Welcome to Nice Ashes, I'm Nate.
I'm Mike.
Now, what are we smoking tonight, Mike?
It tastes great just from the wrapper feel and smells really good too.
This is a 6 inch Maduro basket cigar from the local cigar shop in Minneapolis.
So very cheap, very reasonable.
I smoke a lot of these basket style cigars at home when I'm in a, you know, putz around
the garage or even sit and read a book.
I'll smoke a cigar outside.
I'll smoke something like this instead of a $16, $17 cigar.
Yeah, I think what?
This was like five or six bucks.
I believe so.
Mine has a very good draw.
Yeah, mine too.
I was just trying to formulate some first impressions here.
A little bit spicier wrapper.
It is.
We've been on a spicy kick lately.
Not just on the show.
Huh?
I said, not just on the show.
Yeah.
Oh, before we get into like the topic of the evening, I actually have a beer tonight because
it's warm enough outside.
And this beer I just grabbed because it was a beer that I haven't tried before.
And it's from a local brewery called Badger Hill down here.
But I have to preface this with I am not a fan of Prince.
Okay.
Musically.
You know, there's like Darling Nicky, great song, but kind of the rest of his stuff, not
hugely into it.
But this is called a-
You don't like Raspberry Parade?
No.
Is it parade?
I thought it was, is it parade or beret?
It's beret.
I always say Raspberry Parade because it's about sex.
To try to find out the Prince haters from the true people who know Prince and still
don't like him?
Sarah's uncle met Prince a lot because they were both partying in downtown at the same
time before Prince was famous.
And he can't stand Prince.
I mean, I'm sure he was a nice enough guy or whatnot.
I don't know.
He said he was a really nice guy.
His music just never-
He just never followed him.
He hasn't ruined all the bars.
Yeah.
It's just not a music style that I was hugely, hugely ever into.
But anyway, we're getting off the topic here.
Yes, the beer.
The beer is from Badger Hill, which is here in Chocopee, a little bit south of where I
am.
And it's called the Paisley Hazy.
And so I've been on a hazy IPA kick and it's Paisley Park themed or whatever.
But I have to tell you, this is like the smoothest tastiest beer.
It doesn't have the harshness of an IPA.
It's just so good.
Sarah and I both had one and she goes, it's like drinking water, but very, very tasty
water.
Have you had Hui?
Have I had wheat?
Hui, Hui, H-O-O-E-Y.
I don't believe so.
That's a hazy IPA that's really popular up here.
They have it in Crosby and Burndale and all these small little towns up here.
Okay.
What breed is that?
It's kind of like their main, I have no idea.
Oh, okay.
No idea.
Never ask because they have it at every bar.
I won yesterday at the Pirates Den in Burndale passing through, passing through a little
beautiful town of Burndale.
For our listeners who don't know, Burndale is a spot on US Highway 10 where you have
to slow down to 40 miles an hour.
They used to make manufactured homes with that business closed.
So now they pretty much don't have anything.
They got the bar though.
They have the Pirates Den gas station bar.
Doesn't get better than that.
No.
Tell you what, my hometown in Wisconsin was so small.
We had 89 in my graduating high school class.
The only chain restaurant we had was a subway and it was one of those subways that's in
the gas station.
You know what I mean?
It wasn't even its own building.
It was just in the gas station.
Sure.
Actually, I still don't think they have any chain restaurants there outside of that subway
somehow that held on.
Yeah, that's interesting.
They just opened up a brewery a couple of years back now.
I haven't been there though.
Really?
I would be, if I ever find myself there, not much reason to go there anymore because my
best friend from high school doesn't live there and then my dad doesn't live there anymore.
Either he sold the house and moved somewhere else.
Oh wow.
Okay.
Yeah, you really don't have a reason to go back, which is interesting.
Yeah, they do have a really good cheese co-op just outside of Grantsburg, Burnett Dairy
Co-op.
They've got really good cheese.
I mean, honest to God.
When I was in high school there, you walked in and it was like a converted Tom Thumb gas
station and they didn't even bother to move the layout.
It was just cheese in the coolers instead of sodas.
And then behind the counter you could get soft serve ice cream if you wanted.
But they did a huge renovation and now they've got their own little bistro and you can get
paninis.
They've got wine tasting and now it's first class, top of the line.
Sure.
So dreams do come true.
That's so funny.
I have a coworker who's originally from Wisconsin and he brings back smoked mozzarella cheese
from the co-op from his hometown.
Does every town in Wisconsin have a co-op?
Usually for a town to be incorporated, they need what?
Like a town council or something.
But in Wisconsin, all you need is a cheese store.
And then the state government is like, yep, we recognize you as a town.
That's really nice.
Don't tell that to Roy Cobb.
We were just talking about that guy at work today.
My coworker had a racist encounter at an auto parts store yesterday.
So this scraggly, he called him a trailer park looking guy, was eyeballing the clerk
behind the counter.
And Gary said he bought a bunch of parts.
He's fixing up his Corvette.
And he's like, yeah, he's like a young guy in his twenties who's happened to be black.
He's a really nice guy.
Help me out, blah, blah, blah.
He's like, I have no idea why that guy would be staring at him with the ugly eye other than
he had to have been just an out and out racist.
It's like, holy shit.
You don't hear about that very often in the modern world.
I don't know how race motivated this was other than it was a white person and a black cashier
at the post office here, right here in my town, just outside of Minneapolis.
And it's like this short white guy and he was upset about something that had happened
prior and I'm waiting in line.
And he's trying to play the, well, I was discriminated against card.
And the lady behind the counter is black and I'm just sitting there and I'm like, I don't
think this is going to play out how you want it to play out, my man.
But so he goes, well, I'm going to call my lawyer and I'm going to see if I have to take
your stuff or not.
And so he calls his lawyer on speed dial, I guess, which isn't really a thing.
You just save your contacts, right?
But anyway, calls his lawyer and he's trying to explain this whole thing.
And he's like really worked up and super heated.
And she did a great job of trying to stay calm and kind of deflate the escalation, the
incident.
But I was like, man, I don't know many people.
I think there's one person I know of that's a friend of mine that would in an instance
like that call his lawyer on the phone.
But it's, I mean, you're at the post office, dude.
You're not getting good service.
Sorry.
Like this is not going to happen.
Yeah.
Not unless you're into it.
No offense to like small town post offices where they know everybody's name, they're
super nice and all that.
But you know, down here.
I was not here to say that.
I'm like, unless you're at a small enough town to where you know who the clerk is.
Yeah.
Probably, they probably don't care about you.
Yeah.
I mean, where, you know, between the post office and the DMV, where are you getting
better customer service?
I mean, you know, marginally probably the post office, but.
Oh, for sure.
James went to the DMV a couple of years ago when he moved back to Minnesota.
Okay.
Got to get a new driver's license.
He was in California and Texas for a number of years.
And the person behind the counter was somebody that we graduated high school with.
And he said that she recognized me and I recognized her and she still treated me like dirt.
Yeah, actually, I hear that goes on your performance review.
If you work for the DMV and you're nice to anybody, you get like a demerit.
Oh my God.
I hope that's true.
That would be awesome.
That would be wonderful.
Oh, that would be so good.
So I don't know.
I may be like a half inch in on this.
What I'll say is there's like, there's no, not really bitter.
It's not bitter.
I'm not really getting much flavor from it at all.
Actually the wrapper is not really spicy anymore and I'm not really getting a whole lot of
flavor from it.
No, I'm, it's so-so.
So very smoky.
Oh yeah.
Mine is extremely-
There's more smoke coming out of this.
I was kind of like relighting it to keep it even burn and the whole thing kind of went
up in flames.
And so I was frantically like blowing out the end.
When I initially lit it, the end of the cigar changed colors from that dark, dark brown
to kind of tannish.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, mine did too.
Uh oh.
Yeah, I'm putting, I'm actually putting it down.
I'm puffing on it and putting it down to let the smoke come off of the wrapper.
Yeah.
I don't know what, I don't know what that is.
Somebody who knows more about cigars might be able to tell us why it's doing this, but
probably the short answer is, you know, it's a bin cigar.
So right.
And it didn't come individually wrapped.
So I mean, that might have something to do with humidity dryness.
Well, mine's at a perfect humidity.
I had mine in my humidor for-
Oh mine too, mine too.
Several weeks.
Yours, you just got-
Not weeks, but you know, one week for me.
Right.
I want results now, Mike.
I want them now.
You know, I've heard people wait, some guys wait 45 days.
They'll humidify a cigar that they buy.
You know, so you buy them online.
I always freeze them for a day or two.
Oh, okay.
I didn't know-
To kill off any tobacco bugs.
I just smoked those little fuckers.
Just smoke them.
I just don't want them to get into my other cigars because I have quite a few as you know.
Yes.
So now I didn't know that I should be freezing them.
Oh yes.
Yes.
Yeah.
If you already have a built up humidor, you want to freeze them because these big cigar
warehouses basically, they can't possibly have the quality control of a cigar lounge.
So I don't worry about it from a cigar lounge.
Those guys are maintaining their stuff at a top-notch level.
Yeah.
But when you get it from like pipes and cigars or something, I always freeze them.
Okay.
What about like, so like Tobacco Grove, they've got to have their stuff all kind of locked
down.
But what about some of these other smoke shops where they maybe specialize in like e-cigars
and the vape juice?
Well, you go to like Anthony's in uptown.
I would not worry.
Anthony's is a beautiful spot.
I would never worry about that.
I don't know.
If it's a real cigar lounge, I wouldn't worry about it.
Yeah.
You know, mine had a cigar lounge called the garage, Tom's Garage.
Okay.
It closed down unfortunately, but I would never worry about getting a cigar from him.
Yeah.
I've never been to a cigar lounge where I was worried about it.
I wouldn't buy anything if I was worried.
Yeah, that's true.
I wouldn't trust like those gas station style glass-frozen humidor's that you see at other
stores and stuff.
Yeah.
That's a little different.
All opinion.
But anyway, some guys say you should humidify your cigar for 45 days before you smoke them,
after you freeze them.
Okay.
And I'll do 21 days usually, three weeks.
Okay.
If I'm excited.
I have not been.
And you know, our first episode we were talking about, you know, you're more of a buy the
book and I'm more of a not, but I had no idea.
So, I've, but I don't smoke as much as you.
I've been smoking more now that we've been doing this podcast, but I've got some cigars
in there that have been in there for maybe two years now.
I have cigars that I purchased before I left Brainerd when I graduated high school.
Okay.
So two years.
Two years for you too is your max.
Two years.
These young kids, I tell you.
Oh yeah.
No.
So what the heck would that be?
16 year old cigar, something like that.
Somewhere in there, 15, 16 year old cigars.
I have a few that are original from the old cigar shop from town.
Okay.
So it's interesting that you had mentioned a 16 year old because what I kind of want
to talk about tonight has to do with a meme kind of, but then it has repercussions in
the legal system and along party lines and everything else.
So being that we're kind of mostly from the same generation, even if we might not identify
fully with the generation everybody kind of labels us.
Sure.
You've heard the phrase, okay, boomer, right?
Absolutely.
Yeah.
When, you know, it was a boomer and they're doing something super boomer-ish.
The young kids all say, okay, boomer.
But the one I saw now was okay, groomer.
And it's in response to the Florida's don't say gay bill that passed.
I have not heard this.
Okay.
Well, and I purposely didn't tell you because I wanted to talk about it with you.
And I didn't do any research on all the sports ball stuff we talked about last time.
So I have not heard about this bill and I have not heard about the okay groomer meme.
So I'm not a meme lord.
I'm not a meme lord.
Okay.
Not yet.
Okay.
So just let's sum it up.
I'm just going to straight out say I am not a lawyer.
I'm not a legal expert.
I am not a tax expert.
I'm not a doctor.
I'm not a physician.
Consult anybody, a professional.
If I say something that is incorrect.
Okay.
Just throwing that out there for our listeners.
Other than smoking is cool.
But only cigars, not vapes.
But anyway, so the don't say gay bill, they introduced it in Florida.
And that's just the nickname it got, the don't say gay bill.
But basically it is aiming to prevent sex education for kids in kindergarten through
third grade.
So basically saying you can't teach kindergartners through third graders sex ed.
But what that has now kind of transformed into is the LGBT plus community has said that
they are trying to hide transgender and alternative sexualities from children.
Okay.
So basically the liberals have billed it as a don't say gay bill.
So if they pass this bill, it means you can't say gay in Florida, you know, to garner support
for their side of the issue.
The other side now that says no third graders should be being taught anything about sex
from a public education, from a school.
They're saying, okay, groomer.
Saying that if you want to force alternative sexualities down kids' throats, you're basically
grooming them as a pedophile.
Okay.
So maybe I should have given you a little heads up that it was going to get dark pretty
fast.
Yes, this is interesting.
I'm drinking Guinness right now.
I'm drinking Guinness and the green labeled bottle and bond whiskey.
This is darker than Guinness, I can tell you that.
Pretty dark.
So not being one to leap on either side and me mostly hating both sides, politically speaking,
I did some research and typically, typically in America here, sex education doesn't start
until sixth grade.
So like sixth through 12th is basically when you could expect your child to go to the,
you know, quote unquote sex ed, let's put condoms on bananas type of thing.
Really?
See, I had sex ed in fifth grade and then we had health class in like sixth, seventh,
eighth, ninth grade and they had a little one or two day unit on it, you know?
Yeah.
Not to make a reference to a penis.
But yeah.
I mean a banana is one thing, a penis is another thing.
Right.
Yeah.
So I had sex ed by the principal in fifth grade.
And the girls, phrasing, phrasing.
Yeah.
They separated the boys and the girls out and you know, that they had a female teacher
teach the girls about periods and preparing them for the inevitable.
And then the boys were, I don't even remember what it was.
I think it was a little bit of condom talk and it was mostly about all that going through
puberty, like prepping us for the fact that we're about to enter puberty.
Yeah.
Well, that kind of, when you said you had sex ed by your principal, it reminded me of
a favorite joke that I have is that I was blessed with a massive cock, but unfortunately
that cock belonged to Father O'Malley.
Oh my God.
Okay.
So anyway, but the point is that there's a certain age typically that our society deems
correct or too young to be talking about sex things, to just sum it up.
You know, and I think, you know, sixth grade, fifth grade, somewhere in there, that's about
when you start, you know, bodies start changing, hormones start going.
Again, I'm not a doctor and it's different case by case basis.
So I think, you know, we can-
It makes sense to have it at that time because it was at the end of fifth grade year for
me.
But that's, it makes sense.
You want to prepare, you know, young people for the inevitable, right?
It's inevitable.
It's going to happen.
So.
So yeah.
So I just, I was, I was curious because, you know, if you read the media about it, it's
the don't say gay bill and they're all, you know, backwards hillbillies in Florida.
And that's a whole different topic, you know, whether or not the Floridians are or aren't.
But you know, when you actually look at what the bill was saying, cause I heard the okay
groomer and I thought, well, that's hilarious as a response to it.
And so I thought, well, why don't I look it up and see what that bill actually is?
You know, not living in Florida doesn't really bother me because I don't live there and I
don't plan on living there and I don't plan on sending my daughter to school there.
So, but when I read it and they said they just don't want kindergartners through third
graders getting sex ed, I thought, well, that's, that seems reasonable to me.
It's well within the lines of reason as far as I can tell, especially if, especially if
they're actually doing that, you know?
Yeah.
And I mean, I have no idea because you know, like you said, it's been 16 some years since
either of us have been in school, high school or middle school this longer.
Right.
It's been 20 years since we were in middle school.
Yeah.
And so my initial thought, I mean, I literally was, I entered high school 20 years ago.
Yeah.
So my, my initial, my initial thought just as a person was, well, I don't want my parents
talking to me about that stuff.
You know, cause it's awkward.
It's weird.
I don't want it.
But as a parent, I'm thinking, well, I don't want some school official talking to my daughter
about that stuff.
You know, but it kind of comes down to like parental responsibility or personal responsibility.
Like that stuff's out there.
You know, sex stuff is out there.
I heard about sex, like on the school bus, you know, some other kid had the talk with
their parents and then told the rest of the school.
So we all knew about it, you know, well before sixth grade.
I'm not saying that's right or wrong.
It's just, it's out there.
And I think, and we didn't even have cell phones back then.
So we didn't have the internet.
So it's not out of the line of reasoning that a lot of these kids before sixth grade are
going to know all of this stuff anyway.
They certainly will.
They'll learn from their peers.
I mean, not the, maybe, yeah.
I mean, maybe not the safest way to do stuff, not the best way to do stuff, but I mean,
they're going to have ideas and they're going to have things in their head, you know, about
it.
But I thought it was interesting because, you know, the media just makes it out to be,
they don't say gay bill.
And then the other side is like, they're calling, you know, so the liberals are saying, oh,
don't say gay.
You don't like anybody that's not heterosexual.
And then the other side is saying, well, you're grooming them for sex, you know.
So it's kind of like gets back down into that area where it's like, if you read the bill,
it seems fairly reasonable to me, regardless of anybody's sexual orientation or gender,
that you know, kindergarten is probably too soon.
I would say that, you know, this, I'm thinking about this and this boils down to, and I think
we've talked about this before.
We both grew up in the post Cold War era and you know, in the nineties, this kind of reformative
middle school teenage years.
Yeah.
Pogs.
Yeah.
Pogs and Pokemon, which I never played Pokemon.
Yeah.
Magic the gathering.
I played WWF before it got turned to WWE, you know, WCW wrestling on TV.
Back then, especially, you know, when the Afghan war broke out September 11th, the liberal
wing of the Democratic party started to become more and more authoritarian in their view.
And this seems to me to kind of be that flex where these left-wing people are trying to
control what other people do, you know, because we don't all think alike and I'm not, I am
not a conservative Christian, as you know, but there are conservative Christians and
they want to be able to brainwash their children in their particular flavor of reality.
And he says there's liberal people and they want to brainwash their children into their
particular view.
And there's a big movement, authoritarian movement on the left to force their views
on people.
And I would say on the right.
Huh?
Well, I'd say on both sides.
Oh, now it certainly is, you know, growing up, it was a lot of, especially in Minnesota.
The Republicans in Minnesota were very authoritarian and the Democrats were less so, but now both
sides have become just anti-freedom, you know?
Yeah.
Well, and we talked about this a little bit last episode with trans athletes and things.
And, you know, I have to believe that by and large, the majority of Americans really, really,
really don't care.
If you want to be trans or if you are trans or if you are gay or if you're pansexual or
any of the other things, most Americans, it doesn't affect their day-to-day life.
If you, an individual, feels a certain way and wants to live a certain way with your
life, you know, as long as you're not breaking the law, meaning like just the base laws,
like you're not going out and killing people, you're not stealing, robbing, I don't know,
you know what I mean?
But by and large, it doesn't bother me if somebody decides to get gender reassignment
surgery.
How does my life change from that?
It doesn't.
And so I think that maybe the liberals or the Democrats, whatever they're going by these
days, see that as, oh, a majority of Americans agree with us so we can double down on some
of our weird dogma.
Yeah.
I'll call back the last week.
So last Wednesday, the United States bowling gongers banned a bunch of bowling balls.
Yeah.
And it's causing a big ruckus in the bowling community.
But nobody else outside of the bowling community cares about them banning a couple of bowling
balls.
Half of them.
Yeah.
Well, I'm telling you right now, this is the first I've heard of and I'm ready to riot.
Right.
Exactly.
And I view truly, even though we were having fun last week about the trans athletes, I
truly don't care.
Right?
The high school sports and the college sports will figure out what they want to do and it'll
be a trial and error process and they'll do what's best for them.
I mean, I think ultimately, I'm not involved.
Yeah.
Ultimately what I'm saying is I'm glad I'm not a coach and I'm glad I don't have strong
feelings one way or the other about it because-
Well, I'm glad I'm not one of those female athletes.
I can tell you that because I know that I'd be pretty upset.
I know me and I know me when I was 17.
A 17 year old me would be very upset if I was a girl.
You know what?
17 year old me might not be upset if you were a girl.
I don't know.
I mean, we'll see.
Life might be different.
It's funny because I just had a buddy call me and he's feeling a little bit down earlier
today and he had a message from this girl he's been communicating with that seemingly
ended their communications.
He was like, oh man, I really want to just send her a message and tell her to fuck off
and all this.
He's like, but I'm calling you for advice.
I said, you know what?
College me would have said, yeah man, here's some more choice words you can add to that
message.
I said, but you know what?
Current me is like, it costs nothing to say nothing.
Yeah, you're upset and you're mad, but what if she changes her mind?
What if you misunderstood the situation?
What if even she didn't change her mind, you were mad and then 20 years from now you meet
again and she goes, you know what?
It was really great you didn't tell me to go f myself.
I don't know.
It doesn't cost anything to be a friend that you end up getting with.
Well yeah, or a sister who knows, you know?
Yeah, whatever.
It's a people, especially online, all this, there's a lot of controversy right now about
people being mean online.
Yeah.
The thing that they don't say on like the big talking heads on the television is that
the people who are involved with this, both on the saying negative things side and the
people who care is that those people are losers, right?
They do not feel like they are winning at life.
They feel bad and they're doing this online outlet thing because they're frustrated angry
about where they're at.
Yeah.
Because people who are not don't care.
And there's fewer repercussions online, I feel.
I mean, maybe now you can get some hate speech stuff thrown at you or hate speech charges
or whatever, but I mean, there's hardly any repercussions.
But you get banned off of Twitter or whatever.
You can get banned.
You could get like sued for cyber bullying or something.
I mean, as long as you're not doing the, what is it, the swatting, the houses or whatever.
Right.
You know, it's like, oh, freedom of speech.
If you don't like it, log off, you know, like go to a different website.
But the thing is too, that that stuff happens everywhere.
It happens everywhere.
Even before there was the internet, people were calling each other names.
Sure.
And I'm a free speech hardliner.
You know, I completely disagree with social media platforms banning white supremacists.
The best thing for the white supremacists themselves as individuals and for our society
is for them to spout their stupid nonsense and then to have that addressed by like Cornel
West one time.
You know what I mean?
Like, it doesn't have to be a daily thing for Dr. West or, you know, whoever it happens
to be.
But here's the thing, but even one interaction could change that person's mind.
Yeah.
And that was better for them.
It's better for society.
You know, I mean, so on one hand, yeah, sure.
I agree.
On the other hand, and this, you know, it almost pains me to say this, but the constitution
doesn't guarantee that businesses will respect your first amendment.
And that's the whole case that they did in the Colorado bakery that didn't want to make
a cake for a gay same sex wedding.
And they ultimately said, you know what, every business has the right to choose, blah, blah,
blah.
See, and I consider that to be a fascist loophole because I do not view these huge corporations
as being separated from the government by anything more than a veneer.
You know, they are paying for policy.
So they are creating policy for the government one way or the other.
So they are the government.
Well, and I 100% agree that you know why everybody's so up in arms about Republicans versus Democrats
because all the politicians or all the people in power, which are politicians and Jeff Bezos
and Elon Musk and Bill Gates and all these other people that have most of them have actually
been to Epstein Island, by the way.
But regardless, all of these rich people, super rich, like I'm talking super, super
rich, rich enough to build dick shaped spaceships and go up into space rich and politicians.
They're all on the same side.
They don't care if Trump's in, if Biden's in, they don't care.
They don't give two shits about that.
They want to stay in power.
And the only way they can stay in power is if we get riled up about Will Smith slapping
Chris Rock.
If we get riled up about a don't say gay bill that has nothing to do with limiting people
saying gay.
That's how they stay in power.
Wedge issues.
All it is is wedge issues.
It used to be gay marriage, which was like the biggest no brainer growing up.
I even as a teenager, I knew that it was a no brainer.
Workers are taxpayers, citizens are citizens.
That's it.
We should all have the same access to government policy.
Yeah.
Well, why not?
It was all abstract because nobody really got hurt by legalizing gay marriage.
It was pointless.
Yeah.
But I mean, that's to say like, you know, under that logic and I agree with you, the
mega corporations were not capitalist, were corporatist or something.
I don't know what the new terminology would be for our society as a country, but it's
sure we're a fascist oligarchy.
Yeah.
I mean, it sure as shit is capitalism because capitalism, we would just say, Oh, I mean,
you go talk to anybody, anybody.
I'm talking anybody is Walmart a good company or bad company?
Terrible company.
Is Amazon a good company or bad company?
Terrible.
Okay.
Well, have you canceled your prime membership then?
No.
Oh, okay.
Well, why not?
Because it doesn't make any difference.
He has more money than God.
It doesn't matter.
Like, they tore down a bridge so he could get high.
I know.
But you can't, but that's the whole thing is like the average citizen can't make, I
mean, I'm not saying they can't make a difference, but I'm saying these people have so many streams
of income coming in that if you want to sit there and stomp your foot and say, well, I'm
not going to buy at Walmart.
I'm not going to buy at Amazon.
I'm not going to do this.
Well, congratulations, you're paying like triple for the same cheap shit that you could
have got for cheaper.
Like, I'm sorry, you don't have enough money to make that distinction.
You have to go shop there.
And that's the way they set it up.
That's the way they set it up.
They're necessities now.
You can't get around it.
Certain things still drive me nuts.
You know, I've met a lot of guys in construction and in maintenance that will buy a cheap pair
of work boots.
Yeah.
And then they talk about how much they love America and how we should all support war.
You could have literally spent a little bit more money and bought American made work boots.
Yeah.
And then not have to go to war.
Because you want to save like 75 bucks, you know?
And now you want to support war.
You know, but that's the thing is like minimum wage hasn't gone up.
Companies want to pay the bare minimum for everybody, for employees.
So there's not that much room for a lot of these people, you know?
And they don't know what they're talking about.
Like most of them do not.
Like how many people could you go and ask about the don't say gay bill and ask them
what it was actually like the actual language, what they're actually trying to prevent with
this bill.
And none of them would, none of them will be able to tell you anything other than, well,
Florida doesn't want people to say gay anymore.
And that's what they would say.
And that would be it.
Yeah, it's the same thing with systemic racism and what is it?
Well, with anything really, it's like, if you explain it, if you actually have a long
conversation and explain what they're talking about, most people kind of all get on the
same page or they at least they at least see the logic behind it and can give you a valid
valid to them or a well thought out like counter, you know, like, sure, it shouldn't just be
like, oh, they don't want you to say gay.
Oh, well, you want them to say gay.
Well, you're grooming them for gay child prostitution or something like, I don't know.
I mean, it shouldn't be like that.
Well, people are lazy.
You know, I thought when the internet went from 1.0 to 2.0, and we started getting smartphones,
I really believed them.
Like we are about to see a revolution in consciousness and we're actually going to have a, like a
more enlightened society and the exact opposite has happened.
I feel like people are lazier than ever intellectually.
Yeah.
Well, being a meme, Lauren, I saw a great one where it was a tweet and they said, Hey,
remember when, when we thought it was easy access to information that was making everybody
be an ass hat?
Yeah.
Our cell phones in our pocket connected to the massive wealth of human knowledge across
all of time.
Yeah, that wasn't it.
Like access to knowledge and information.
It doesn't, it doesn't matter if you don't know how to use it, you know, and it's crazy
because like my parents were always like, well, don't believe everything you read on
the internet.
And then they'll post all these weird Facebook things.
And it's like, uh, what?
Yep.
I have a cousin who likes to send insane right wing conspiracy memes.
And I don't know him well enough to know if he's being serious about it or if it's a joke
to be honest.
And I'm not going to have that discussion, you know, with my, my second cousin or whatever.
Yeah.
But I think you should be a good Thanksgiving dinner topic.
Right.
Yeah.
But you know what the technology stuff, we watched the Oscars as I, as I mentioned, but
the coolest thing, I mean, honestly, the coolest thing that we saw were some of the commercials
and one was a Snapchat recognizing sign language.
So you could sign into your phone and it would pick up what you were saying and send language.
Like it would, it would, it learned.
And then there was another one for, uh, it was another app, uh, for like a bedridden
and kind of like paralyze people and they could like look with their eyes left or right and
they could control the screen on their phone.
And that's what technology should be doing.
That's what it should be doing.
Not whatever else people are using it for.
Um, you know, but it's like, man, that's closing the gaps and the barriers and it's, uh, helping
these people that have been underserved that, you know, can really finally do stuff.
Absolutely.
Yeah, I know this is like a first world, uh, benefit obviously of the internet, but, uh,
when I got the internet, I didn't have the internet at this house until last year, right?
We just became available where I live, uh, for the first time ever.
So now I have it.
So I installed some smart switches in the house and I love being able to have my outside
lights on a timer.
So if I know that I'm going to be out, you know, every, every Thursday, I can have it
turn on.
I can have it turn off and I can have it turn on again.
You know, what else is cool?
It's awesome.
Yeah.
Uh, so I've got this app.
It's called if that, then this, and you can basically connect all your smart things together,
but I've got it connected to a location, uh, beacon on my phone.
So whenever I leave like a one block radius around my house, all the cameras on my security
cameras turn on to motion activated and then it sends a list to my phone.
And when I come back, it turns them off.
So I don't have to look at my, myself walking across my patio or something.
Um, so it's like a cheat.
I shouldn't say cheat.
It's like a short way to do logic chains.
Yes.
Yep.
And you can do it with lights too.
Like if I arrive home, turn on my lights, you know, you can do it with anything that's
connected.
Um, it's great.
It is great.
I mean, I, I, uh, have, uh, five switches and a couple of lights on, you know, plugs
and I like it.
It's awesome.
Yeah.
And they use to have the old school timers.
You could set the old timers and they can, yeah, we still use one for like our Christmas
tree.
When we break it out, we pull out the old 1987, you know, programmable 24 hour a day.
You push the little tabs down, um, thing for the, for the Christmas lights.
Sure.
We used to use them for cameras, timers and stuff.
Yeah.
We've got a daylight, like a light sensor for our patio and you can tell it how long after
dark to stay on, which is, which is nice, especially in the summer when you're out there,
you know, it's like, Oh, they shut off.
It must be, you know, about 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock or something.
Right.
I really like being able to turn the lights on and off of my phone too.
Oh yeah.
That's great.
Yep.
It's awesome.
But again, that's like total first world benefit.
It is a help.
You know, people that don't have access to electricity 24 hours a day.
That's true.
But, but I mean, the point is technology can do amazing things and that's really what it's
supposed to do is make people's lives easier, not, not make them harder and not, um, drive
them apart.
Right.
I mean, I mean, you know, these cameras that I buy, uh, they're really cheap, like really
crazy cheap and they've all got infrared night vision motion sensors.
This new one I have on the patio has a color night vision.
Like that's better than Arnold had in predator.
I mean, it's got color night vision.
Wow.
And it was like, it was less than 30 bucks.
That's incredible.
So you know, they manufacture these things for like four or $5 a pop.
Right.
And you could, you could literally send them anywhere and it would hardly cost you anything
or you're just selling that cost.
Yeah.
I mean, not just cameras, like what are you going to do with a camera if you don't have
internet and you don't have electricity and stuff like that.
But I mean, that's what technology should be doing for everybody.
Should we be making everybody's life easier and not what it's seemingly doing, which is
trapping all of us in this, some kind of like corporate hell hole.
Which is what, I mean, arguably it was what we're at now.
Yeah.
But it's not really that bad for me personally, but.
Yeah.
Well, you got, you got bowling.
So that.
Right.
Exactly.
Well, I got so mad the other day.
Not bad.
Let's be honest.
I didn't get mad.
I was cynical about it.
They just gave Ukraine like $13 billion for some reason.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
And.
There's a war there or something.
Well, there's a war, but according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the federal government
could end homelessness for $20 billion a year in this country.
Oh, of course.
Yeah.
It's like.
They could end student loan debt.
They could end people that can't afford medications and set up GoFundMe's and then die anyway.
Right.
It's insane.
No political will to end homelessness.
You know, they'll kick them out of where they're at and move them around the city and harass
them and do all that.
Yeah.
No will to just.
Oh, and they do the, they spend lots of money.
I mean, lots of money on these anti-homelessness architecture things.
Like you've seen those benches where you're like, oh, that's like a cute bench, but really
it was designed so that homeless people couldn't sleep on it.
Yes.
Yep.
Louis Rossman shows stuff like that in New York City and they, even on the grates.
Oh yeah.
Everywhere.
Under bridges.
Even here in Minneapolis, you walk, you walk around and you look at those, some of those
benches and you're like, all right, I know what you're doing with that.
Yep.
Yeah.
Instead of a, like I say, I know no, no solution is going to be a hundred percent, but you
gotta do something.
You know?
Yeah.
Well, and any of that's the government.
So they thought they were going to, they took drugs to war and drugs won.
So I mean, just cause they say they could do it for 20 million and end homelessness,
would homelessness win?
I don't know.
I mean, they're pretty inept at things if you can't fight drugs.
Well, I mean, the drug war was a front anyway.
Oh, well I'm on the side of drugs.
Don't get me wrong.
I'm just saying the government is inept.
One of Nixon's old advisors has now formally admitted that the drug war was formulated
to attack dissidents and people of color back in the seventies.
Yeah.
You know, like that's what it was for.
It was never about getting rid of drugs.
You know, it's so ridiculous.
You know, obviously it didn't prevent meth from spreading like wildfire through northern
Minnesota.
Yeah.
And it didn't stop crack in the city areas.
It certainly didn't stop the heroin epidemic that's currently going.
Well, and then you get into other things like Oxycontin and just prescription drugs in general.
So I mean, just one big round of applause for drugs, I guess, for winning that.
So cigar, but it kind of comes back.
Oh, I'm sorry.
Go ahead.
Oh no, I have about two inches left in my cigar.
Yeah.
So I was going to say I'm over halfway.
I've got maybe four, but Mike smokes and can take greater length than myself.
And I will say, you know what, if it's the best thing I can say about the cigar outside
of the price is it is pretty dang consistent.
It's been consistently bland the whole time that I've been smoking it.
But see, the reason why I'm saying I'm in the last two inches is because now the flavor
is starting to change.
Okay.
For the better or for the worse?
First four inches, I would say for the better.
I mean, change is good.
Yeah, yeah.
Typically, in a good cigar, I expect kind of a change of flavors throughout the process.
This has been, I'd smoke this mow in the lawn.
Yeah.
You know?
Yeah.
I could do it mow in the lawn.
This wouldn't be a bad one if you had friends that maybe never smoke cigars or were interested
in kind of like getting into cigars.
It's a little darker maybe than I would start with, but you know, a bin cigar like this,
I think that'd be a great just starter.
Hey, you want to get into cigars?
Here, try a couple of these.
You know, you could grab a couple different blends or whatever and just say, you know,
whichever one you like best, you know, branch out in that area.
I wonder if we made this into a tequila cigar.
You know, I was just thinking that.
We need to talk about the tequila cigars for our listeners if they haven't heard about
it.
But this one would be a good one, although I think that for whatever reason, the wrapper
on the end here is a little soggier than my wrappers usually are at this point.
So I don't know if that's a wrapper thing or if that's just, I've been drinking the
paisley hazy and just getting excited.
It's a slobberknocker.
Yeah.
I got other things I could say about it, but I won't because it's 2022 and they're no longer
appropriate.
My grandpa and my grandparents, well, he was a World War II vet and he was in the merchant
marines with the Navy and he was off the beaches of Normandy for that.
And then he was stationed off of Japan right before they dropped the bombs.
But they would always get a big bowl of nuts, you know, like mixed nuts for Christmas.
This huge bowl, like this massive bowl of all of these nuts.
And it was exciting as a kid because, you know, as a kid, you really only know peanuts,
you know, maybe sunflower seeds.
But these were, you know, walnuts and things I still don't even know the names of, the
true names, because there were some that had some very, very racist nicknames that he would
call them.
You know, I don't know, it wasn't really like a hateful way of just, hey, grab me one of
those, you know, expletive expletives.
And you'd be like, oh, okay.
And you go and grab it and, you know, it was a tasty nut, but that's not what it's called.
And so, you know, I may never know what it's called.
My grandfather was also a World War II vet, and he also got nuts for Christmas.
And I also heard those terms.
And I believe you're talking about Brazil nuts.
I think we're talking about the same one.
You're talking about Brazil nuts.
Yes.
My mother made sure to tell me the real names of the nuts because, you know, she was a school
teacher and a nurse.
Yes, she was worried you were going to find yourself at a cocktail party at a young age
and say an inappropriate thing.
There's many electrical components when I was in a party that I did not know the real
name to it.
You know, it's like, oh, grab me that donkey dick.
I didn't know what it was called, you know.
Flexible explosion proof fitting.
Yes.
But, yeah.
Donkey dicks and horse cocks and other less appropriate names.
Yes.
And that's sometimes that even Mike and I will not say on a podcast.
No, no, no.
When I became a journeyman, they started sticking with female apprentices a lot for various
reasons, mostly because I wasn't going to sexually harass them and I wasn't going to
allow them to, you know, slough off.
You know, I'd make them work.
And a lot of the older guys didn't feel comfortable with that because they're, you know, creepy
a little bit, I'm sure.
But I had so I had to learn all the right names for all the materials.
So I don't want to say all this nasty shit.
And then I would have to tell them like this is the trade name for this.
So when you know, XX says, I bring me the this, this is what he means.
Very interesting conversations, you know, to talk to your 20 year old female apprentice.
Well, the more you know.
Yeah, the more you know.
So always interesting.
Yeah.
So bringing it back to the tequila cigars.
Now, Mike and I, we did try this once, but I think we both agreed that it was we were
a little little overzealous with tequilaing the cigars and it turned it into kind of a
soggy, soggy stick.
We had imbibed beforehand.
Oh, yes, and we imbibed after hand.
Yes, we did.
But just for our listeners, explain to them kind of how we got turned on to this.
So I was scrolling YouTube, as one does, and a video popped up of my feed and it had Arnold
Schwarzenegger.
And he was explaining how to make a tequila cigar.
So anybody who wants to watch the video, just type in, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger tequila
cigar and he'll tell the story.
Great storyteller.
Makes me jealous.
I think he gets paid to do that, though.
As an actor and a governor, ex-governor.
I mean, he gets paid to tell stories.
He's personally, I think that he's incredible, you know.
Oh, yeah.
Anyway, he'd be a fun guy to meet, I think.
Oh, what an intense guy.
You know, he's like a, let's just call it a dock worker who really liked to lift weights.
He got really good at lifting weights.
So he moved to the superpower, didn't speak English, learned to speak English, became
an actor, became so successful as an actor, he married into the royal family of the country
and ended up becoming the governor of the biggest state in the country.
Yeah.
Pretty impressive rise, you know, in life.
But anyway, so basically a tequila cigar, put your tequila in a little glass and you
brush the cigar with tequila and you dip the tip of the cigar after you cut it and you
let it muddle, so probably for a couple seconds.
Yeah, not like five.
Not like what you did.
More like five seconds.
Just put it in there and then start yakking.
I mean, it will soak up liquid.
It's a mostly dry, meant to be ignited thing and it will soak up moisture.
So for a couple seconds, you know, maybe three, you dip the tip and then you let it sit and
dry out a little bit and then you smoke it.
But he said you can turn any, even like a shit cigar into like a phenomenal smoke this
way.
Like he swore by it in the video.
He did.
He swore by the method.
So we can test it with this.
Yes.
I have some Alec Bradley seconds that I was going to try it with and they're actually
pretty good already.
Okay.
We, you know what?
I think we need to try it with one that we're not like, not in love with.
Yeah.
This one would be great.
I think this one would be a good one because I have a couple of these in the in the humidor.
So I mean, I guess, I guess to be fair to this cigar though, like I'm not hating it.
I'm not hating it.
There's been cigars I've smoked.
Usually they're like the really sweet ones, you know, but I'm not hating it.
You know, like I'll finish it.
You know, I'm not going to put it out by any means.
I used to hate the real sweet ones.
And then Sarah got acid blondes or something.
They're very sweet, like vanilla cigars.
Okay.
And I didn't mind them.
She hated it.
And I was like, that's not too bad.
So I think, you know, as I get older, I'm starting to really kind of just like everything
as far, you know what I mean?
Like, yeah, it's fine.
I don't want it every day.
No.
Yeah.
And I think, I think it really comes down to like, not just the cigars that you enjoy,
but which cigars do you enjoy for which things you're doing?
You know, if you're drinking, if you're drinking a really dry drink, maybe a sweet cigar would
be the way to go.
You know, if you're mowing the lawn, this cigar might be the way to go.
You know.
It pairs well with Guinness.
Yeah, it pairs well with this, the Hazy Paisley or whatever.
So for non Minnesotans, the Paisley Park is Prince's residence slash recording studio
that they've now turned into a museum and tour destination.
You can go and tour it.
But that's the name Paisley Park or Paisley Hazy.
They named it after that residence.
Yes.
And actually we, Sarah and I went to Paisley Park after Prince died.
This is before you could actually go in, but we went and saw the big mural that people
had created on the, on the chain link fence around it.
You know, they went and put their own, you know, artworks or Prince memorabilia or whatnot.
But you know, we were close and we're like, I don't know, you know, let's go check it
out, you know, one time thing.
But it would be neat to go and see the recording studio, the setup and all that, even as not
a fan of his music, you know, it'd still be neat.
Oh, absolutely.
He's a, was a big musician.
So yeah.
And he was a huge musical influence on tons of people and did things to further, you know,
non white musicians and other things.
So it's a Minnesota legend.
Yeah.
Not slamming the dude.
Well, you know what, Bob Dylan, not really a fan.
I'm just going to come out and say it as long as I'm saying things I'm not fans of.
See and I like Bob Dylan.
I like Bob Dylan, but I, you know, being from the Northern territory, I grew up with a lot
of folk music, a lot of folk musicians around here.
They like to wear their lumberjack shirts and you know, one I enjoy folk music.
But I think like Bob Dylan is the mumble rapper of folk music.
So I don't know.
I mean, he's got some good songs.
Don't get me wrong.
But I don't think I'd ever sit down and maybe I would after a couple of tequila cigars,
you know, but I don't know if I'd sit down and be like, I got to hear this Dylan record,
you know, part one to the end or track one to the end.
I like it, but that's okay.
I have about an inch and a half left of the cigar now.
Yeah.
And the flavor change is definitely occurring.
Like all the flavor changes in the last two inches of the cigar.
Okay.
It's all right, you know.
I've got a little bit more, maybe three inches.
I'm getting a little, little subtle flavor changes.
Not sure if it's good.
It's not bad.
Not a bad change.
Maybe it's a good change.
I think the whole of the cigar so far has been bland is what I would say.
I would just say it's bland.
I would agree with that assessment.
It's a bit bland.
You know, it's something like you said, you're doing something, I don't know, whatever, mowing
the lawn.
If you're just like, eh, I don't feel like smoking something that's going to overpower
my mouth.
You know, let's say you're having a fantastic dinner later or something.
It's fine.
You know, I think this would be a good second cigar.
You know, let's say you come over or I go over.
And by the time we're to the second cigar, the cigar really isn't important anymore.
No, especially if we've been drinking.
Right.
And that's kind of what I was getting at.
If we had been inbinding.
The second cigar, you don't need a $10 or $15 or a $20 stick at that point.
No.
You start with that.
Yeah.
And you move on to this.
This is a very good maybe social cigar where it's like, hey, we're here.
Okay, I'm going to light up my cigar.
Hey, we're going to get in the car and move, but you can't smoke in the car.
All right, I'll put it out and throw it away.
Like, I don't care.
Like it's not no big loss.
I can go do something else now.
You know, like it's not a.
Right.
I'm heartbroken about cutting the tip off and relating it.
Yeah.
I don't think it would hurt it any.
Which I usually smoke a shrew for a second cigar or something like that.
And we are going to do a shrew showdown at some point.
Yes, we are.
We're going to probably do the Kentucky, I'm guessing a bandito and then I don't know,
red line or we'll figure it out.
Yeah, we'll figure it out.
We got some more planning to do, but that's in the works for some, some episode sometime.
Yeah.
We're also going to do a CEO flavors showdown.
Oh, that'll be good.
Yes.
I ordered them up.
I like the moon trance.
I am 100% behind the moon trance, but.
Is that the vanilla one?
Yeah, I don't know if we're adding the other ones.
Oh, is the moon trance, is that that vanilla one you're talking about?
Yeah, it's a vanilla bourbon.
Okay.
Yeah.
Oh, well, vanilla bourbon.
Yes.
Hello.
Yes.
It's very good.
Yeah.
One of my favorite cigars are the diesel whiskey Rose.
Those are delicious.
I liked it too.
I liked that cigar, which I'd never had a diesel cigar before then.
Then I was impressed.
Yeah, me either, but it was good.
It was good.
Yeah.
So I guess like this cigar is really good for social, for thinking about other cigars
you'd maybe rather be smoking.
Oh yeah.
I mean, I would love to have a Diablo right now.
I think that.
Yeah.
It reminds me of a darker cigar, but it's just a remembrance.
Yeah.
Oh, oh, it's like the La Croix of cigars.
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
This cigar was stored near a case of dark cigars.
So it just picked up a hint, hint of lime, a hint of dark cigar.
Oh man.
A hint of lime.
This can was shown a Wikipedia article on pomegranates.
And so now it kind of vaguely tastes like pomegranate.
Oh yes.
I've been searching Wikipedia on all these journalists.
There's been some heat in the news, which I know you don't watch about these Ivy league
educated female journalists claiming that they're being harassed and all this stuff.
And it's all online harassment, but they're trying to compare it to like in-person harassment.
Yeah.
It's, but I mean, so.
You just can't compare what's going on on the internet in that little texty box to being
harassed in person.
Like it's ridiculous.
Well, but now think about this because Meta, Facebook and Meta, they're going to do this
whole metaverse where it's going to be like ready player one, and you're going to log
in to your little avatar.
And then you have the real question if you kill somebody else's avatar, is that technically
murder or not?
It's going to open up a whole new realm of lawsuits.
I'm sure.
Well, there was a journalist who tried Meta and she claimed that she was groped on Meta.
Yeah, I was groped on Meta.
Which is AKA not being groped.
Just so everybody's aware.
Being groped on the internet is not being groped.
What if you're wearing a haptic suit?
Well that's different.
I'm not going to worry about that since that's not the case.
We'll get there when we get there, Nate.
We'll get there when we get there.
I'm never going on the metaverse.
I shouldn't say never.
Never say never.
I'm likely not to go on the metaverse.
I would really rather not go on there, but I don't know.
I don't want to be necessarily that crotchety old man that doesn't enjoy technology.
I was on Facebook when Facebook first opened up to other colleges because I was in college.
Then they opened it up to high school kids and we were all like, oh man, it's going to
be ruined.
Then it opened up to everybody and it totally was ruined.
I was on there quite a bit throughout college and even shortly after graduating college
and posting opinions and trying to debate people online and stuff.
Now it's like, yeah, I go on and I can see pictures of my niece and my nephew and my
family members.
I went in this, not this last election, but the election that Trump won.
I went and muted a lot of the stuff that my dad was posting.
Now I don't see any political stuff.
You can customize your feed so you don't see the stuff that you don't want to see.
That's not like, why would I go on there?
I can play with my daughter.
I can go outside.
I can smoke a cigar and talk with you.
I don't need to be on there.
I don't know why I would want to go on Metta.
We just picked up a fourth cat.
I'm not sure if I mentioned that last week.
I saw that.
You were trying to pawn it off.
I was trying to pawn it off.
Yeah.
We found the cat in the garage.
But too late.
It chose you.
It really did.
I went to the vet and got the cat shots and a checkup.
She had some mites in her ear or whatever.
Now it's like, four cats and a dog.
It's like, jeez, I don't have time to go online.
I have pets to take care of.
Bowling to bowl.
Bowling and work and my parents.
People need to focus on their own lives.
I know Jordan Peterson's heavily criticized by a lot of people for a lot of reasons, but
people should focus on their life.
You're in it for you.
Yeah.
You know what?
You only get one shot.
If we get to the point where we can have a little merch shop for nice ashes, I want a
t-shirt that says, I was groped on Metta.
Yes.
I like it.
I mean, I don't have to tell them it was myself that did it, but-
Wow.
All right.
Self-groping has a different term, I think.
Yeah.
Well, and it's kind of the same thing with AI or robotic servants that you sometimes
see in sci-fi flicks and things.
But is there going to be, I'm sure there will be lawsuits about my AI sexually abused me
because you read these stories about scientists or developers feeding their AI hundreds and
thousands of pages worth of Twitter feeds and they become these racist, antagonistic
AIs.
So I don't know.
I would like to see the data, which I'm certain that they keep track of.
I would love to see the data on how many people are rude to their smartphones and their smart
devices.
Oh yeah, their devices.
Yeah.
I'm occasionally rude to mine, Siri especially.
Not Alexa.
Alexa's pretty good, but Siri is-
She's pretty good.
Siri does not understand my accent.
I don't understand your accent, so that's not a Siri thing.
No, I swear to God, Siri does not understand my accent.
She does not.
I did the whole tutorial and everything.
It's like, you just don't understand what I'm saying.
Yeah.
I get mad at my Alexa sometimes because she'll keep wanting to tell me, did you know you
can also do this and this and this and these five other things?
And it's like, that's not why you're here.
I don't want that.
I don't want you to do that.
I don't want you to give me deal updates.
I want you to tell me the weather every morning and play music I like.
That's it.
Lately, my Alexa has been asking for reviews of products that we've purchased on Amazon.
Okay.
And it's like, I've done a few in-depth reviews on products and I think that's why.
They're targeting me because I've done a few reviews with pictures, staged photos and in-depth
answers about things.
That's why they're after you.
Yeah.
You're doing content.
You're doing Jeff Bezos' work for free.
Well, when it comes to certain things, I like reading good reviews.
So if it's something that I really like, I'll write a good review and if it's something
I really hate, I'll write a detailed review.
Mostly they're positive, but occasionally I bought ear protection that also doubled as
an amplifier for hunting.
Oh, okay.
I have a good earbud.
We worked one season.
180 bucks worked one hunting season and I wore it to work a couple of times.
So maybe four or five months and then it stopped working.
It's like, that's trash.
Yeah.
Well, that's the crazy thing.
Hearing is so important and I spent a long time since I've gone hunting, but I would
definitely want to get some sort of hearing protection that would do that.
That it would shut off when I fire.
Absolutely.
I'm a big proponent of that myself.
So I've hunted a lot and you got to protect your hearing.
It's just the way it is.
Sarah and I, we both have, I don't know, they were maybe like 12, 16 bucks on Amazon.
They're called downbeats.
They're little silicone things that go in your ears.
They don't alter the sound of anything, but they reduce it by, I don't know how many decibels.
So we wear that every time we're at a concert.
Everything sounds crystal clear.
We can talk to one another, but anything over a certain decibel threshold gets cut out and
they're just silicone.
There's no battery.
There's no nothing and they work fantastic.
I used to have these massive headaches the next morning after going to concerts and stuff.
Gone.
These are the greatest things.
Nice.
Highly, highly recommend hearing protection if you're anywhere loud.
Absolutely.
Yep, I wear ear protection pretty much all day in one form or another.
That's just me.
I don't want to lose my hearing.
Me either.
Especially now that-
What's with your cigar?
I am officially done.
Yeah.
I don't know.
I've got like a couple inches left here.
Oh wow.
Maybe two.
Well, it's kind of like going out.
It's petering out on me.
It's got a lot less even here at the end.
Sure.
I didn't have any issues with the light again.
You're outside.
I'm outside.
I've kind of been struggling and then I forgot to turn our patio lights back on.
It's just dark.
It's dark out here.
I'm scared.
Scared.
Scared in your suburbia.
Hold me.
Yeah.
I'm trying to keep it going, but the change in flavor hasn't really improved its opinion
in my book.
It's not bad.
Still not bad.
I guess if you wanted to spend $6 on a cigar, you could on this one.
I think there's probably some better ones that you could get for around the same price
point.
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
And this is a no name or no brand cigar.
Some of the basket cigars are very good.
Some of them not so much.
I would say this is definitely a loser as far as it goes.
Yeah.
It's metal road.
I have some Rocky Patel edge fumas that I want to try.
I got a bunch of those and I like the regular edge.
So that's why I got the fumas.
Those are made out of the end cuts, the end cuttings.
So it should be, theoretically should be as good.
Just a little different construction.
But yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I guess our message then is the basket or bin cigars kind of at your own risk.
But if you find one you like, it'll be worthwhile.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
When I was younger, I always smoked a basket cigars because I didn't have a lot of money
making $6.50 an hour, which was still $2.25 more an hour than minimum wage at that time.
Yes.
At $6.50 an hour, it's hard to swallow a $20 stick.
And you know what?
Like honestly, if I had the choice between like a Swisher Suite and this bin cigar, it's
the bin cigar all day long.
Oh, absolutely.
That's not really even a comparison.
No, no, no.
I didn't even make the connection because it's not in the same ballpark.
It's not even really cigar.
It's not bad.
It's just not great.
Yeah.
It's the middle of the road.
I think if I would have smoked this when I first started getting into cigars, I probably
would have liked it quite a bit.
Sure.
Yeah.
With experience, your taste change.
Yeah.
So, well, I think that's all for this episode.
So thank you for listening and we'll be back next week.