Well, welcome to Nice Ashes, I'm Nate.
I'm Mike.
We're here smoking some more cigars, we're both face to face, we can gaze into each other's
eyes.
That's right.
And regale you with random bullshit.
That is correct.
What are we smoking today, Mike?
This is Rocky Fatale The Edge 6-inch Torpedo.
And yeah.
I'm excited.
We also have a Fumas version of the cigar we will smoke at a later date.
Later date.
To see whether the Fumas are as good as the real deal.
Or at least comparable.
Yes.
What are the differences between Fuma and The Edge?
Well, The Edge is a premium hand-rolled cigar and Fumas are created from the cuttings from
these cigars wrapped in a leaf.
So there you go.
The tobacco won't be a long roll, it'll be a short roll.
Okay.
Perfect.
Let's light it up.
We gotta get Mike on board with my lighter.
He's been having lighter issues.
He's matching it.
It's the temperature.
The temperature.
My lighter doesn't like it.
Too chilly outside.
Yes.
My lighter doesn't like it when it's too chilly either.
But normally I just hold it in my hand for a little bit.
Also what I told my high school girlfriend.
For those of you who watched our last episode, you saw my lighter and it's a zipple with
a insert by the same company that Nate's lighter is made from.
It's a jet line lighter.
And I really like it.
I had a zipple branded torch lighter.
Didn't like it.
It's trash.
Jet line is good.
Yeah, I like the jet line.
I got the three butane jet engines as it were on my lighter and it's got the little mirror.
Doesn't work a whole.
The mirror is fine but you really got to awkwardly position everything to see.
So the mirror is not the selling point of the lighter.
Just the three butane torches.
Mine's a double lighter.
I don't like it.
Summertime lasts me a couple weeks usually.
So this episode, and actually you know what?
Initially just two puffs to three puffs in.
Not harsh at all.
No really digging this cigar.
Yes, that's a rocket but tell.
We usually smoke good brands here even though we were going to do some bins occasionally.
Yeah, it's a very good cigar.
I've never had this cigar before.
Me either.
And it's interesting because I just wanted to mention a couple puffs in.
Tastes fantastic.
Not the same as the Whiskey Row from Diesel that we smoked.
That one was very, very harsh to start but it really came into its own.
Had the first inch or so.
I would say yes.
This one, I don't know.
This one I'd be like yeah great.
Right off the bat.
Right from the get go.
This is potentially going to be as good as the La Gloria Cubana.
That one was really good.
We might have to go back and revisit that one.
We certainly can because I have some in the Hilidor here at the house.
We also have the Series N to try out.
Interestingly has an N on the wrapper.
I don't know how they did that but they wrapped an N onto the wrapper.
We'll have to take a deeper look into that in the future.
This episode we're going to talk to you about.
Cigar cutters.
As you know, if you've been listening to us for any amount of time, Mike rocks the V-cut
and I just do the guillotine.
I do.
But he's been really promoting the V-cut and despite us having three episodes together
face to face, has never once offered to V-cut my cigars for me.
He also never asked.
For shame.
We are drinking Lugavalin, eight year single malt.
Cheers.
And also some Harp.
As one does.
So Mike said he's been doing a lot of research on cutters.
I have.
You've been eyeing some fancier V-cutters similar to what Mike rocks.
Yes.
I have a Calibri V-cut.
That's my main cigar cutter.
Rose gold, of course.
But I've been thinking about getting a straight cut.
You have.
I have.
And Zakhar makes a couple different cuts.
They make a 70 ring gauge one which I was really interested in.
And Calibri makes a standard cut and then they have various combinations of the two.
Which I can understand why people would want that but I don't.
I already have a V-cut.
I just want a straight cut.
And I think I've gotten down to, I think I'm just going to get the exact same cutter but
a straight cut.
So a Calibri S-cut.
I like this Calibri a lot.
It's served me well for many, many years.
It's very fancy.
It's got the kind of the spring release.
Right?
To open it up.
My cutter, I don't know, stainless steel.
It's a Cuban.
I don't know much about it other than that.
It's got the little like Dorpedo hole.
So you shove the little Dorpedo nib in there and it'll cut it.
I've always had really good cuts with it.
It's a little bit bigger gauge than Mike's.
We smoked, not on the show here yet, but we will, some Asylum 13s.
And they were girthy bastards.
They were.
To put it mildly.
And they were wonderful, by the way.
They were.
They were so good.
Truly wonderful.
But my cutter handled them as a max of what my cutter could handle.
And Mike had to borrow my cutter to cut his.
So I think there's that to consider when you're buying a cutter too, as well, that you need
to make sure that it will handle the gauge of the cigars you're smoking.
Absolutely.
And I smoke a lot of different gauges all the time.
Yes.
And I even cut my Torpedo today with the V cut.
Yeah.
It doesn't.
But he only did a one cut.
He didn't do the cross cut like he normally does.
I did not do the cross cut.
Because it's a little narrower.
Yep.
So.
So the one you're looking at, would that be handle a bigger gauge?
Or would it be the same gauge that you have currently?
I believe the one I was looking at will do a 68.
Okay.
Yeah.
There's the car cutters, which is why I was really interested, will do a 70 and cut a
70 and a half.
Okay.
But I've been doing the online review thing, of course.
Yes.
As one must.
And people don't seem to think that the steel they use on the Zikar cutters is up to snuff.
And when I first started smoking cigars when I was 18, Calibri was the company.
You wanted a Calibri lighter.
You wanted a Calibri cutter.
And maybe it's still true.
I don't really know.
But I like my Calibri cutter.
I wouldn't recommend it to anybody.
In rose gold.
Or whatever your preferred metal.
Mine's rose gold because rose gold was the cheapest when I bought it.
You mean because it looks the best.
Yeah.
Exactly.
High up social events.
I also have a pink bowling backpack.
Which we've talked about.
But we didn't really, you know what?
We never did get into Dan.
Oh, did we not get into Dan?
I thought we did.
No, we briefly touched upon Dan.
Dan and Natalie.
But we talked more about the old man that accosted us on the street.
Yeah, oh yeah.
The nice ashes guy.
Which is where we came up with the name of this podcast.
Because we're super original and can totally create things out of our minds on a whim.
Absolutely.
But let's talk about Dan for a little bit and we'll go back into cutters.
Absolutely.
So I went over to Nain's Saris for a weekend.
Nice.
What a weekend it was.
It was a very interesting weekend.
Mike and Sarah was working.
Had to have been.
Because she wasn't there.
Yeah.
It wasn't even with her at the time.
I think we were.
It might have been so long ago.
It might have been pre-Sarah times.
Maybe.
We've been dating for several years now.
I don't know.
I've known Mike for longer than Sarah and Mike had been dating and he never proposed
to me.
That is true.
But anyway I was visiting for a weekend and we decided to go bowling.
We decided to try to go bowling.
Try to go bowling.
Yes.
And so the bowling alley was probably a half hour walk.
Something like that.
So we lit ourselves a cigar and walked our happy asses over to the bowling alley.
As one does.
As one does in the middle of winter.
But the problem is it was longer than half an hour but shorter than an hour.
And so by the time we were done with our cigars we still had a ways to go.
And I overestimated the amount of time it would take us to get to the bowling alley.
So we lit us up a second cigar.
We did.
We were standing outside of the bowling alley in winter smoking a cigar.
In Minnesota.
As one does.
And this guy came out carrying a doggy bag or the styrofoam to go food thing.
He came out, he almost walked completely by us.
He did.
And he was, give you a visual.
Long hair, beard, viking's jacket, sorrel boots tucked in.
Yeah.
And he stops and starts chatting.
Looked pretty normal for an average Minnesotan.
Pretty much yes.
If you wanted to visit Minnesota and be accosted by a native Minnesotan this is what they would
look like.
Yes.
Yes it is.
So Dan starts talking to us.
He chats us up.
He told us a Bill Hicks joke or something.
Well this is the greatest part of the whole thing.
He goes, hey do you guys want to hear a joke?
And we're like, well we got so much stuff on our cigars we might as well.
Would you say no to a joke in the bitter cold Minnesota winter?
No.
Like if you're going to entertain us.
Entertain us man.
And he goes, okay let me tell you a joke.
It's not my joke.
It's somebody else's joke.
I watched him on Comedy Central or whatever.
And he tells us his joke which I think he handpicked just for us because of Mike's pink
backpack.
Potentially so.
Because it was a homosexual joke.
It was a homosexual joke.
Yeah.
It was.
Yeah.
I don't remember how it goes.
I don't particularly remember how it goes either.
And he did not land the punch line.
No.
He incredibly assumed that we were homosexual life partners instead of heterosexual life
partners.
Apparently so.
And then I know that he asked us our favorite colors.
Yeah he did.
And his was purple.
His was purple.
And then he didn't even have to ask Mike's.
He didn't want to hear Mike's because he knew Mike's was pink based on his backpack.
Because the backpack is a choice you make when you buy the backpack.
You don't happen to stand into a pink backpack.
Yeah.
You don't buy the pink backpack because it's half the price of the blue backpack.
It matches all your other bowling equipment.
Because all your bowling equipment is Strike Force Royal Purple.
Yeah.
Culpepper Royal Purple.
They are actually.
I always have the Royal Series other than my bag.
Yeah.
But it was funny because he didn't even finish the joke and his girlfriend slash fiance slash
wife came out.
And he had previously we said hey man don't people need you inside.
He goes ah nah.
And then his girlfriend.
We'll just say girlfriend.
NASCAR Natalie.
She comes out.
She looks at us and goes oh my god I'm so sorry is he bothering you or whatever.
And we're like well he hasn't finished the punch line of his joke yet.
And she kind of did the eye roll like oh my god I know where this is going kind of thing.
And she she like chastised him in front of us.
You know what are you doing.
We're all waiting for you.
We are all waiting for you.
Yes.
And this is important because later in the story you will get the twist.
But not now but later.
So she said we are all waiting for you.
And we said well he's not bothering us.
We would like him.
I mean he wasn't obnoxious.
So it was enjoyable.
We were having a good time.
And we were feeling no pain.
This was our first Natalie encounter.
Yes.
And so we were more inclined to humor Dan than we were to humor Natalie.
Mostly because he had already told like you know three quarters of the joke.
And we just wanted to know what it was.
We knew it wasn't going to be like the most earth shattering epic thing that we've ever
heard.
But we still had enough cigar left that we were inclined to hear the end of the joke.
And so we said oh no he's not bothering us.
And he hasn't delivered the punch line yet.
So you know give him some time.
And she begrudgingly agreed.
And then it was something on a homosexual thing.
He was trying to make fun of us for being homosexuals.
Yes.
Which really wouldn't bother me at all.
No.
Me being a married man at the time.
I'm guessing I was in a committed relationship.
I don't really remember.
We don't talk about that stuff because you know what Mike is an attractive man in his
own right.
And anyone would be lucky to consider him the object of your affection.
And it doesn't matter.
I don't care if you're gay, straight or pansexual or interdimensional sexual.
It doesn't matter.
You would be very lucky to consider him an object of your affection or vice versa.
Well thank you Nate.
Yes.
We're all about love here.
Yes.
Peace and love.
Nice ashes.
No.
Peace and love.
And blessings to you and yours.
Yes.
Anyway so he finishes his lame ass joke.
Which is mostly making fun of homosexuals.
Which was mostly making fun of homosexuals.
Which kind of bonds off us because we had our gaydar up.
Is that the saying?
I don't know.
We're comfortable in our sexuality.
We don't care.
Mike's got a pink backpack.
We're in the Twin Cities.
Nobody should be causing us because we're gay.
Right.
We're not gay.
It's fine.
But if we were, they shouldn't be causing us anyway.
Right.
Either way.
It's not an issue.
It should be an issue.
It is not an issue.
Dan must be from a small town where Mike and I grew up.
Dan was definitely of illish descent.
And NASCAR Natalie.
Well NASCAR Natalie.
Had a big NASCAR shirt on.
Oh, other thing.
Because here's the twist of the whole plot.
He was running the leftover food nachos, which will be soggy the next day, out of the car.
And she stomped back in.
She stomped.
She was angry.
She literally stomped back in.
Because she was mad that Dan made friends.
Whether they were homosexual or heterosexual.
She didn't care.
She did not care.
That was the whole point of the whole interaction.
She didn't care if they were gay or not gay.
She was mad that Dan was outside not being with her.
Yes.
She was mad that Dan was talking to anybody other than her.
And we invented this whole backstory for Natalie and we'll get into that in a second.
But we go back in.
And Mike was partaking in a no alcohol challenge, which is a terrible idea.
If you ever get the opportunity to participate in a no alcohol challenge, you just pass.
Yeah.
And I was drinking NA beer.
So I was not imbibing.
I think it was the Heineken 00.
I was very much imbibing.
It was the Heineken 00.
That's what Mike was drinking.
And I tried some.
It tasted just like beer, except they didn't give you the good beer feeling.
You know, it was fine.
If you want to drink something that tastes like beer, that's not Odoul's.
You know, hallelujah.
I have a login needed as IHOPs too.
It's very good actually.
Yeah.
It doesn't really taste like beer though.
Okay.
Yeah.
So I think it's a good alternative to the Odoul's.
Let's just say that.
Like if you want to drink 00 beer, you can do it.
I don't know why.
My brother drinks it.
He's a big fan of the non-alcoholic beer.
Yeah.
I mean, that's fine.
I'm just saying if you want to do whatever you want to do.
Absolutely.
If you're going to drink beer, just drink beer.
You know, if you want to quit beer, just quit beer.
You know, it's kind of like the people that try and quit smoking by going to vape.
I've heard, I mean like on a video on the internet.
So whether it's true that they made whiskey that has no alcohol in it.
That's not whiskey.
What's the point of drinking whiskey without alcohol?
I don't like whiskey.
I mean, I do like whiskey.
I love whiskey.
The majority of the reason why I'm drinking whiskey is because it makes my feel-feels
go off.
Yeah.
It's not because I want to drink the Lugavallan straight out of a glass.
It's the same, you know what?
The Impossible Burger.
If you want to eat a cheeseburger, eat a fucking cheeseburger.
You don't eat a vegetarian, want to try to be the cheeseburger.
You know what?
We have the black bean burgers from Costco.
They're not trying to be a burger.
It's like black beans pressed into a thing.
Delicious.
I've had very delicious black bean burgers for my brother who lives in the U.S.
You're sir.
And they were fantastic.
And I generally, generally, generally dislike beans of any kind except green beans because
beans in their natural form just kind of taste like little sandbags, like just little sand.
It's not the taste.
It's the texture.
You know what I mean?
It's the texture for me.
Sure.
I like beans.
And mushrooms, I don't like mushrooms.
I love mushrooms.
If they're chopped and diced finely, not a problem, but I'm not eating like a fungus.
You know, like spongy.
I don't want to taste the texture.
I don't want to feel the texture in my mouth.
It's a texture thing.
It's not really a taste thing.
I cook lots of things with cream of mushroom.
It's great.
Phenomenal.
Love it.
If you're just going to serve me up a mushroom, I'm like, no, I don't like the texture of
that.
And that's not that uncommon from what I've heard in my independent non-peer-reviewed
studies.
You know, but it's like, it's a texture thing.
And the bean burger, the bean burger can be great.
My brother made us some black bean burgers on the grill outside of his yurt.
Phenomenal.
They were great.
But there's a lot of things like chili.
Do you have to have 18 different types of beans in your chili?
Or can you make do with just meat?
You know, I mean.
I like bean chili.
I'm not going to lie.
You would.
I would.
Cigar update.
I am officially an inch and a half ahead of Nate.
As he always is.
As I always am.
All right.
So Mike needs to talk more and I'll smoke some more.
Cigar is extremely good.
Oh, it's so good.
I'm not impressed because I know Rocket Patel is a reputable company and I expected it to
be good.
Yeah, but you can still be impressed.
Right.
I mean, you're not taking off guard.
It's worth the price of admission.
You're not taking off guard.
No, I expect a certain level of.
You expected this.
Yeah.
And it's delivering on every single count.
Absolutely.
It's so good.
Oh, you'd be disappointed if it wasn't this good.
Here's the question.
Is it better than the other one we smoked?
The Asylum or the Ligoi Kavana?
Ligoi Kavana.
It's on par.
I would say it's on par.
We'd have to do.
We'd have to smoke both of these kind of like back to back.
Absolutely.
To really determine a winner.
Yes.
And I like torpedoes.
I do like torpedoes.
That definitely skews my perception.
I don't normally buy torpedoes.
I do.
I like box press torpedoes and I buy a lot of.
I probably buy more Robustos and Rothschilds.
But I like my torpedoes as well.
I don't normally buy torpedoes.
So there's probably one of the handful of torpedoes that I've ever smoked.
Oh really?
Yeah, I like torpedoes.
I don't know what it is.
But there's something magical about it.
It's a good smoke.
Right.
Yeah, exactly.
Who gives a shit?
It's kind of like the Kentucky Shrew.
I like them.
So.
Exactly.
I don't have to think of a whole lot about it.
But anyway, back to Dan.
So Dan tells us this homophobic joke and then goes back inside.
Yes.
And we finish our cigar.
And we go inside and try and get a lane.
Yes.
This is the whole thing.
We put our names on a waiting list.
Mike, he's not drinking.
So he gets the Heiny Zero Zero.
And I get something that's not zero zero.
He gets some beer.
And we're sitting there on the lane.
And we happen to look over and who do you think we see?
If you guessed Dan and Natalie, you're correct.
And it was only Dan and Natalie on the lane.
There was nobody waiting for them.
On a pair of lanes.
They had two bowling lanes.
Natalie said we are all waiting for you.
But the we was only her.
And they had a pair of lanes and a full bowling alley, which is a no no.
It's a no no according to Mike by the book Bowling.
Well, Mike by the book Bowling says that unless you're a league bowler at that house, you
don't get pairs.
You get single lanes.
And even Nate by the not the book bowler, who just wants people to have fun bowling,
would say if you're two people and you have two lanes, that's one lane too many.
Absolutely.
I mean, seriously, think about it.
You're bowling against each other.
Just bowling on one lane.
You can't possibly play more than one game together.
I mean, you can.
But it's a fucking full house.
If we're sitting there, we're waiting for a lane.
We waited 45 minutes.
We never actually bowled that night because of Natalie and Dan.
Well, not particularly Natalie and Dan.
Not Dan, but for sure Natalie.
Well, you know, NASCAR, NASCAR Natalie.
So you have Dale Earnhardt shirt on, didn't she?
She had something on.
So we decided that she forced Dan to watch NASCAR with her at home.
And she kind of had him pussy whipped.
She definitely had a pussy whipped.
Had him something whipped.
She definitely had a pussy whipped.
Just the way she was talking to him, not OK.
She was being nasty.
And you know what?
This is not a sexual or gender thing.
This is a mutual respect for human beings thing.
OK.
Because we don't care who your partner is.
I mean, we care.
We love your partner.
Your partner is great.
But the thing is, you need to also respect your partner and talk them up.
There's so much of this talking down to your partner.
They're terrible and things like that.
You know, you go to your girl groups, your boy groups.
It's really not gender specific.
But I swear to you that there are men groups that they go and they talk shit about their
wives and there are female groups where they go and they talk shit about their husbands.
And I don't think that that's OK.
I know that they exist.
I've never been a part of one.
I've not been a part of one either.
But I think like, you know, in some situations, in some situations, that's OK.
Because if you're in an abusive relationship and that's the only outlet you have, that's
one thing.
But if you're in a situation of relationship where, you know, generally you bring your
concerns to your partner and they will hear you, they will listen to you, and then they
will try to work on that, that's not that's not an OK thing to go back and say, well,
I talked to him two minutes ago and he hasn't made any changes.
You know, you're supposed to be in your partner's corner.
Right.
Even if you know that they're wrong sometimes.
We've talked at length about this outside of the podcast.
Yeah.
A lot of people never develop a normal adult relationship with their partner or with their
parents or their siblings.
Yeah.
And it's sad.
Yeah, it does.
It's worrisome.
And people don't put in the work to do it.
This is this is interesting.
And I'll bring this up here because either the people I'm talking about aren't listening
or they need the wake up call or I'm a raise misogynistic asshole who doesn't care.
Well that's true.
You can decide.
100 percent.
You can decide.
You're a misogynist.
Yes.
I like massages.
You're not wrong.
A massage enthusiast.
So we went my wife and I went down to her family for New Year's in St. Louis, Missouri.
Missouri.
And there's some very fascinating history in Missouri, especially around the Civil War.
Very, very interesting.
I recommend you check that out if you're interested in history at all.
Just look it up.
It's very interesting.
I had no idea until we went down the first time and checked out some of the museums and
things.
I had no idea.
It's very, very vivid and much more than you would think.
Sure.
Because it's so far west, not nowadays, but in the Civil War days, it's very, very west
for America.
But we went down and so one of the cousins' moms is on a very, very good relationship
with their daughter, the cousin.
Very good.
They do all sorts of things together.
They go out every weekend.
They drink and partake and have fun and enjoy themselves.
And they try and abandon the father, the uncle.
He's a strange character, to be sure.
Very strange character.
He does a lot of jokes and it's one of those people that if you don't joke back, then it
feels very lopsided.
But as soon as you start understanding that he just jokes to try and give you love, even
though the jokes are stupid and terrible or whatever.
As soon as you joke back, it's like, oh my God, it's smooth sailing.
We had a cousin night out this past summer and one of the cousins was like, oh yeah,
that guy, you just joke back with him and it's all fine.
And so I tried it because I'm not one to shy away from advice.
Sure.
It was the most amazing thing ever.
It was so good.
He came over to our house and he was like, oh yeah, all these possum hands you have hanging.
Does Sarah ever hit you with those?
That's a fucking weird thing to say.
That's a weird fucking joke to make.
This is before I had the advice.
But then after I had the advice, I just joke back with him and it's all good.
It's all fine.
On my other best bud, I said to Mike, we'd always shout slurs to each other out the parking
window because we had apartments next to each other.
That's how we got to know each other.
I was playing Galaxy Quest.
He heard the engine hum through the wall.
He knocks on my door and he goes, are you watching Galaxy Quest?
And I said, how did you know?
He goes, well, the engine hum wasn't Star Wars or Star Trek.
So this is a guy you need to know.
If he can tell the engine hum through the wall.
That's an interesting character for sure.
For sure.
I would come back from work and he'd be like, it's a homo.
He just shout out the window.
And then whenever I saw him come back, I'd shout something similar out the window to
him.
But it was a mark of love.
It wasn't a mark of we're hazing each other or getting each other's nerves kind of thing.
It was just, you know.
Hazing is a ritual.
Hazing gets a bad rap in our modern society.
And I will defend hazing.
To an extent.
People should be hazed.
They should be hazed.
But obviously they take these crazy instances where these kids usually just take it way
too far and like hurt other people.
That's what I mean.
To an extent.
You don't physically hurt anybody.
But you should be hazed.
I was hazed when I came into the Union Brotherhood.
It's a rite of passage.
Right?
Like you earn your spot and get your respect.
Or get your really cool nickname for the rest of your life.
Well I mean, like for a job like mine, when you're an apprentice, you're treated like
shit.
That's the point.
Well as an intern you're treated like shit anyway.
Right.
Well intern, apprentice, it's similar.
It's similar.
Very similar.
And I did a five year long apprenticeship and the first three years you're treated bad.
Like real bad.
They want you to quit.
You mean real bad isn't like not good?
Yeah.
Like a hundred people turn into twenty people.
That's how bad it is.
They want to make it difficult.
Because at the end of that path, now you're making 120 grand a year.
And you have respect from your coworkers.
Because you made it through the gauntlet.
And that's the whole point of the ritual.
Now you're part of the brotherhood.
You're a good fellow.
Brotherhood or sisterhood or whoever.
You're a good fellow now.
Yeah.
Now you're a good fellow.
And women are included.
I say brotherhood.
Yeah.
It's personhood or sisterhood or brotherhood or whatever you want to call it.
The only non-discriminatory name for a group of people, non-gender related, has been banned
by my HR company.
But the true non-gender discriminatory term for a group of people is, hey you fuckers.
Right.
I mean we called it the brotherhood back in the day.
Now it's the fuckerhood.
Well, sisterhood too.
I had many female apprentices.
And I tried to haze them and teach them how to do their fucking job.
Right, I mean part of hazing is teaching people, like myself, how to control their emotions.
Because stress when you're...
Stress always comes up.
Stress always comes up and you have to control your stress.
Have you ever been in a job where you haven't had stress?
No.
Exactly.
That's the point.
And sometimes the stress is extreme.
And you have to be able to deal with that in a positive way.
And if you're going to flake out, then you need to go.
If you're truly...
If you're using hazing as a positive.
And I worked for the Boy Scouts of America for several years.
And I've been involved in the Boy Scouts since I was six.
They're not affiliated with this.
They can't come and sue me now.
You listen you fuckers.
You can't come sue me.
But they have an anti-hazing policy for good measure.
They've got a lot of policies for good measure.
They've got a lot of policies to separate them from the Catholic Church and child abuse
for good measure.
They've got a lot of policies that I don't agree with and things like that.
We can get into that later.
That's not the point.
The point is that if you're hazing somebody, it shouldn't be solely based on the fact that
they're different or they're newer than you and you should then therefore haze them.
The point is the hazing is sort of an initiation into that group.
The hazing is an initiation into this is some of the stuff you might encounter.
We're doing it kind of in a safe area here.
You're brand new.
We're hazing you and hazing can be very, very negative depending on who you are and what
your experience with it is.
But if it's done right, if it's done by people who care about you and want to make sure that
you are making the right choice for yourself, hazing can be very, very important.
It happens in all classes, in all races, in all groups to some extent.
To some extent it does because they have certain parameters they want you to follow to make
sure that you're part of their people.
I was hazed to my benefit and I always made sure that my apprentices were hazed as well.
It's to toughen you up mentally.
I was doing industrial electrical, very stressful, especially when it's hot work, which now I
almost exclusively do hot work.
I don't know if you've ever talked about that.
You look like you do.
I know, right?
But now with the job I have, I exclusively do hot work.
Everything's hot and it's in public view a lot of times.
So Mike is an electrician.
Hot work means electricity is connected at the time he's doing the work.
You are doing the work with live electricity.
You're not shutting off breakers to be safe.
You're doing it hot.
You're doing it live.
Almost all the work I do is live now.
And that hazing process prepares you mentally for the stress of doing hot work.
Hot work is very stressful.
Obviously, you kill yourself.
Kill yourself and other people.
He's working with higher than 120.
I work with 480 pretty regularly.
A lot of it.
It's not just child's play.
Mike's coached me, but before Mike coached me in electricity, I've been zapped by 120.
Not fun.
No, it's not fun at all.
Not a fun time.
It's bad time.
It's not a good time.
It's bad time.
And then this was before I kind of knew Mike as a friend.
It was an apartment and I shouldn't have even been doing it because you should just submit
the thing to the apartment manager and they should come bring the guy in.
But I did it and it zapped me.
And it wasn't fun.
It didn't end my day.
But it was like, I definitely don't want to touch that again.
Absolutely.
You know what I mean?
Absolutely.
I didn't feel my life was in danger, but I just felt like I probably shouldn't touch
that again.
Right.
It was enough.
I work a lot with 240, 480, and then the 240, 120.
But we do it live all the time.
I have to do it sometimes.
Yeah.
I'm doing emergency work, which is a lot of what I do.
Mostly what I do is emergency work.
I go from one emergency to the next emergency constantly.
That's why I'm there.
If it wasn't an emergency, it wouldn't be there.
But that sort of mental toughness that you get from that hazing ritual, I guess you're
prepared.
Yeah.
But fun, I think to some extent, you can sanitize and bleach a lot of things.
We just took a bathroom break.
Mike's range off the patio is a little bit greater than mine.
I didn't want to be emasculated by that.
Maybe he was storing up more than I was.
What do you think?
I think I'm more used to it, man.
I live here.
You're used to the cold.
I was in the pool.
Exactly.
As the Urska Sands are its thing.
Now we have our third co-host here.
She's back.
She is back.
She has no deer legs or turkey carcasses.
No, she does not.
Yet.
No, she does not.
The night is young, so she might yet.
Yes, maybe she will.
So yeah, we went back and we saw Dan, and it was just Dan and his Natalie, NASCAR and
Natalie.
Yeah, NASCAR and Natalie.
They had two lanes.
There was nobody waiting for anybody.
That was the whole point.
No, that was the whole point.
They were bowling on two lanes with two people, which in a full house is a no-no.
I think this lanes, they had what, 36 lanes total?
Sure.
They were a big house.
It was big.
It wasn't a small, like, mom-and-pop bowling alley with five lanes or something.
They had enough lanes where if Dan and Natalie would have stopped with their NASCAR bullshit.
Six lanes.
Here we go.
We're going to get into it.
It's always a derivation of two, usually a derivation of four, unless it's six.
And to me, that sounds like, there's a derivation of blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
There's a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
But you know what?
Mike takes his bowling seriously, and Mike has worked at it, so he can.
And I have not worked on my bowling, even though I have a custom ball and some dedicated
bowling shoes.
But I have not worked at it like Mike has.
So he's got the right to poo-poo any of my ideas on bowling, because I don't really have
many ideas on bowling.
And he knows what's up with bowling.
And I still always love our initiation story.
It was so, it's so fun.
It is fun.
We were talking about Ayn Rand.
And this might be a good time to talk back about it.
When we first met, Mike and myself, I was huge, huge, huge into Ayn Rand.
And I had gotten huge into Ayn Rand.
Kind of in the middle of college, I discovered her writings.
And Atlas Shrugged is a behemoth of a book.
I shit you not.
If you're going to read a behemoth of a book.
But when I went to, I had read it previously.
And then I went to London in 2007.
And I read it on the plane and back.
So I read it again.
And it's a massive book, just massive.
And why I brought that in my backpack, I have no fucking idea.
But I read it again.
And I really enjoyed it.
And I enjoy the book.
And I enjoy the general thing.
But Ayn Rand is very, very black and white.
And initially, that's why I started deviating from Ayn Rand's philosophy.
And the cool, I guess the cool thing about Ayn Rand's philosophy is she passed it on
to somebody who I think was a much more of a lesser scholar in it than her.
Much more of a lesser.
Yes.
And that's why Ayn Rand taught me to speak.
Yes.
I'm just kidding.
And that is why we are not professionals.
But it was a lesser.
So she passed her life's work on to a lesser.
And then he had all of these audio snippets of explaining modern things.
So she was huge in the 50s, I think.
Yeah.
Well, she was very focused on anti-communism.
And then she died in the 80s or 90s.
Yeah.
She was huge on anti-communism.
And then she passed it along to this man.
I can't remember his name.
It's not important.
I swear to you it's not important what this man's name was.
But she passed it on to him.
And then he went and did all of these little audio things on questions like, well, how
does objectivism fit with transsexuals?
And he would do a whole audio thing on how objectivism fit with that.
Because objectivism is very, very black and white.
It was if you know what's right, what's right is good.
And if you're anything less than what's fully, completely 100% right, you're bad.
And that's what it was.
And so a lot of his things were very black and white look at everything.
And this was from people that never experienced a lot of this stuff.
If you're transgender and you want to transition, Ayn Rand never wanted to transition.
Her successor never wanted to transition.
Ayn Rand probably never thought about that subject ever, not even once.
No.
It's something that we-
It's a very modern, recent thing.
We talk about it a lot now.
And maybe it should have been more talked about in the past.
I'll come out now and say people who transition have a lot of intestinal fortitude.
Yeah.
Especially 20 years ago.
Well, and for lack of a better phrase, and not to assume gender or anything, but that's
a lot of big dick energy.
Big dick energy for sure, bro.
For sure.
It doesn't matter what gender you are, but big dick energy.
Yeah.
Because I'm here, I am me, and I am proud of it.
If you meet a transgendered woman, that's probably a person that has a lot of strength
mentally and fortitude and moral uprightness.
Yes.
As far as their situation is concerned.
Yes.
Now, I know that there's a lot of teenagers who are getting in the transgender trender
phase.
I've heard this term.
I am not sure.
I am not a teenager, but I've heard the-
You're not.
You're not a teenager.
You're a transgender.
I am.
I know.
My skin is smooth, and my heart is young.
Yes, and your semen is varro.
Well, obviously.
As one must.
Yeah.
Like any other teenager, I'm worried about cutting the hedgerow to the driveway leading
up to the property and making sure that all the fucking-
And plowing in the winter.
Plowing in the winter and making sure all the crab apples are trimmed up and nice and
all the cedars have their little baskets.
Every teenager's world.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm worried about the willow tree, and I have to cut off one of the branches and put some
spice on it.
Also, which cigar are we smoking?
Yeah, yeah.
As most teenagers, naughty teenagers, like Mike and myself, often think.
But yeah, any transgender person who happens to be listening, I have a lot of respect for
the trans community because it does take a lot of mental fortitude to admit to yourself
and to present to the world your belief.
And it's much more difficult than anything that I've ever had to do.
And me as well.
I'm a white guy that has sex with women.
It's not very difficult.
Sometimes.
He sometimes does.
All the time.
100% of the time.
It's pretty simple.
All the time he does.
Yeah, it's pretty simple.
I mean, now that I'm older, it's like I'm with one woman, so-
Yeah, I got to tell him.
It's pretty simple.
I have to tell him.
I got to tell him, like, dude, these posters of Ryan Reynolds in your bedroom, you got
to take them down.
Right, yeah.
I appreciate that.
Even though I think, like, you know, in my life, growing up in a Lutheran household,
it was homosexuals are the devil.
Really?
Even Lutheran?
Oh, yeah.
They're Catholic light.
I was raised Catholic.
Catholic light.
I don't remember ever hearing homosexuals are the devil, but we were cafeteria Catholic,
of course.
Yeah, as most people are.
Right.
You know, it was homosexuals are the devil.
My pastor, who everybody loved, was caught banging the church secretary, and he had to
get a divorce, and his daughter was in my grade in school.
Interesting.
And it was very, very awkward, the whole situation.
And I think, I mean, I don't know, because I was so young, like, I don't know how she
handled it, you know, as the daughter, and I don't know how everybody else handled it,
because that was middle school, and then high school, I moved somewhere else, and it was
different.
Right.
See, we had a lot of third-way priests here, which, for the listeners who do not know about
the Catholic faith, there is a not, it's not acknowledged, but there is a quote-unquote
movement of third-way Catholic priests, and these priests have girlfriends, and they're
typically nuns.
And they get shunned out into the hinterlands, which is where we are here.
And that actually, they're loved here.
The third-way priests are truly appreciated out here, because, yeah, we don't accept child
rape, and we don't accept priests doing naughty things.
And people who are Catholic here aren't really devoted to...
Clare boys.
Yeah, they're not devoted to, like, the Catholic dogma.
It's more of a social club.
And yeah, the priest should be happy.
A priest is a member of the community, and we want the priest to be happy.
And if the priest has a girlfriend that he's devoted to, good on, good on, good on them.
And we're Catholics.
And I'm not sure, you know.
I'm not sure where in the Bible it says priests have to be celebrated.
Well, that was created in the 1200s, because the church didn't want to divide up property,
because...
I'm not sure where in the Bible...
Well, okay, yeah, in the Bible, yeah, in the Bible, yeah.
Where is that?
I'm not going to get into the history of the Catholic Church, I guess.
Let's do it.
Well, in the history of the Catholic Church, the Catholics didn't want the priests to be
able to divide up church land.
And...
Fair enough, but where in the Bible does it say that?
What's the Bible have to do with Christianity?
Exactly.
And most Christians these days don't give a two fucks about the Bible, and they wouldn't
care.
What's the man Jesus have to do with the fucking Christian church?
Yeah, what does the Middle Eastern skins, Jesus, have to do with anything?
It's white Jesus we care about, and white Jesus loves guns and bacon and fucking off
liberals.
Oh, no, capitalism.
Yeah, white Jesus loves capitalism.
Well, why wouldn't he?
He's white Jesus.
For fuck's sake.
For a dissertation, not a dissertation, but...
All right, stay tuned for the next three hours as Mike launches into his dissertation on
Catholicism.
No, no, no.
For my final paper for a class that was a dissertation, I talked about...
As a fancy way of saying this dissertation is not a dissertation, but it really, truly
is.
It truly is.
A dissertation.
So I talked about American Jesus, and there's a book called In His Steps, and In His Steps
is called...
What Would Jesus Do?
Remember all the WWJD bracelets?
The bracelets.
So I went into that book, because it was one book that caused all that What Would Jesus
Do nonsense.
Yeah.
And the moral story of the book was, was Jesus a socialist or was Jesus a capitalist?
It was written in the very late 1800s, like 1899, 1898, something like that.
I've got a book called Misquoting Jesus, but that's a different thing.
You do you.
So anyway, the sum total of the book was that, yeah, Jesus was a socialist, but the socialists
that are around now are not Jesus-like figures.
Not the same.
Yeah, they're not the same.
And rightly so.
Well, why should they be?
And why should they be?
Exactly.
And you can be all knowing...
I'm a fan of the man Jesus, even though I'm not a believer of the man Jesus.
You talked about your atheism.
I am a Unitarian, firmly, firmly on the Unitarian side.
Most of the founding fathers were firmly Unitarians.
Absolutely.
Even though a lot of naysayers will say that they were all Protestants and believers in
Christ, and they will tell you that if you don't believe in Christ, you're not American.
No, they were mostly Unitarians.
They're mostly Unitarians.
Mostly Unitarians.
Yeah.
John Adams, my favorite founding father, believed that Unitarianism would overtake the United
States intellectually.
Yes.
Well, and Thomas Jefferson wrote his own Bible, where he took all the miracles out of the
New Testament.
Right.
And it's the Thomas Jefferson Bible.
You can go and read it.
He believed in the moral principles of Jesus.
He didn't believe in the fantastical miracles Jesus performed.
Sure.
Which is an important distinction, I think.
I love the man Jesus.
Yeah.
He's an interesting philosopher, especially for his time.
If, in fact, he existed.
And there's a huge debate, yay or nay.
But I think if you do read the Bible, or have read the Bible, regardless of whether or not
you believe in it, and this is true of most philosophies, there are very, very good things
to take out of all philosophies.
At least one good thing out of every philosophy.
And you need to remember that because I was huge into objectivism.
And I would say, if you want to get into objectivism, I would say don't.
Don't do it.
It's all black and white.
I think that...
And they try and radicalize you against people that don't see exactly eye to eye.
This is a great point.
I think that the reason that you and I hated each other when we first met is because you
were so devoted to objectivist philosophy.
And I also want to mention this, and this is very embarrassing for me to acknowledge
and to admit.
And I don't know if that mic knows this.
But I'm going to say this here for you, all the listeners, because we love you.
And I have not heard this before.
You probably has not heard this before, is if you Google Wikipedia, bring your diarrhea.
Honest to God.
Okay, so my guy already knows.
I know.
You told me about, I'd never heard of bring your diarrhea.
Okay, okay, I'm sorry.
So I want to clear the air here so that we are all on the same page.
And also to prove that I don't have much to hide.
Okay?
Yes.
I do not have much to hide.
And if my weaknesses and my feelings can inspire you to do better in your life, please, please,
please take that opportunity to do so.
But here's the thing, is right before, and you might not have heard ever this before,
is right before I came to the bowling alley with you, I had just, like honest to God,
and this is disgusting, and I hate to say this, and I'm almost hesitating to say this,
because of my male ego, my pride, but I will say this now, and this will be for you, the
listeners and for Mike, my dearest friend.
Sarah was like, we got to go meet my buddy Mike at the bowling alley to go bowling.
And I said, great, that's fantastic.
She went down to the car and started it.
And what did I do?
I said, I have to use the bathroom one more time.
But I had the bring your diarrhea.
Like honest to God, I had the bring your diarrhea.
I'm not trying to like the bullshit anything.
You Wikipedia, bring your diarrhea is a thing.
Nobody knows what causes it.
I had seen her at the door, the front door of the apartment.
I closed the front door of the apartment and I thought to myself, oh my God, I have to
shit so bad.
I ran in the hallway.
I shit my pants.
I honestly, honest to God, as an adult human, I shit my pants.
In the hallway, it went down the gene leg, went onto the carpet floor and I went to the
bathroom and like just went to town.
Like honestly, I went to town.
Then I was done.
I put on new clothes.
I cleaned up the hallway with the appropriate cleaning things.
Went down to the car and Sarah goes, I almost, I'd like literally almost just left you.
I'm like, I just shit my pants and shit the hallway.
You don't understand.
This is a whole big ordeal for me.
It's bad.
It's not a good thing for me.
Totally, totally terrible.
Embarrassing.
Embarrassing even when you're alone.
Embarrassing.
Yeah.
If you're not, I mean, I swear to God, I didn't want to shit the hallway.
Oh, yeah.
I've never had control with my bowels, but this was a whole thing.
I did it and you know what?
I spent most of the time that night in the bathroom of the bowling alley with Mike, but
I came out and was able to come out enough to bowl my frames and it was a whole thing.
I was not perceptive enough to know what was going on with me.
Who would have been?
Nobody should have been except Sarah, but she didn't care because I was hanging out
with her friends.
Right.
You were still fresh as far as a couple.
You weren't fresh yet.
You were hardcore into the...
Not fresh in the pants, I'll tell you that.
But I shit you not.
I swear to God, I don't know if you ever heard that before, but I did.
I shit the hallway before I came out and met you the first time.
I did not.
You never told me you shit in the hallway.
Well, it's embarrassing.
It is embarrassing.
What am I supposed to do?
You know what?
It happens, right?
I mean...
I thought for sure I had IBS.
Sure.
But it turns out I didn't.
Yeah.
And it was the brain or diarrhea.
The brain or diarrhea.
I've never freaking heard of that before ever in my life.
I swear to God.
It's not Wikipedia.
So it's got to be true.
But for whatever reason, for that six month period, I had the absolute worst shits.
And I was always very like, where am I going?
How long is it going to take to get there?
Because I'm not going to make it.
Like bottle wise.
But since then, ever since that passed, it's been fine.
I've been normal.
Just like anybody else.
Sure.
Well, you know, in your defense, after you left that town, now you're drinking well water
because there's well water here.
Yeah.
And there's well water at your in-laws.
Well, it was only the first couple of months.
Like honestly, like after that, after that initial bout passed, everything was fine.
Sure.
And what does it have to do with because Brainerd fought against Florida?
But for a while, I was just like, I was shitting all the time.
That's crazy.
I know.
And I look at Brainerd diarrhea and sir's like, look at Brainerd diarrhea.
I'm like, all right.
And she was meeting as a joke.
No.
It was legitimately what's happening to me.
And I looked it up on Wikipedia and it was exactly what was happening to me.
And then after a couple of months, it was fine.
And I was still there.
I was still drinking the same water.
I was, it was all fine.
But that's why maybe I wasn't as open to buy the book Bowling Mike.
Right.
As I would have been if I wouldn't have been shitting myself every five minutes.
I will acknowledge that I'm sorry, you know, high five.
It's all good.
High five listeners.
We're best buds now.
I will admit that in my mind space at that time, I wasn't super open to, I ain't rambling
on that.
I was usually into Iran, but you know what?
I ran never, never accounted for brain or diarrhea.
Right.
Yeah.
And it was a lot bigger into like socialism and socialist philosophy.
Yeah.
And I'm not huge into socialism, socialism, not even now, not even now, not even now.
I know a lot more into it than.
But I think the point is I'm not a huge into socialism, but what the actual fuck is going
on with our health care?
You know what I mean?
Like what the actual fuck is going on?
It's a fact that if we had some sort of public health care, we'd be better off.
And I have a health care version plan.
Let's call it that.
Of the Bible.
Yeah, of the Bible.
There's no reason why the government couldn't sponsor the health care I have considering
all extraneous factors.
There's absolutely no reason.
And all the health care that I had growing up, you know, my dad and me, there's no reason
why that sort of health care couldn't have been provided for everybody at all the time.
It would cost next to nothing by comparison to what we're spending now.
On military?
Military on the homeless population.
I mean.
That's a fraction of the military budget.
I've heard consistently that it would take 20 billion dollars to house the homeless in
the United States.
And you know what?
It's better for everybody no matter how you want to look at it.
Elon must buy Twitter.
Oh yeah, exactly.
Elon must buy Twitter.
Instead of buying Twitter, why don't you just house the homeless?
It's better for everybody.
Homeless people are human beings.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Well, they are.
Homeless people on the street is bad.
No matter what angle you look at it, it's positive for everyone.
Also with the health care debate.
Are you saying homeless people on the street is positive for everybody?
No, I'm saying that homeless on the street is bad for everybody.
It's a positive to like fucking get them off there.
Well yeah.
And it costs like pennies.
There's multiple things.
Well, it costs 20 billion dollars, apparently.
Compared to these rich fucks that rule our country.
It's pennies.
20 billion is nothing.
They just dropped that amount of money in Ukraine.
More, more than that they dropped.
Probably, probably more.
I mean, it's ridiculous.
Why are there homeless people?
And we're not pro-Russia.
Give them housing.
We're not pro-Russia by any means.
I'm not pro-anybody other than pro-me.
Why wouldn't you help these people that need help?
I'm a hyper-nationalist.
These citizens that are our citizens.
They're our patriotic brothers and sisters and thems.
Why wouldn't you support them?
I'm a hyper-patriot.
Why would you give Ukraine, and I understand opposing Putin.
That's not what I'm saying.
I'm saying is why would we have bases still in Japan who hasn't shown an aggressive bone
in their body since 1940 or whatever.
Oh, the Japanese are murderous fuckers.
They have to be.
They're rightfully so.
But they're not anymore.
They were then and they are now.
We took the wind.
We are now too.
We are just as aggressive as they are.
Everybody is, but we took the wind out of their sails.
And you can like it or you can hate it.
I don't care.
The fact is they're not going to fuck with us anymore.
Japan is not going to fuck with America anymore.
Japan is now a member of the large nations or the modern nations.
The in power nations.
As an equal member, which is what they wanted even then.
Which is what they even wanted then.
Yes.
But you know who's not going to fuck with us?
Japan.
You know who's not going to fuck with us?
Germany.
We're on the same side.
You know who is going to fuck with us?
Russia and China.
Those are the two.
And North Korea to some extent, however the fuck they figure it out.
But you know what?
Most of those people aren't going to fuck with us.
And the point is we fucking showed them, I'm sorry history whatever yada yada.
We didn't mean to nuke everybody, but we did and fuck you.
I mean that's the point.
We could have an episode about the nuclear bomb.
We could.
I'm pro nuclear bomb.
I'm pro nuclear bomb too because my grandpa was stationed off the coast of Okinawa.
You know what?
Japan?
Japan.
Japan have really owned up and they've become their own and they've made really great electronics
for everybody.
Japan had a fucking society independent of us and they flourished.
And they flourished, yeah.
That hard attitude that people had my grandfather's age and your grandfather's age.
For sure.
He tried to instill that into me and I have a part of that in me.
There's a part of that.
But I'm not as hard as they were.
Not as hard as they were.
My grandmother was as hard as cut steel.
Yeah.
She was hard as cut steel.
Yes.
And she was a nurse and her husband was a World War II vet and she was very serious
about everything.
Yes.
There was no joking and fun.
Not at my grandparents house.
My grandfather was fun.
My grandmother was not fun.
She was mean.
Yes.
Straight up mean.
How is it that the war torn veteran was the nice guy in that relationship?
But it was true.
It was true.
It's a realism.
Maybe they were together and she was a nurse and he was a guy.
Yeah.
You have the idealistic vision of war.
But unless you're fighting a war.
He loved talking about tanks and how to blow up tanks because he was a tanker.
But he never talked about any people that he killed.
And I know that he had a whole box of or a whole drawer of metals because he was there
for the whole time.
Well his whole point is you're fighting for your beliefs.
My grandfather didn't fight for beliefs.
I truly believe.
So my grandfather hated Republicans to his dying day.
He felt that Hubert Humphrey was trying to kill him.
As he probably was.
He did.
He believed that he was trying to kill him.
He picked fruit.
He lived through the Great Depression.
And when the war started he signed up first year at 16.
And he fought Germans.
And he killed lots of people.
He's got he had he's dead now been dead now for 10 years more than 10 years 15 years more
than 20 years.
He's been dead for 20 years.
Scary that my grandfather's been dead for 20 years.
But anyway he had a whole box of metals killing people you know because that's what he did.
And that's just what they did.
There was a whole generation of people they didn't know they were born to kill Nazis.
But my grandfather was one of them.
That's what he did best.
He wasn't a good welder and he wasn't a good railway worker and he wasn't a good mason.
But he did kill Nazis really well.
He wasn't a very good husband or a very good father.
He was a great grandfather.
But he was old enough to accept his fucked up shit.
Let's do a cigar check.
I am done.
He's done.
What do you think?
Very good very smooth.
Very good.
Even cigar throughout the whole thing.
Me too.
This is a great cigar and I encourage you to try it.
Yeah you should try it.
Give it a go.
Nate has what three inches left?
Yeah two and a half.
Three.
I highly recommend the Rocky Patel.
Let's do the Rocky Patel.
Thank you for listening.
This has been Nice Ashes.
Have a good day and hope.