Hello, welcome to Nice Ashes.
I'm Mike.
And I'm Nate.
What are we smoking tonight?
We're doing our CAO flavors.
We're on the second to last one, I believe.
Is it the second to last or is it the last?
No, we got a special episode with one of the flavors.
We have a special episode.
We're doing the, what is it called?
The Gold Honey.
This is the Gold Honey.
And then next episode we're going to do a cherry bomb.
Yes, yes we are.
And then we decided we're going to revisit the Moon Trance, but we're going to do the
Torpedo instead of the regular, as it were.
Yep, and then later on we have a Blood Red Moon cherry cigar that we've talked about
on there.
But that's not CAO.
No, no.
So we're about to clear it.
This is our second to last CAO flavor we haven't tried.
We're going to go back and revisit the Moon Trance at the end, just to kind of bookend
it.
Yeah, but the Moon Trance is the only one we've liked so far.
Yes.
I don't know, man.
You're going to have to tell me, but I'm getting kind of some bad vibes a la Bella Vanilla
off of the first few puffs here.
I'm not thrilled about the tobacco quality just up front.
But to be fair, we got to give it at least an inch, inch and a half.
I am not thrilled with the quality of the cigar roll itself.
It's very loose, in my opinion.
And the flavor is acidic, but I am getting some honey on it.
What's the, isn't the saying loose cigars sink ships or something like that?
Something like that.
Something very close to that, at least.
Yeah.
I've got a little bit of wind down here.
It's a hundred degrees Fahrenheit, both where Mike is and where I am.
It's kind of just a hot, hot, hot summer day.
Yes.
And where I'm at, the thunder is starting.
I can hear it.
I'm sure that it's going on in the background for me.
Okay.
Well, just, you know, we're smoking cigars and we can't always be inside, inside where
everything's nice and quiet.
So that's why you listen to us, because we're actually smoking these cigars when we're recording
this podcast.
Yes.
Yeah.
So gold honey.
That's what we're smoking tonight.
I've got myself half of a gin and tonic left.
This is my second gin and tonic of the evening.
And then I've got a natural light natterdaze strawberry lemonade queued up for when I'm
done with my gin and tonic.
So you got some of those, huh?
Well, my wife went on a camping trip and brought some back and I thought it's a hundred degrees.
I will drink that.
But Mike and I had a little seance or powwow together.
We didn't record any episodes, but we smoked a ton of cigars and he introduced me to these
Natty Light natterdaze and their strawberry lemonade flavored beer.
But I would say like the moon trance, very tasty.
It's not overdone on the lemonade.
It's a nice, nice blend of lemonade and beer.
So if you see them, don't be hating.
What do you want to talk about tonight, Mike?
Mike's on mute.
He may be, he may be dying.
Oh, he's back.
He's back.
I am back.
I apologize about that.
I had to let the third cohost inside.
Yes.
She grabbed a cord for my headphones, my headjack and ripped it off.
Accidentally.
She wants all the spotlight to herself.
She does.
So, but yeah, so your wife went on a camping trip and got some.
Yes.
I don't know if she bought them or if her camping compatriot bought them.
But the fact remains is she brought some, she brought two of them home.
So I got to snag it before she gets her hands back on it.
Yes.
And this is from somebody who really enjoys craft beer and hazy IPAs, but these are well
worth it.
Yeah, they're good.
Especially for a hot summer day.
Yes.
I'm drinking Guinness.
Okay.
Seller-made Guinness.
Not my preference for a hundred degree weather day, but you do you.
Well, I've been drinking ice water all day.
I've also been staying inside.
I had the day off.
Yeah.
Well, why don't we talk about that first?
Because there was something that was really kind of like irking me about today.
Okay.
And for those of you who don't know or might know, because we record things and then we
edit them and then we post them online.
So it'll be like a week later when everybody's listening to this.
But today is the observed day of Juneteenth.
And for those that don't know, this is the day that what the federal armed forces marched
into Texas and demanded they end slavery.
Yes.
This is the last day that black people en masse were enslaved, but not the last day
of slavery in the United States.
The last day black people were en masse enslaved in the United States, but also not the last
day of slavery in the United States and not the last day of slavery of any people worldwide.
But I did want to talk just upfront of some things that I learned kind of through, you
know, like the Instagram stories and things, but also that's where I saw some stuff that
kind of upset me greatly.
And I was reading that, you know, well, even before my reading, words have certain powers.
And you know, if you're a writer, if you are a reader, if you are interested in kind of
communicating with people in general, you know that the word choices that you make greatly
affect the message that is received, irregardless of what the intended message may be.
Right?
So you can pick certain words and certain words have certain connotations and certain
words have different meanings maybe or more subtle meanings.
So word choice is important.
Let's just say that.
And I was reading that, you know, calling somebody a slave is maybe diminutive of their
experience as a person.
And so calling them enslaved, you know, making it something that happened to them and not
like the defining word that sums them up.
So I think that maybe is important to just begin with.
And that's something that I can definitely get behind.
I know that words and your word choices greatly influence how your message is received.
That is true.
But I will also note that the people who are having a conversation about this have never
been chattel slaves.
So.
Well, and that's where my second point comes in.
So I just first wanted to say that yes, you know, wording matters.
Calling somebody a slave versus calling them an enslaved person, there's definitely a different
meaning there and one that certainly I never thought of.
So I think just in general, it's very, very good to, you know, think about the words that
you use and maybe it's solely based on the words that your parents and grandparents used.
I know for me that's very, very true.
So that's one thing.
Okay.
That's its own thing.
I can get behind, you know, if referring to that terrible part of our country's history
as calling them enslaved instead of calling them slaves, that's fine with me.
Not a big deal.
I just wanted to kind of mention that for awareness for everybody.
But to Mike's point, nobody alive today because Juneteenth happened in what, 1865?
I believe so.
So nobody alive today, you'd be, you'd be a hundred and almost 160 years old.
So there are currently no living formerly enslaved people in the United States, formerly
enslaved by the United States in the United States.
Maybe somebody fled from somewhere else where their slavery is still happening and they're
here now, but certainly nobody-
There's no people who were slaves who were directly, who directly benefited from the
freedom of the slaves after the Civil War because there were, well, there might be some
people alive who were enslaved as a part of the incarceration system.
Yes.
Because that didn't end until the 1940s.
So-
However, Juneteenth is not celebrating 1940.
No, no it's not.
Juneteenth is celebrating the official end of slavery in the United States as an institution.
Yes.
Might there have been other things, indentured servitude or what have you, the Japanese concentration
camps in World War II.
Yes.
We're talking about the ending of slavery as an institution.
Sure.
And the PO, we had POW camps.
And they definitely use those people as labor.
Yes.
Which most people would not disagree with.
If you do or don't, it's beside the point of what we're getting at here is there's not
a living enslaved person anymore.
Not in the United States.
And if they're in the United States, they fled somewhere else.
They're not a victim of American enslavement, of American slavery.
There's nobody alive today in America who owned enslaved people.
Not in the United States.
There are people in the United States-
Not in the United States.
... that owned enslaved persons in other countries.
Well, yes.
And the same thing is true.
There's nobody alive in the United States who under the American slavery institution
owned an enslaved person.
Okay?
Because that ended in 1865, which was far too long past the 13th Amendment.
I'm writing my numbers on that.
14th Amendment, I believe.
14th.
Oh, 14th Amendment was the Civil Rights Act.
Yep.
13th was abolishing slavery.
So there's nobody alive in America who suffered or profited under American slavery.
There may be heirs of rich people, but they never directly owned any enslaved people.
So this brings me to my point here, and this is my thing.
And also to further be clear, I did not have the day off.
It's a federally recognized holiday and I worked.
Okay?
Mike works for the state.
He had the day off and that's fine.
Yes.
And one of my coworkers had to work today because his union didn't ratify the holiday
last contract cycle.
Okay.
But so also on Instagram, where I also saw the slave versus enslaved, a lot of people
were posting, if you have the day off, you need to make reparations to African Americans.
And I thought to myself, that is some absolute horseshit.
And if I'm...
What?
Okay.
If I'm wrong, if I'm out of line here, let me know, but...
No, no, no, no, no.
Somebody online posted that...
Multiple people shared this same thing.
People that you know personally are just random trolls on the internet.
If you don't have to work today, most people that generally post, in my opinion, they generally
post things that are more thought provoking.
They're maybe a little more left leaning than most other things.
They're kind of anti-Elon Musk and anti-Trump, but they're also anti-Biden in some senses
because it's just kind of like...
But sometimes they veer fairly heavy into like, all white people are bad kind of thing.
Well, I mean, we could have a very long discussion about that concept.
Well, yeah.
It's been around for a while.
Yes, that's true.
But I just thought, my God, here we are.
We're all wage slaves.
Okay?
I mean, most of us.
We don't...
You know what inflation was?
40 year high.
I'm not even 40 years old.
This is the highest it's ever been in my lifetime.
8.6%.
And you know what my increase is going to be this year?
It's not going to be 8.6.
I'll tell you that right up front.
So it's like you just, you slowly fall down this hill, right?
You're clawing up this sandy hill, but inflation outpaces, raises, and cost of living increases
8 to 1, 5 to 1, year after year after year.
But then they're telling me, but I didn't have the day off, so I guess it's not me,
it's you, Mike.
It's all your fault.
But they're telling people you have the day off.
It's a federal holiday.
Everybody's supposed to have it off.
But if you have it off, you have to make reparations to an African American person.
Like I wasn't, I didn't, I never owned any enslaved people.
I don't know anybody who was an enslaved person.
That doesn't mean they're not out there, but math tells me that they're not.
At least in America.
If you want reparations, you know what, instead of coming after my $5 or my $20, petition
the government.
They can shift some money from the military industrial complex and give it to some African
American people.
But then that's got to be it.
You can't just keep doing it.
You know what I mean?
Well there are, you know, there's the reparations argument.
It's been happening since before our time, obviously.
But as far as I was aware, the whole concept behind quotas in hiring and you know, the
quota system for college admissions and those sort of things.
You're talking affirmative action.
While there's affirmative action and then there's like various versions of, I suppose
it is all affirmative action, you know?
Yeah.
So we've discussed the hiring policies of certain organizations that I've worked for
in the past and all of them give extra credit for not being a white man, basically.
And in college admissions, the same too.
And I figured all that was the reparations, right?
You know, when you create a 14-point system into which I, as a white man, can only get
11 out of 14, then that's a pretty unfair advantage for other people, assuming they
have equal qualifications.
Yeah.
And that's, I mean, whatever.
It's just the way that it is.
Yeah.
And that's not taking into account, you know, generation upon generation of, you know, enslavement,
not equal rights segregation.
So I'm just trying to say like-
But as you said, I have never directly benefited from that.
Yeah.
Yes.
I'm just saying as you and me, you know, and it's not to justify slavery at all because
it's terrible.
It's not a good-
Obviously.
Some people would justify slavery.
I hear arguments-
Some people would.
But nobody that I would be friends with.
Well, I hear arguments on conservative radio shows that aren't an outright call for slavery,
but the consequences of what they're saying would re-enslave large sections of the population.
Yeah.
But I'm just going to go out there and say that I am 100% against slavery in any form,
shape, or fashion.
But the fact of the matter is, I mean, like, let's look at this historically, and you as
a history major, in the grand scheme of life and everything, the small slice of time where
slavery was legal in the United States pales in comparison to world history where slavery
was accepted.
Yes.
Because when, you refresh my memory, when did America break free from Britain?
1784, I would say.
I think that's what it was.
Yeah, but they issued the Declaration in 1776.
Well, that's when they issued the Declaration, but they formally won the war.
Yeah.
So let's just be, you know, let's just say 1776.
Let's be generous and say 1776 to 1865.
That sounds like less than 100 years to me in American history where we had slavery,
because everything pre-1776, that's not Britain.
Sorry.
Sure.
Can't help you there.
That's Britain's fault.
I'm not taking ownership of that.
Right.
And well, the mainstream narrative around American slavery doesn't include the native
population that was enslaved.
No.
It doesn't include the indentured servants that were...
Yeah.
It goes all the way back to though, to a Plymouth Rock when British people first landed here.
Like they're more than happy to...
My family, my original progenitor was a indentured servant in New England.
So yeah, it's...
They definitely have versions of slavery in the United States from the earliest days of
colonization.
Let's put it that way.
So before we continue the enslavement slavery debate that's raging hard and fast here on
nice ashes, I'm about halfway done with this gold honey.
And I have to say it's really kind of...
I've warmed up to it.
You have.
Yes.
I'm halfway through and I've got just a slight honey, a slight hint of honey.
And well, I'm drinking a gin and tonic, so that's kind of dry, right?
Dry and harsh.
And it's a little bit of honey in this cigar.
It's...
I don't know that I'd go out and buy another one, but it's probably my second favorite
so far.
I like it better than Eileen Stream.
See and I don't.
I don't like the tobacco.
Okay.
I do get the taste of honey, but the tobacco to me, maybe it's because I'm smoking it too
fast.
I'm also about halfway through.
Okay.
But it tastes harsh.
I don't like the tobacco at all.
Well, and mine doesn't...
It might be a bad pairing with the Guinness too.
Yeah, that could be.
And I think pairing is huge and I'm not going to discount that, but I've got this new ashtray
that I got for my birthday and it's a big chalice and it's got four welded on cigar
holders.
So I've been setting mine on the cigar holder there.
Man, and it just...
It sits there.
It sits there and it's never going to roll off, even in the wind.
It's great.
It's a beautiful ashtray.
I love it.
It is a very nice ashtray.
So I've been setting it on there and so I'm smoking it.
I'm taking deep puffs, but I'm not smoking fast.
So nothing's tasted harsh to me.
I am almost done with my second gin and tonic for the evening.
It's a hundred degrees.
I've been outside drinking since five, since 5 PM and it's 8 PM now.
So it's about three hours of good solid drinking.
But it pairs well with the tonic.
The tonic's a little bitter, the quinine or whatever.
So I think it's a good compliment to that.
I don't know if I was drinking a sweeter beer or something.
I don't know if it'd be as good.
Yeah, because I'm trying not to puff too hard on it, but that tobacco just has a little
bit of a sour taste to it to me.
Maybe it's my humidor.
I don't think so.
I wouldn't think so.
I don't think it is, but I can definitely taste the honey.
So you don't like this as much as Eileen's Dream, the Irish whiskey?
I don't like the tobacco as much.
The flavor on this is better.
Okay.
And maybe that's the difference is the flavor here is better.
Definitely.
Oh, for sure.
The flavor here is second only to the Moon Trance so far.
But I don't think, you might be right about the tobacco not being even as good as Eileen's
Dream because this is a little bit lighter wrapper again.
And I remember the Bella Vanilla was a lighter wrapper.
So I don't know if it's just when they wrap them with the lighter wrappers, if it's a
different tobacco that they use.
I'm open to the suggestion that it's me because I usually do not smoke Cameroon wrapper cigars.
I'm usually a Maduro kind of guy.
Well, me as well.
But I think the honey, I think that's a great flavor.
I don't think it's overpowering like the Bella Vanilla was.
That was terrible.
But it's more prevalent than the Eileen's Dream where we were kind of only getting like
a vague creaminess.
But this one you definitely do get a honey flavor.
But it's not overpowering.
But so that's our halfway check-in.
I just wanted to pop back in with, so far I've been fairly impressed with this one.
Like I said, I don't know that I'd necessarily go out and buy it.
I would go out and buy more Moon Trance because if it comes down to it and you're saying like,
you got to smoke a flavored cigar, I'd be like Moon Trance, Moon Trance all the way.
What about the gold honey?
Nope, it'd be Moon Trance.
I give Moon Trance to people all the time because they're good.
They're really good.
This is not an episode about Moon Trance though.
No, it's not.
It's not.
But this is our what?
Moon Trance, Bella Vanilla.
It's our fourth episode of the CAO Flavors and we promised the listeners a hard blow
by blow which one is best.
And I do not foresee the Moon Trance being dethroned, but I'm open to the possibility
that it will be.
But it's not going to be this one either.
I'm definitely open to the possibility.
It's not going to be this one.
I have smoked the CAO Cherry Pipe Tobacco.
Okay.
And I like the CAO Cherry Pipe Tobacco.
So we shall see.
But I will tell you and the listeners that right now the stack ranking first place is
Moon Trance.
The second place is probably the gold honey.
Third place by a slim slim margin would be the Eileen Stream and then somewhere 50,000
spaces down is the Bella Vanilla.
I would generally agree with that assessment.
I would say that the Moon Trance is, that's like S tier.
You know?
Yeah.
Yep.
I always have a half a box of those in my humidor.
Yeah.
And you know what, this one here, the gold honey, you might not like the tobacco flavor,
but the flavoring of the honey is fine.
Yes, absolutely.
So it's a nice summer.
It does have a honey flavor.
You know, nice summer.
Hey, I want it a little sweeter.
I don't want it overly sweet.
You know, they got the flavor right on this one.
So that's, you know, that's good.
The tobacco, they could probably up the tobacco quality, but they didn't.
So it is what it is.
I wonder if this would be better if it was a natural wrapper instead of a Cameroon.
You know, it probably wouldn't.
Because I don't mind natural wrappers.
I've had a couple green cigars and I like them.
They're good.
So, I don't know.
Hard to say.
It's tough to say, especially with these flavored cigars.
You know, it's tough to kind of pick out the palate.
You know, is it the tobacco?
Is it the wrapper?
Is it the flavoring?
Is it something else?
You know, is it a loose wrap?
Is it a, you know, some kind of manufacturing defect?
I don't think.
See, and as we've been talking, the flavor is actually getting a lot better now.
Okay.
It took me to about the halfway point for it to like, that's why I wanted to mention
it.
Because I was like, man, this one's finally coming into its own.
You know, the first half or, you know, 45% of the cigar, it wasn't anything that I was
excited about.
It wasn't as harsh as the Bella Vanilla.
So, in my mind, that's a win in terms of our CAO Flavors, you know, smoke off.
Right.
It wasn't offensive.
It was one that, you know, if somebody said, man, I don't like vanilla flavor and I don't
want the moon trance.
Right now, my second would be, well, do you like honey?
Right.
You know, if we were somehow in a circumstance where it was like, I will only smoke a CAO
flavor, I won't smoke anything else, but I don't like vanilla.
It would be this one.
So far.
So, I would also like to mention a totally different topic.
Revol Day happened between the last episode where, if I remember correctly, I kind of
shit on the police and this episode.
So, I would like the listeners to know that my opinions were not affected by any events
that have been going on or were going on.
Yes.
And I would also say between, I think, two episodes ago, maybe more.
I don't know.
There's one episode we were talking about capital punishment.
People who shoot up schools.
Top of the list.
Top of the fucking list.
You know, I remember, you know what?
And it's sad.
It's really sad because I enjoy shooting guns.
I enjoy hunting to a certain extent.
I have never shot anybody.
I don't want to shoot anybody.
I've always practiced very, very responsible gun ownership, gun handling.
I think it was Newtown, Newton.
There was one that happened when I was in college and it was like the first elementary
school shooting or something.
And I remember just crying.
And this was before I had kids.
But it was just so sad.
And I can't, I don't know.
We did active shooter drills in my school like my last maybe year in high school.
You know, I just put cardboard in the window of the door and close the blinds and basically
hide under your desk as if an atomic bomb in the 1950s was going off.
But there's these people out there that think arming teachers is the answer.
And I don't know about anybody else, but I always had good grades, but I was never like,
you know, rah rah fan of the teachers.
So I don't know if anyone can imagine what having an armed teacher would be like.
It would be like prison.
Arming the teachers would be a serious mistake.
I don't want to offend anybody when I say this, but people who are school teachers are
either true believers in whatever educational cause that they're doing, or they are the
lowest common denominator.
Well, and regardless of all of that, they just don't pay teachers enough money to get
truly competent people and you don't 100% or not 100% there.
Well and let's see guns around children.
Let's be very, very clear.
They don't pay enough to always get competent people, but the competent people that they
do get because they do get competent people, but they're there because of their heart,
because of their life's mission, because of some deeper thing than money and pay.
They're there, I'm not saying that's right or wrong.
I'm not saying like positive view.
I'm going to take a negative view.
They're there for their agenda.
That's usually political or personal or whatever, you know, that could be, that could be, you
know, and there certainly are teachers like that.
And you know what, in all of my years of schooling, and I don't remember what the, what the number
is the average American gets because you know, you start in kindergarten, sometimes you get
a pre-K and then if you go to like a four year college, it's like, I don't know, 20,
you know, 18 or 20 years of schooling, right?
So you get, you get all these people.
When I look back at my entire educational career, as it were, my educational indentured
servitude as it were, there's maybe two, maybe if I stretch three teachers that I thought
were really truly excellent teachers that were there not for their political agenda,
but were truly there to encourage learning, encourage kind of a positive constructive
discourse.
You know, but that's like, I mean, if you think about all of the years and all of the
teachers I interacted with, they only have three that I could look back on and say, yep,
I remember that teacher and I loved their classes.
They clearly had a passion.
They weren't trying to indoctrinate people.
They were really trying to encourage free thought.
That's pretty sad statistically.
And regardless of if you're a good teacher or not, you're right.
They're not getting paid enough to make life and death decisions with active shooters.
And I don't think, I don't think any of our children, any of our children anywhere should
ever, ever have to face that.
The police, and they just released video this last week, the police didn't even try, they
didn't even try to go into the room, into the school in Texas.
They didn't even try.
That should be a surprise to no one.
People that don't act and they have the power to act and the power to save lives and you
don't, that is the utmost show of cowardice that anyone anywhere could ever possibly display.
And that is, it's, it's unforgivable in my mind.
These are kids.
These are elementary school children.
And I made a post, or I put a post online and I shared this meme with you, Mike.
It was a picture of the, the blue Lives Matter flag with the thin blue line, rah rah.
And it said, these colors don't run, and in parentheses it said into buildings where there's
an active shooter.
And my dad who's, who's like a thousand percent Trump said, that's why he said, everyone has
the right to defend themselves.
And I said, not elementary school children, because they don't, they don't vote.
They can't buy, they can't buy firearms, nor should they.
That's not the point.
That's not the point I'm trying to make.
I just want to be clear.
And then he said, that's why teachers need to be armed.
And that's what got me really thinking like, man, if, if my gym teacher, if that guy had
a, had an open carry, or we knew he was carrying in high school, it would have been game over.
Like he would have been drill sergeant.
You would have had to like, I mean, he was the type of guy that kept the women's locker
room open because his office had doors to women's locker room and the men's locker room.
He kept both doors open so he could watch everybody change, you know?
But if that guy had a gun, like Jesus, you know, like that would have been a whole different
dynamic.
The people that say teachers should carry guns are also the people that lose their minds
when like these SJW freaks try to teach about gender studies to in, you know, grade schools.
So you know, they really need to think about what they're asking.
Do you want the gender queer kindergarten teacher who cries when you say mean words
to them to be carrying a gun to defend children when a psycho comes in?
That doesn't seem like a good long-term strategy for success.
And I'm not attacking the teacher.
People are all different.
I'm just saying that that is not somebody who is going to shoot somebody else.
Most of those people, and I've met a lot of them.
And so you cannot handle dealing with somebody who is abrasive towards them, let alone somebody
who is trying to kill them.
Yeah.
And I think to be very, very clear here is that there are terrible people.
They're out there.
You know, maybe you live next to one of them.
Maybe they come into your store and berate you and ask to speak to the manager.
But there's terrible people out there.
But I think the point that we're trying to make is not that any of these terrible people
are correct or should be somehow exonerated.
But the point is that these are the same people that say, I don't want this liberal teacher
teaching whatever, whatever to my son or daughter, but I trust in the carry gun to save my offspring's
life.
You can't have it both ways.
You know, like, or you've got, and on the flip side, let's just say the flip side, I
don't want this conservative teacher teaching my children that the founding fathers were
100% right.
Like I don't, I don't like that teacher, but also I trust him to use lethal force if needed.
Like that's not how that, that's not how that works.
You know, like you can't sit there and on one hand say, oh, all the teachers are super
liberal and we hate them all.
And then say, well, they should all carry guns.
And then they'd say my kids like, no, that's not how that works.
Like you understand like taking another life.
That's a huge, huge, I mean, that's a huge thing.
And certain morality or moral codes allow for it.
But I think, and you know what?
So I've never killed anybody.
I have no desire to kill anybody.
You know, my grandfather killed a lot of people in World War II and he never talked about
it.
So all I can surmise in trying to flex my empathy muscle, all I can surmise is regardless
of your thoughts, if you think you're justified or not in taking a life, it's not, it's not
going to prepare you for actually doing it.
And it's not going to prepare you for any, any sort of guilt or remorse or anything that
you might feel after the fact.
Like that's not something that you're, you can just, you know, overwrite with whatever
you think your moral code is.
I think even shooting a bad person, killing a bad person in self-preservation, I think
you're still going to feel guilt somewhere, somehow, if you're anywhere close to a decent
human.
I don't know for sure.
I'm just trying to think like, you know, trying to put myself in some of those situations
where it's like, you know, of course I would sit here and say, yes, of course I would storm
the school and take out the shooter.
But also I wasn't there.
And you know, I don't live in fantasy land.
I have no idea what I would do in that situation.
Yeah.
I just wanted to, you know, just bring that up.
Right.
I think that I don't want to sound too harsh on the teachers.
I watched a TikTok video compilation of all these crazy teachers and there's only like
a dozen of them that were clearly out of their minds with their politics.
And they were all grade school teachers, of course.
So it was like, do I want those 12 people carrying a gun in a school?
No.
I think back to all the teachers I had, a couple of them probably were carrying guns.
In fact, I know that one of my teachers had a gun in his vehicle because I was his student
in aid and he was a hunter, so he had his shotgun and his gun dog on this truck during
the school day.
Part of my job was to go up there and feed and water and walk the dog.
But yeah, but I mean, that's different.
That's different than open carrying in the school.
You know what I mean?
Right.
He wasn't carrying a gun in the hallway.
And there's people that are responsible gun owners.
Okay.
You know, they keep them in safes.
They make sure they're unloaded.
They, you know, they don't hand loaded guns to complete strangers.
You know, they know what's going on.
They know that it's a tool.
They understand that.
They understand that just like a pocket knife or even a lighter or a box of matches.
It's a tool.
You can do great harm with those tools if you are so inclined.
But if you're responsible, and we talk about personal responsibility all the time on this
show, you know, I'm not worried about one of my neighbors having a semi-automatic AR-15.
You know, that's not necessarily an assault rifle, but that's what the media calls it.
You know, if they're responsible people, we should talk about gun control, what we think
should happen because I know I think we should.
I have a very firm idea of what should be done.
Yeah, that'll be next.
I think that a lot of people who are firearms enthusiasts have the same idea because I've
been talking, I've talked to many people about this over the years.
Yeah.
All of whom are pro-gun.
I really don't know anybody who's anti-gun to be honest with you.
Yeah, I think there are people out there that I've interacted with that are very clearly
anti-gun.
I don't necessarily talk to them anymore.
And I'm not going to say that they have a point, but we'll get into it more in like
next episode.
But like I said, you know, these school shootings, I never thought about it.
I never thought about anything.
Like honestly, like all my school, you know, up until high school was all tornado drills
and fire drills, right?
And then 9-11 happened and that happened live in my first period class.
And that like rocked my world.
How did you start school that late?
Mine was in second or third period.
Well, maybe it was second or third period.
I don't know.
You know, that was 2001 and it's 2022.
So it was quite a while ago.
I remember because I remember that day very clearly because my dad was in Washington,
DC at that time.
So I had to get called into the principal's office and he called the school.
He had an office at the Pentagon at that time.
You know, all that jazz.
So I don't think it started, but it was like, so after our first class in the hallway, some
kids were saying, oh, some idiot pilot flew into a building in New York.
Like I can't believe it.
They're just a moron, you know?
And that's what we thought.
And then I don't know how they heard about it.
But then I went to my next class, which was social studies and the teacher and he was
the football coach too.
So he could be fairly intense, but I can't ever forget what he said to us and the way
he said it and the way he looked when he said it.
And he said something, I don't remember exactly the words, but I remember like the feeling
and just like you could tell.
Like this is 2001, so I was in my, I think my sophomore year of high school and it was
like, you could just tell.
Like you're a young kid and you're feeling like good and you're like, I'm almost an adult
and stuff.
But like, man, when somebody comes out and says, look, we got to watch this news thing
because it's happening live and whatever we had planned for today, it takes a second seat
to what's happening here.
And I mean, that's just impactful as a young kid, as a teenager, you know, and for a teacher
to like kind of level with you in that way.
Like this is something serious is happening.
And remember the only thing I heard about it was some pilot.
And I saw I'm thinking like a little Cessna or a little two seater plane flew into a skyscraper
in New York, you know, like, oh, obviously that's a mistake.
Like how dumb can you be?
Like, look, it's right there.
It's huge.
It's a skyscraper.
Like miss it.
Like don't hit it.
Don't fly that close.
But then he turned on the plane and the one tower was smoking.
And we actually saw live the second plane hit.
And we saw the second plane hit and we had the same, you know, or at least I did the
instantaneous realization that the newscasters had, you know, because they were thinking
it was a mistake or it was an error, pilot error, somebody was drunk under the influence.
They had no idea.
Like how would you know?
And then to see that second, that second airplane hit, you know, very clearly not a mistake.
But it was a very, very impactful, I don't know, awakening and of innocence as it were
to my childhood.
And there were other things happening.
Like I was born in 86 and that's when the Berlin Wall fell, but I was an infant.
So you know, it doesn't matter.
You know, in Korea and some other things happened, but I was too young and OJ Simpson happened,
but I was in elementary school.
So I had no idea of what the implications either way were.
But when you watch an airliner crash into a skyscraper with thousands of people in it
on live TV, that's, I mean, that's different.
Oh, sure.
At school shootings, I mean, we've had school shootings in Minnesota, both justified, AKA
the police shooting criminals and mass shootings.
No laws have changed here.
That's for sure.
And we'll talk about it again next episode, but it's not considered a mass shooting unless
more than four people die, not including the shooter.
Sure.
But I, you know, when it comes to schools, I don't think anyone should die except maybe
the person with the gun that's going in there to shoot kids.
Preferably not.
Yeah, preferably not.
There was a school resource officer in Minnetonka a couple years back that shot a child having
a mental health episode at an after, that was playing basketball at an after school
program or something, you know?
So even somebody who's trained to carry a gun in a school is susceptible to using the
gun against a child that there's no reason for that to have happened.
The child didn't have a weapon, you know what I mean?
Yeah.
Yep.
So.
Well, and that's why you can't possibly, with what you pay teachers, you can't possibly
expect them to be trained to the level beyond the level of police officers, because if Texas
has shown us anything, where would you ever suspect the most rah rah, let's go shoot the
bad guy police force would ever possibly be?
It would be Texas in my mind.
I mean, that's the whole state's persona.
You know, that's the stereotype.
And for them to wait and be detaining parents outside the school building and to not go
in and shoot the bad guy, like if they can't go and do their basic job, how would you ever
expect a teacher whose primary job is to instill knowledge to ever be able to do anything with
a gun?
Right.
I am done with my cigar, by the way.
Smoked it right to the nub.
It was good.
Well, that's good.
I've got about an inch left.
But it's been it's been good.
It's getting a little little harsh here at the end.
But the middle part of my note with about an inch left, but that to me is about the
no.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Burn my mouth or whatever.
Yeah, I'm not going to put it on a no.
No.
So but by and large, this this so far, I think to me has been the second best.
I would say it probably second best.
Yeah.
Thus far.
I would not recommend it.
Yeah, I don't know.
Maybe if you like lighter cigars.
Possibly if you like lighter, if you're if you're a huge honey honey addict, I would
say sure, go for it.
Right.
Yeah.
And if you ask me what the second best CAO flavors was, I would say probably the gold
honey thus far.
But I would say why would you want the second best and you can just go for moon trance.
Right.
Yeah.
That's like I say, that is a S tier.
That is a very, very good.
Yes.
Always in my humidor.
It's right there with the Kentucky shrew.
It's got to be in there.
You know, I run out, I buy more.
Buy them in bulk.
Yep.
All right.
Well, that's it for this episode.
Thanks for listening.
Take care now.