'll have to look it up.
Sixteen.
I want to say so.
I'm going to look it up.
All right.
Fifteen.
Okay.
Fifteen.
Yes.
So that makes a lot of sense then.
Yeah.
Because all these new flags started coming out right after gay marriage got legal.
Yep.
So they didn't need to have the solidarity anymore because the gay people got what they
wanted, you know?
Yeah, they achieved their combined mission, I guess.
Right.
In the late 90s makes sense too, because in the 90s, the Supreme Court decided that employers
couldn't discriminate against homosexuals and that people, renters couldn't be discriminated
against for their gender identity and all sorts of things like that.
So yeah, it makes sense.
So every time there's an advancement, there's a splinter group that wants their cut of the
pie, which is good, you know, I guess in its own way.
Yeah.
I mean, that says it should be like, you know, we've talked about this before is the government
shouldn't be precluding people from doing things as long as you're not harming somebody
else, right?
Right.
Yeah.
The government is not a moral actor.
So they're not the arbiter of truth and they're not the arbiter of moral correctness.
Yes.
So yes, yes.
I am nearing the end of this cigar.
Shockingly near as well.
Yeah, I figured you were because you took took a couple of flags in a row and I was like,
I'll catch up while he's talking.
I did.
I did take the couple of flags in a row because I'm like, I'm going to be done too early.
That never happens.
Yeah, but never happens.
Just ask my wife.
Ka-ching.
I have to say, looking at these, there's a lot of lazy design work in these flags.
Like they really just took that one person, Harvey Milk and Gilbert Baker's design and
they really just kind of ran with it.
Yeah, so they certainly did.
And I still think the winner is that what was it?
The Landis or Labris, Labris, the Labris lesbian flag.
That one was awesome.
Now that one is like I say that you could damn near have that at any event.
You know what I mean?
That could be your LARPing club flag.
That could be like your guild in a game flag.
Yeah, no, that's a great flag.
Like I say, I can see that being behind people's motorcycles and they're driving up and down
the road like mad men.
Oh yeah.
Or mad women.
I see a lot of women riding motorcycles now.
More than men.
Oh, OK.
Yeah, I don't get it.
I mean, I don't know why I never noticed it before or maybe it's a new trend.
Yeah, it could be.
I don't know.
I'd have to keep my eyes open when I'm out and about.
Yeah, keep your eyes peeled, man.
I see more women than men nowadays riding bikes.
So that's more power to them, I suppose, you know, whatever.
Yeah.
All right.
Was there anything else you want to talk about or do you want to do final thoughts on the
stick?
Yeah, we can do some final thoughts.
It's good.
It had to be.
It was very temperature sensitive, though.
I had to be really careful not to puff too fast because it got sour.
Yeah.
But it came back.
You know what I mean?
It would get a little sour and then I'd slow it down and it would start to taste really
good and it was sharp, sharp, but medium bodied, you know, and a small amount for me, at least
a small amount of transition.
But there was there was that kind of in the middle.
I liked it.
I don't I don't know if it's as good as some of the other ones that we had in the Gurkha
line.
I don't think it's I mean, I wouldn't purposefully buy it again, but it wasn't bad either.
You know, no, it wasn't bad.
It's very it's very fine.
It was tasty.
It just I think it comes down to kind of like more of the flavor profiles that you and I
enjoy.
Yeah, it's different than what we normally smoke.
It was good, though.
Yeah, it wasn't bad.
Yeah.
If if people are going for more of like a bitey medium bodied cigar, I would suggest
this for sure.
Yes.
So.
All right, do you have a favorite Gurkha that we smoked the past few episodes here?
Oh, geez.
Now I'd have to try to remember.
I think the Centurion was the torpedo, wasn't it?
I believe so.
Let's look.
I'll just I'll pull up our list here and then we can see what we smoked so we can remember.
Yes.
So I know I'm trying to remember here what we did.
We had one where it was interesting, interesting.
So OK, so we did the OK, so we did the Gurkha crest, the Centurion, the vintage 2001.
We did the beauty and the beast.
Yes.
So I remember we what we didn't like the beauty, did we?
No, we did not care for the beauty.
We did like the beast.
We like the beast.
I had stuff to say.
There's one that I like better.
Well, what the hell is the one that we quit halfway through?
You think so?
We quit one of them halfway through.
It might have been the crest.
I know.
I think so.
In the crest, we had a lot of like tech issues as well, which have since been resolved.
It wasn't on our end.
It was the platform that we're using to record.
I guess one of the browsers made it and it made an update change that kind of tweaked
how things worked.
But we were struggling that episode.
And then I think between that and how bad the cigar was, we were like, we're not even
going to try the rest of it.
Yeah, because that stick is still in my ashtray and I have three and a half inches left of
it.
Yeah, and that doesn't sound like you.
No, no, no.
I usually smoke them all the way down for sure.
So very rarely do we have that.
If you have more of those, that might be a good tequila cigar.
I don't think I have any more.
Thank God.
Okay, well then don't buy any more.
Don't buy them.
No, no, no, no.
The Bin Maduro is way better than that.
Yeah.
So.
But yeah, the Titan was good, better than submarine, apparently experimental.
Yeah.
So do you want to talk about that briefly or should we save that for another episode?
Oh, yeah.
Well, the time that this is not a whole lot to be in the past.
Yeah.
A bunch of billionaires died in an experimental craft.
Yeah, because he didn't want to hire boring 50 year old sub experts.
He wanted to hire inspiring diversity hires and use carbon fiber, I guess.
Yeah.
And safety is not cost effective.
Right.
That guy had a lot of crazy quotes.
So you get what you get.
Yeah, you get what you get.
It's interesting that the big news conglomerates are kind of slamming most of the rest of the
people in the on the planet saying, you know, good riddance, let's get some more orcas to
take down some more luxury yachts.
Let's send more billionaires to the bottom of the sea.
Because by and large, the average person who's not in the ruling class, a billionaire, doesn't
much care for billionaires.
And I don't think it's weird.
It's weird.
The false sense of self the billionaires have like, oh, we're God's gift to humanity.
Why are why is everybody cheering when five of us implode at the bottom of the sea?
I wonder.
I did see an interesting conspiracy theory where it was that the billionaires didn't
actually implode at the bottom of the sea, but they're now on Epstein Island.
I saw that as well, but they called it Caligula's Island.
Okay.
So for those people who don't know the Caligula story, look it up real quick for yourself.
It's awesome.
So Roman Emperor Caligula, that is.
Yes.
I don't know if there's any other Caligula's out there, but
who knows?
He probably had a better flag than some of these communities.
I'm guessing so.
But yeah.
Well, anyway, don't get into any Pringle cans to go to the bottom of the ocean with your
rich friends and we'll catch you next week.
Be safe, have fun.