Welcome to Nice Ashes, I'm Mike.
And I'm Nate.
What are we smoking, Mike?
We are going to smoke the CAO Black.
It's a cigar that I've never had and it looks really good.
It's a torpedo.
We've had good luck with torpedoes.
Yeah, and this one has a cedar wrapper on it.
Yes, very good shelf appeal.
Alright, I'm lit.
Me also.
First few puffs pretty good.
Oh yes.
Yeah.
So what are we going to talk about today?
Well I thought we'd talk about a wide range of topics, but kind of wanted to start with
tattoos and what do you know about tattoos, Mike?
I know that I don't have any tattoos.
I've never felt the need to have one, I guess.
Once we get to 100,000 subscribers I'll get a Nice Ashes tattoo.
Perfect.
I also don't have any tattoos.
What are your thoughts on them?
Well, I've looked up the history of tattoos.
There's been like famous tattoo enthusiasts in the past, mostly circus performers.
And they used to be associated with the military and the Navy.
But I don't really have an opinion.
Sarah has a couple tattoos.
My Sarah does and your Sarah does as well.
And I'm not against it by any means, but I've never felt the need to have one.
Oh yeah.
Let's say that I was giving you the runaround there for a little bit.
And we're going to talk about the legality of some of this stuff in a few moments, but
I wanted to get your opinion on how old do you think people should be allowed to go get
a tattoo?
Ah, well, that's interesting.
I'm not sure if we talked about it.
We're kind of changing our legal restrictions on things for age.
When they raised the smoking age up to 21, I thought, well, that's interesting.
So if we're going to say you can't smoke or drink until you're 21, you probably shouldn't
be allowed to do a whole lot until you're 21 as far as dangerous things or permanent
things, including joining the military, potentially driving a car.
Probably working full time.
If we're going to say that the age of majority is 21, then that needs to be consistent.
Yeah.
And you don't get to just pick and choose, right?
You don't get to say, well, we can exploit them in the workforce before that, but they
can't do any of the fun things normal adults can do.
Yeah, I agree with that because at least around here, if you're 14 or 15, you can't work past
nine o'clock at night, but you can work a 40 hour week.
And it's like, I don't know about that.
And then once you're 16, I don't think there are any rules.
Maybe it's not after midnight or something.
It's been a while since I was that age, so I can't remember the rules anymore.
Yeah.
Okay.
So you think probably 18, 21.
So we do have, I'm not sure if it's nationwide, but I think it's illegal to tattoo a minor,
anyone under 18, even with parental consent.
Oh, really?
The law is pretty strict.
That's interesting.
In that sense, because the other thing that I wanted to ask about was let's just go with
the straight up general earlobe piercing.
What age do you think somebody should be allowed to get their ears pierced?
Now that is interesting because a lot of parents take their small children, typically girls,
to get their ears pierced.
Yes.
And my ears are pierced and I didn't get my ears pierced until I was 18.
So honestly, I would say that probably should be 18 as well, that if we're going to be consistent,
you know what I mean?
Yeah.
If we're going to be consistent, I think, I don't know.
There's some different laws, depending on the states, for ear piercing.
A lot of ear piercing places say they will not do ear piercing until the child can make
an informed decision themselves, which I think a lot of them have agreed on maybe like eight
and up.
There are parents who do want their newborns to pierce their newborn's ears.
Of course, that raises a whole bunch of different issues, but body autonomy is one of them
because the infant doesn't have a choice.
I guess like circumcision in most cases.
I would say that's very similar.
I would say ear piercing isn't as dramatic, but it's similar.
Well it's similar.
It's maybe not quite as dramatic as a tattoo or if you were talking about the circumcision.
But I think that the piercings are a little less taboo socially or culturally than tattoos
because a majority of women and a fair amount of men have ear piercings.
And I don't think, I mean, depending on the types of earrings that you wear, I don't think
anyone's ever said, look at that tacky person with their pierced ears, at least not in modern
times.
Right?
Whereas people with tattoos, you go to like a job interview or something, or you try and
wear long sleeves to cover them up or whatever you might do because they're not as socially
acceptable.
Although I think they're getting there.
They're getting there, but certainly if you're going for a professional job, you're going
to want to not have tattoos on your face or hands.
Yeah.
And it's similar, I think with the earrings and like professional dress for men.
If you're going to an interview, you probably don't want really loud earrings, just like
you wouldn't want a really loud tie for the, at least for the initial interview, right?
You want to try and be a little more conservative just because you don't know the vibe of the
place.
Yeah.
If you're a man, you probably want to pull your earrings out for the interview.
And determine the culture before you, depending on how much you want the job, of course, but
it's still not necessarily acceptable for men to have earrings.
Yeah.
Which is whatever, it's just the way it is.
So what are you thinking about the black so far, the CAO black?
Ah, it's good.
Not incredible, but very respectable.
No, it's tasty.
It's kind of right in the middle, I would say.
Not overly light and not overly dark.
Yeah, it's a very good stick, but it's not like, we've had a few where they're exceptional
from the very start.
Yes.
And this is good, but it's not like-
Yes.
And you know, it can still, it can change, it can get better.
So we'll see.
Oh, sure.
Now, what if you said, or what if I told you, Mike, that I was merely trying to lure you
in to a giant debate that we're about to have?
Okay, about tattoos and earrings?
Would you be excited?
Sure.
I would like also to mention, because I thought about this, that in many states you have to
be 18 years old to tan in a tanning bed.
Oh, okay.
I didn't even think about that.
Oh, yes.
Okay.
So here comes the bombshell.
A few days ago, as of our recording of this episode, so this will be a couple of weeks
ago now for your listeners, Nebraska passed a ban on gender-affirming surgery for minors.
I thought this was where it was going.
Okay.
I would have to know the details of that.
And so, well, we're going to get into that, but I want to tread carefully here because
we're not trying to make fun of transgender people.
We're not trying to say that this surgery isn't needed.
I'm trying to bring some logic and rationality into this because we have these other things,
tattoos, ear piercings, tanning, that are all, I mean, I don't want to say like cosmetic
and like minimize gender-affirming surgery, but they are looked, you know, like appearance-based
things for the most part.
And we've already said, you know, just like tattoos, it's illegal under 18, even if your
parent consents to it.
Piercings, there's not really a, there's some laws in different states and things, but it's
really up to the piercing shops.
And most of those have agreed that they won't do it if your child is too young to make a
decision for themselves.
And you know, and I know they're trying to like extend that don't say gay bill in Florida
and everything.
The Nebraska trans health bill, some politicians were threatening to filibuster on it, but
they voted to advance the bill that would ban gender-affirming care for minors.
And let's see, I'm just, I've got the article up here.
So one person who's 29 years old said of them passing this, I am a ball of rage.
I have had to go back to therapy when this bill was introduced.
I know so many people, so many kids who will be hurt by this.
And so there's some parents that were upset because I guess they gave their child gender
affirming surgery and they said, I know they would have killed themselves had they not
had the surgery.
That's a big, it's a very controversial topic and it's very complex.
I would, in general, I'm opposed to giving minors hormones or surgeries to change their
appearance.
Mostly for consistency sake, you know, we, as a society, we've kind of come up with a
few ages where we all kind of acknowledged that before that age, that person can't really
be held super accountable for their decisions because they're not really, they don't have
enough information and experience to make those decisions for themselves.
So if you can't drive a car or go into a tanning bed, why would you be allowed to take hormones
that would alter your natural body process or alter your appearance physically, like
having a breast reduction or an implant or something?
You know what I mean?
It's not consistent.
Yeah.
And I, and so I guess you could sit there and you can say that tattoos and ear piercings
are purely optional.
They're not things that really need to be done.
Whereas, you know, and some of the people that were upset about this, Bill in Nebraska
saying that if their child hadn't been able to get the gender reassignment surgery that
they would have committed suicide.
You know, so there's obviously a lot more, like you said, it's complex issue.
There's a lot more feelings and you know, the core of your being, like if you're not
registering what you're born as or presenting as, I guess, right?
Like it's much more mental anguish than choosing whether or not to get a tattoo.
There is what we also, I mean, you and I can acknowledge it.
And even though I guess it's controversial, there is a certain amount of trans trending
going on with young people at this point in time.
Yeah.
And a lot of people who have gender dysphoria through puberty no longer have it after they're
done with you.
So for those people, you're screwing them over if you allow them to start altering themselves,
you know?
Yeah.
Delaying the gender affirming surgeries and hormones.
I guess to me it's a cost benefit analysis.
Is it going to hurt more people than it helps by forcing them to wait until they're an adult
to make an adult decision?
Yeah.
And you know, I know there's other surgeries that people do for minors, right?
Like, I don't know, wisdom teeth removal or tonsil removal or whatever.
That's significantly different than changing your physical appearance.
Yes.
I'm not trying to argue that.
I'm just trying to bring in kind of all sides.
So it's not to say that surgery for minors is illegal, but there are things known as
elective surgeries as well.
So I guess we'd have to look it up if like cosmetic surgery, I would doubt that that's
legal for minors.
I would hope it's not.
You know, I would hope that you can't give a nose job to a 15 year old.
That doesn't seem, rhinoplasty seems like something you should be an adult for.
Probably even 21.
I'm guessing that your bone structure is not done developing until at least then.
So I guess I don't know.
I've never had plastic surgery.
Well, me either.
So you were just born an Adonis.
Trying to look up the laws on the rhinoplasty.
Oh, sure.
We have to be very careful.
We've edited certain portions of this show before for a lot of reasons.
We have, and I felt like I really would like to talk about it, but I don't want it to be
a yay or nay necessarily.
You know, I want to look at it in line with some other things.
And I don't mean to be minimizing anything by kind of leading Mike on with the tattoos
and the piercings other than those are things that people have experiences with.
And there's some, yeah, experience.
There's, what do you call it when there's like a vast, vast batch of knowledge.
Right.
And I haven't read the bill.
I did hear something about it.
A lot of times these bills, in my opinion, go too far with the rules.
You know, it's not just before you're 18, you're not allowed to have gender reassignment
surgery.
They add addendums to it that makes them cross the line in a crazy town.
And I don't know if that's the case.
Well, I think that's maybe the big problem.
So it looks like minors can get plastic surgery in the United States, but parental consent
may be required.
And so it looks like parental consent is required for patients under 18.
Sure.
And there's a big difference between repairing a cleft palate or something of that nature.
And yeah.
And I guess to be fair, like, I don't know what they're defining plastic surgery as,
you know, if they want a, I don't even know all the terms, if they want, what do they
do when they inject the forehead to tighten it up or something?
Like if they want that kind of stuff, it's probably different than if they're repairing
a cleft palate or some kind of other accident.
Right.
I could see somebody get into an accident and having to have a nose reconstruction,
you know, if you're in a bad car accident or something or a snowboarding fall, you know
what I mean?
Like there's things that happen where I could see.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
But it's, like I say, if you can't, if, if, if we as a society have agreed that you're,
you're not even mentally aware enough to be able to tan responsibly when you're 17, then
we've really said that 17 year olds are not capable of making decisions for themselves.
Yeah.
And that's not to say that, like, I don't know, cause it's weird.
I was kind of opposed to the smoking age moving to 21.
And I would have been more in favor of, let's just say the drinking age moving down to 18.
Sure.
And just, you know, the voting age and the drinking age and that stuff, like just all
the same age or make everything 16 or make everything 18.
You can't drive till you're 18 or something, you know, like, I don't know what, but.
Right.
I happen to be a fan of that as well.
I know that there's been interviews that I've watched with military commanders and they've
asked these guys, you know, what would happen if they raised the minimum military age to
21?
And almost universally they say that there wouldn't be a modern army if they had to recruit
21 and above.
Yeah.
So.
And you can be 17 to join the military.
You just have to have a parental permission.
Yeah, that's true.
But I'm having some pretty serious draw issues on my cigar here.
Really?
I am not at all.
Mine's drawing fine, tastes fine.
Like I say, it's not crazy good, but it's good.
Yeah.
We've been spoiled.
I've been spoiled the last couple cigars that have smoked.
Yeah.
Mine is very like cloggy and I took a little bit more off the, off the end, but that wasn't
it either.
Hmm.
Weird.
Yeah.
I'm getting hardly any smoke in my mouth from this one.
Really?
And the ends really lit well.
Yeah.
I think I'm forcing, I think I'm forcing through it now.
I don't know if there was just like a tight little tight spot.
Yeah, mine's fine.
It's still not a terribly great draw, but I'll work through it for you, the listeners.
Yes.
Friday night I smoked a Protagas black and a CAO moon trance.
Okay.
So those are pretty good cigars.
I like both of those.
Yeah.
And so like I say, I was spoiled the last two that I had, but I can say it's good.
I'm pairing it with water this evening.
I was debating water, but I decided to go with the powdered dry IPA, double dry hopped
from Sierra Nevada.
I did a fair bit of drinking last night with our main man, Dev.
He always appreciates these shout outs.
So I'm sure the Wednesday that this episode drops, I'll get a little texty poo from Dev.
Nice.
Yeah.
I had people over on Friday night.
Okay.
And let's just say that my friend was drinking Busch lights and I found two of them in my
driveway full.
Okay.
And on the ground.
There you go.
So there we go.
So let's go back to this age for gender affirming surgery.
I guess I'm not opposed to it taking place.
I'm opposed to child beauty pageants, but they still happen and people aren't arrested.
But I think that it can't be done lightly and it's more, until they're 18, it would
have to be more so on the parents, right?
But there's so many parents that don't even talk to their kids hardly.
Right.
And children are very susceptible to manipulation.
And I mean, I'm not trying to attack anybody, but some adults definitely have a agenda either
for or against the LGBT community and they're both committed to that ideology.
And I think that they would easily manipulate a child into doing things that they otherwise
would not do without that influence.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
I mean, and I feel like, I was just going to say, I feel like even when you and I first
met, I think I was like 25 or maybe a little, I was probably a little younger than that.
I don't know.
But I feel like I didn't really kind of get a hold of myself until maybe about 25.
You know what I mean?
And everybody's different.
Everybody's different.
And if somebody's transgender and the parents know that they're just absolutely miserable,
I think there needs to be some sort of legal way to get the surgery done in extreme cases.
Right?
Regardless of if there's a ban under 18.
Do you know what I mean?
Like, I feel like there would have to be some sort of exception process because I wouldn't
and normally I'm more of a fan of the government leaving people alone and letting people do
what they want to do.
And I don't know, maybe it's better to let anyone who wants gender affirming surgery
to do it.
And if they were just following a trend, I guess that's a good lesson they learned.
And if they weren't, then they were able to take care of their life and feel comfortable
finally for the first time.
You know, I don't know.
It's interesting.
I can only imagine though that any minor that gets the surgery and then later decided it
was a trend probably has some good legal recourse against the doctor who performed the surgery
possibly.
Well, they're definitely going to have some scarring potential infertility issues that
they're going to deal with for the rest of their life.
When it comes to adults, I think that adults should be able to do whatever they want as
long as they're not hurting anybody else.
So that's pretty easy line in the sand for me to draw.
But like I say, the issue becomes when you're under the age of majority, which we don't
have a clear age of majority in the United States.
But if you're under the age of majority, you're not responsible for your own actions, largely.
You know, you don't have the same legal repercussions if you commit crimes.
You don't have the same legal rates.
Yeah, I was going to say it's strange when minors commit crimes because it kind of depends
on the severity of the crime if they choose to try them as an adult.
Yeah, yeah.
And the more serious the crime, the more likely it is they'll be charged as an adult.
And of course, the closer to adulthood, I guess in that case, which would be 18, they
are the more likely they are to be tried as an adult.
Yeah, yeah.
If you're 15 and you have three felonies, your third felony is probably going to be
charged as an adult.
Yeah.
And there are 15 year olds that have three felonies, unfortunately.
Yeah.
Yeah, you know, it's a very sensitive issue.
I mean, I've talked to 15 year olds.
I don't think a 15 year old is capable of making a decision for himself.
Yeah.
At least not the ones that I've talked to recently.
Well, I mean, they can decide like what roller coaster to ride at the amusement park, but.
Right.
And everybody does.
That's a lot of serious decisions.
No, I know.
And I also know people mature at different rates and it kind of depends on your parenting
and how you're being interacted with by adults, too.
I know that I felt like, I mean, it's tough because when I was in high school, I was like,
why do I have to listen to all these adults?
You know, like I was a good student and got good grades and everything.
It was just kind of like I'm ready for people to take me seriously, which it's tough because
like looking back now, I'm like, OK, OK, 15 year old me.
Yeah, you had your shit together then, not, you know, but I don't know.
Like on one hand, it's like why not treat people like adults?
But again, you know, like you're not going to let a 12 year old be a guest on our podcast
and smoke down a cigar and drink scotch, you know.
So like you said, there's like adults should be able to do whatever they want, but we have
laws in place to kind of protect children from, you know, I don't know if it's really
harm.
It's harm because I know drinking alcohol, smoking marijuana, cigarette smoking or vaping
all have kind of developmental consequences if you do them when your body is still developing.
Oh, yes.
I mean, to an excess, I'm sure.
Like I'm sure if you take one puff off of a joint or something, you're not going to
be irreparably damaged.
But yeah, if a child starts smoking marijuana at nine years old, there's probably going
to be some serious consequences.
Regularly consumes marijuana.
Yes.
And I think marijuana should be legal.
I think every drug should be legal.
If people want to destroy their own lives, that's their right.
But that's the right as an adult, not as a minor.
Yes.
No, I'm with you.
I feel I think all that stuff should be legal.
I think the biggest thing that isn't said, a lot of these people, I would venture to
guess, I would bet money that a lot of the supporters of this bill in Nebraska would
prefer just to ban transgender people in the state of Nebraska period.
Oh, yeah, I'm sure.
And I think you kind of hit the nail on the head when you said that most of these bills,
one way or the other, are too far.
They're both totalitarian, either way you go.
Or one's totalitarian and one's like, hey, free love for all or something like that.
You don't want gender affirming surgery?
Go get it.
Everybody can have it.
And the other one is like, nobody can have gender reassignment surgery at all.
We hate people that aren't their genders that they were born with.
And that's what I mean.
There's got to be a middle ground because there are people that legitimately struggle
with this.
And I would go so far to say, there's need this surgery.
Well, it's generally accepted that for people with gender dysphoria, the only known treatment
is to go through a transition because not doing so has pretty serious mental health
consequences for those people.
And that's accepted by the majority of educated people, I think.
Yeah.
And that's what I mean, I think we need to have a law that can protect people that are
following a fad while still serving those people that legitimately need it.
We're so early in this current trend or current awareness that even bringing up the concept
that some of this is a fad is considered offensive by some.
Yeah.
And I'm fine with that.
I mean, it's an awfully expensive thing to be a fad.
Just surgery, healthcare in our country, any kind of surgery to be a fad, regardless of
what it is, is an awfully expensive fad, in my opinion.
But like you were saying, the children are very impressionable and puberty is a very
confusing time for everyone, at least if I'm recalling correctly.
Yeah.
There's a lot of changes and you're just basically just starting to become a conscious,
conscientious person and it's definitely an interesting time in everybody's life, I would
think.
This whole transgender thing is really, it's only something that middle class people worry
about.
If you're super poor, this is not on your radar.
I bet you there's not nearly the same percentage of transgender people in Appalachia or the
inner city as there is in the suburbs.
You know what I mean?
I think this is kind of a trend in the affluent communities.
Yeah.
I mean, I guess it kind of goes back to our Amish episode, right?
When I was asking if there were homosexual Amish people and you said no, because they
didn't know about it.
But I feel that there's...
So let's just, let's go with like legit cases.
There's probably the same percentage of legit cases all over the place and there probably
has been throughout history.
It's just we don't have the data to support it.
You know what I mean?
I would agree with that.
I would assume that that's the case.
Yeah.
And so people in Appalachia or wherever might not know what it's called, but they might
be like, hey, that person dresses kind of like mannish, but they were born a girl and
then it's just kind of like left out of that, you know, because there's not much else that
they can do.
Or maybe they don't get to do anything and they commit suicide and nobody knows that
it was because of gender dysmorphia.
So I don't know.
I think it's tough to try and make kind of bold statements about it because certainly
there were homosexuals before same sex marriage passed in the legislation.
You know what I mean?
And there were black people before desegregation happened.
So I mean, it's kind of, it's hard to measure some of that stuff.
It's extremely difficult to measure.
This is not an aside, but it kind of is.
I feel really bad for the tomboy and metrosexuals, which are kind of the same thing, but one's
a man and one's a woman, you know, because I see a lot of women, especially who were
in their fifties who are heterosexual, but who are tomboy and the same with men.
You see these men that are pretty flamboyant dressers, but they're with women.
So I think that the young, those people are, they're old enough to wear none of this crap
is going to affect them.
But if you're 14 and you're a tomboy, I bet you it's pretty confusing time to be growing
up as a teenager right now.
Yeah.
No, I know at least where I went to school, it was always like a stereotype that the softball
players who were girls were lesbians.
And that certainly wasn't 30 fucks, five lesbians on that field.
No, I mean, it depends on what movies you're watching, but probably not.
Not in my town.
I'm sure there were a few lesbians on the team, but maybe, I don't know.
I don't even remember who was the softball player.
But I'm sure the same is true for any sport, whether it's male or female, you know, there's
just a fact of life.
Right.
That was the joke though.
Oh yeah, they're all lesbians.
No, yeah.
They might be, maybe they were a little bit more muscular.
I heard all male bowlers were non-transitioning lesbians.
That's correct.
That is correct.
So I don't want to like crimp your style and everything, but for the life of me, I can't
get this cigar to draw.
Really?
Like it's lit.
I'm having a grand old time with this thing.
Yeah, I just, I puff and I puff and I puff and I don't get any smoke in my mouth.
And it's, you know, it's lit and smoking on the other end.
Do you have a poker to poke, like a pipe tool?
No, I've got, well, I'm looking at, I hung some more pegboard in my garage today and
I'm looking at all my tools arrayed out on the thing here.
But the smallest thing I would have is kind of like a screwdriver, but I think that's
a little bit too big.
Oh, we have a nail.
Yeah, depending on the size of the screwdriver.
We've had like a double on.
Maybe have a nail.
Yeah, a small, small nail.
I've got some big nails.
We grow them big here.
I see.
No finished nails for Nate.
All trim is put up with 16 penny.
Yeah.
If you can't, if you can't feel it going in, what's the point?
I don't know.
I got a really long screw that's like gross and icky.
I don't know if I want to do that.
I'll keep looking.
You guys keep talking.
Yes.
Vamp, vamp.
Oh, wait, here we go.
I've got some bright wire nails, one inch.
I'll try that.
Nice.
Give it a shot at least.
Yeah, I don't know.
So like my humidity in the humidor was a little bit higher than it normally is, but I don't
know if that's really going to.
Oh man, whatever that nail did the trick, I think.
Hopefully so.
Oh, there we go.
I guess it was just really tight down at the torpedo end and I've heard that before.
Yeah, so I've seen guys have to hold it.
It's so tight at the torpedo end.
Yes, yes.
So when I was in college, I knew one transgendered woman who was going through this teaching
program at the same time.
And this person would dress, go to class as a man and then go to these conferences and
big events as a woman.
It was always interesting.
And then they would pretend like they weren't the other person seemingly.
You know what I mean?
Because I talked to the person in class when they were dressing and acting like a man.
But at these things, I would sit at the same table and they wouldn't talk to me.
Okay, that's a little strange.
It was really weird.
And a really nice person.
I got along well with them, but just interesting behavior.
I had people I'm sure that this was in the mid 2000s.
I'm sure that it was a very tough thing to do for them at that time, especially in not
a major city.
It was a large area, but it wasn't like Chicago or something.
But I don't remember anybody being transgender when I was in high school.
Yeah, I don't really keep up with my high school classmates, but I don't think I heard
of anyone being transgender from there.
But I graduated with 89 people.
So right.
I'm sure that there's at least one transgender person that was there.
They just wasn't, they weren't open about it in high school or if they were, I didn't
know them.
Yeah.
And I mean, you know, they might not have been.
So like for me, they might have been there when I was there, but they might not have
been in my grade.
Right.
We had open homosexuals.
And your Sarah and I were talking about this.
This was like right after September 11th and there was not a lot of bullying going on at
that time.
It was very discouraged with all the school shootings and stuff that were going on.
It was really frowned on.
From what I gather, bullying is becoming a bigger issue in high schools now.
Okay.
Which is weird.
I talked to my nieces and nephews and they're around that age and apparently bullying is
back in a way that it wasn't when I was in school.
It just wasn't considered a cool thing to do or it wasn't socially acceptable amongst
my peer group at least.
Well, it shouldn't be.
It shouldn't be.
No.
But that kind of goes back to our thing where, you know, and I mean, so bullying happens
at all ages, but just at work, you know, it's just called being insubordinate if your boss
is bullying you, you know, so then it's your fault.
And I guess usually with bullying, people try and blame the victim more so than the
bully.
So I don't know that we really had bullies in our high...
I'm sure we did in our high school, but like I said, it's a small class and I don't know.
Yeah.
When I was an apprentice, that was like a pretty standard practice to make first through third
year apprentices have a pretty difficult time at their job, but it's all part of the process.
Yeah.
And I think hazing is different.
Yeah.
I think there's a lot of hazing and causing stress on purpose because until you hit your
fourth or fifth year, you're not really allowed to work with live electricity and that's extremely
stressful.
So they want to weed people out that can't handle pressure and stress because they're
dangerous to themselves and to other people.
And you just got to get rid of them.
Unfortunately, it's not a very nice way to look at it, but it's the truth.
Well, and you know what, that happens in a lot more jobs than people want to admit because
a lot of jobs have like probationary periods.
Even if you're not working with live electricity or lions and tigers or whatever it might be,
but a lot of jobs have kind of those probationary periods where, yeah, maybe you interviewed
well and you had good references, but maybe you just can't cut it.
And so that's why they have those probationary periods because it's pretty much like you
don't get a lot of the benefits or have a lot of the protections.
So if you fuck up, they can say, bye bye.
Yeah.
And they, certain professions are going to have a higher failure rate than others, you
know?
Yeah.
By design, that's not a bad thing really, unless you're one of the people that failed.
But then you've got to be resilient and find something else to do.
Oh yeah, and that's the other thing that I wanted to mention about minors and piercing
tattoos and surgeries and other things.
Because I'm really not trying to single out transgender.
Part of life is that you can't always get what you want right away.
You know what I mean?
And it could be a toddler in a toy store who wants all the toys.
Not our toddler, but you know what I mean?
There's things that we have very grown up discussions about with our toddler.
No you can't do that.
Why?
You know?
So yeah, very well rationalized, thought out arguments from her.
You know, I mean, delayed gratification is definitely kind of like a thing in life, you
know?
And it's tough with social media and like TikToks and kind of like the instant messaging
and instant stuff and all the time.
I started reading, I read a couple books recently.
I don't know if they really kind of fit here, but I'm going to see if you've heard of either
of them.
And one was really short.
It took me like an hour to read it, but it was Gifts from the Sea by Charles Lindbergh's
wife.
I can't remember what her name is off the top of my head right now.
Mrs. Lindbergh.
And I'm not trying, and I know, so like this is a terrible time for me to space on her
name, especially when we're talking about trans.
And now I'm like, yeah, her, yeah, the author is, well, I have to define her by her husband,
who's a man who I remember and not what her actual name is, right?
So I apologize.
That was not my intent.
Guessing she's not from Little Falls, Minnesota.
Probably not.
She's a fairly prolific author.
Okay.
But basically she was, and they were living or she was living, I think they were living
in New York or just outside of New York City.
And she went to this beach house for, I don't know, a week or a month or something.
And she was basically just talking about how there's all these societal pressures on her
kind of just as a woman or an adult.
And hey, we've got friends, but when I go hang out with my friends, we've only got limited
time to hang out, so we're always just talking and we're not just like quiet with each other.
You know what I mean?
And just kind of like using her vacation at the beach to kind of like what you said, you
know, you need to go out in the woods and be alone for a little bit.
That's where you get your thinking done.
You know, that's where you can be introspective.
And so it was very, very interesting and I really enjoyed the book.
It was really good, you know?
And so like going out there, but she's talking about all these different pressures and all
of this stuff.
And so, you know, thinking about, you know, emails now at work or like if you don't respond
to the email within five minutes and it's like, no, that's what the chat is for.
That's what the messaging is for.
You don't email me and expect me to get back to you.
We talked about this on a previous episode where you're like, I check my email like once
or twice a day.
And then I'm also reading The Dawn of Everything, which I guess is kind of like the counterpoint
or different train of thought as the book Sapiens, which I have but haven't started
to read yet.
But they're going through and kind of a lot of these anthropologists are trying to figure
out where like inequality came from, right?
And so The Dawn of Everything is trying to focus on American societies before Europeanization,
which is a term I think, right?
Colonialism.
Yeah, something like that.
And basically it's interesting and I don't, you know, like I'm not an historian and I'm
not an anthropologist, but it's fascinating because they're talking about the French,
you know, and like, I don't know, 17 something came over and they're talking to the Wendats
and the Algonquins and they're like, we're so much better than you and we've got all
this stuff.
And they're like, wait, so you take all your orders from a king?
Like our chief can't even tell us what to do.
If we don't want to do it, we just don't do it, you know?
And so it was kind of like, and the women were not, they were, I guess, sexually liberated
in the tribes, some of the tribes anyway, where they could kind of choose, until they
got married anyway, they could kind of like do whatever they wanted with whoever they
wanted until they were married.
But you know, I don't know, it was kind of interesting because the native tribes were
like, we don't have to follow that kind of, you know, I don't, I can't remember.
I can't remember the word for it, but the, like the rule of just somebody who's different
than you, you know, like a monarch or whatever.
And you know, and I guess the concept of having beggars in France was like mind blowing to
these tribes because they kind of take care of their own.
I mean, certainly there were some tribes members that were kind of, you know, heavy air quotes,
more wealthy than others or had more status or had more whatever, but everybody ate.
Well, that's interesting.
That's interesting.
This is very loosely related, but in the United States, we're, at least in the dialogue, people
are obsessed with freedom, you know?
And it's kind of humorous because most people spend the majority of their life working.
And during my work hours, I'm not free to do what I want to do.
Like I'm a cog in the machine, just like everybody else.
I have very little autonomy.
I mean, my job's a little different where I do have a lot of autonomy in how I do things,
but I'm always responding to emergencies.
So I do have to go and take care of this stuff.
You know, I don't really have the choice to just slough it off and do whatever I want.
I mean, you have autonomy in some sense, you know, same with me, you know, like I'm salaried
and I work from home.
So there's, but there's stuff that I have to do regardless of how stupid I think it
is to have to do it.
Yeah.
And there's a lot of people, you know, we have not unique jobs, but we have good careers
going on.
A lot of people don't have any autonomy at their work.
If you're working on an assembly line or something, or a call center, or a call center or for
Amazon or Elon Musk, if you're one of those two employees that are still left.
You know, there's a plenty of horror stories about American manufacturing.
Not necessarily manufacturing as it is like the assembly line type work, you know, or
if you had to work in an office under your supervisor directly all the time, I imagine
that it's not very liberating.
That's not fun.
No, maybe that's why there's so much obsession with freedom is because people aren't free
for the most part.
Well, that was kind of the interesting point about at least this, these few chapters I've
read in the Dawn of Everything where the French thought they were more free than the native
tribes, but they really weren't in comparison.
I mean, the French had more, I guess, let's say like technological advances.
I don't think, did any of the native tribes have like written words?
Like?
I don't think so.
And well, no, that's not true because the Aztecs and the Mayans.
Yeah, they did.
But like the North American tribes, I don't know if they really had written stuff or maybe
they had kind of like hieroglyphs or something.
I don't think so.
I think that, what the heck they call them, like the Mississippian civilization that predated
colonialization.
I think they might've had written records.
I think the Navajo might've had written records, but they were more of a farming type society.
They were hunter gatherers.
It was sort of the Mississippian culture.
They were farmers.
Okay.
Because that was the interesting thing is like the French were saying that they were
free and they wanted the native tribes to be free and the native tribes are like, you
guys aren't free.
Like you tell me about this king all the time and like all these things you have to do and
your like obligations and that's not freedom.
Like somebody, if the chief tells me to go like kill an elk, if I don't feel like it,
I'm just like, nah, you know, like whatever.
Right.
So, I mean, I don't know.
I do what I want.
Interesting.
Yeah, it's, this is a total tangent, but writing systems usually come about when you have to
take a stock of surpluses and grains and things like that.
So the numbering system comes up.
Okay.
Yeah.
And then the writing system comes about so that you could say, you know, I have so many
bushes of wheat store.
Especially if you have debts, you need writing.
Right.
Debt and taxes.
Yes.
Yeah, those are the first, well, this is years ago when I was learning about like the ancient
Near East, but the first written records that we had at least then were tax reports.
So I guess government hasn't changed for, you know, 7,000 years.
I mean, there's a fair amount of writing down the spoken word stories, you know, that have
passed down orally through generations.
You know, as a way of like preserving them.
But it's interesting because as soon as you start writing, you kind of lose the oral tradition
as like a side effect.
Oh, of course.
Of course.
The Navajo claim that they still have a active oral tradition with a lot of their ceremonies
that resulted from the persecution by the Catholics, the Spanish Catholics down there.
And of course, there's no way to verify that because they're not sharing that information
with outside of their culture.
Yeah.
So we have to take it on their word, which is a reason to believe in lying.
Well, yeah.
And there'd be no way to check.
Like you're not going to infiltrate the ceremonies.
No, we're not going to infiltrate the Navajo.
Yeah.
So, you know, I don't know.
But I mean, if they're doing that, then that's cool.
Like that's neat.
I sometimes wonder like if we still did like the oral traditions, maybe we wouldn't have
like the Star Wars sequel trilogy be so bad writing wise.
Oh, but we were talking about that.
My buddies and I here and if they would have brought back Darth Jar Jar movie nine.
Yeah, yeah.
I would have forgiven them all their sins.
Yeah.
Like if you're going to fuck it up, just fuck it up hard and don't be ashamed.
So.
Well, it's not even fucking it up.
Darth Jar Jar's, you know, is a fan favorite theory, we'll say.
He is.
He's a mine.
Yeah.
So where are you at in your stick?
I got two inches left or so.
OK, I probably I've got like four inches left, but I was fighting it for a long time and
I still am kind of poking it every once in a while to keep it loose.
I don't know, man.
It's just this one.
This one stick is is not very good draw wise.
It tastes fine.
Sure.
Well, maybe we'll have to redo it.
I think I have more of these.
Yeah, I don't know.
I mean, it's I don't know if it's like I'm not saying it's not good enough to smoke again,
but it'd be one where it'd be like I'll smoke it again, but probably not on the show.
Sure.
You know, and I understand that there's a lot of, you know, manufacturing variances
and and maybe because my humidor is running a little little higher than it normally does
humidity wise.
It's contributing.
But, you know, torpedoes, like, you know, if you said, you know, a lot of people need
to poke the torpedoes, maybe I'm just not aware of that.
So I've seen them.
I've seen people do it.
I don't know if it's necessary.
I've never had to.
I've never had that much of an issue myself.
Yeah.
And this one was fine for the first, I think, third, the first third.
It was but then about, you know, a third of the way in, I was getting no smoke in my
mouth and it was and I'm not and I'm not I'm not I'm not stressed and I'm not like clamping
down with my teeth.
Like there's not bite marks in the stick.
So it's not I'm not smoking it incorrectly as far as I know.
Mine's actually now I have like two inches left.
It's getting a little soft.
Okay.
I mean, which is to be expected because it was a fairly long stick.
I think we had six inches like the retoros.
And they're a fairly narrow gauge.
Yeah.
Maybe the 54.
I don't know the actual stats for anybody who's wondering.
I did not look it up.
I'm just guessing from experience.
Yeah.
And that has a tendency to get a little sour.
Oh, there we go.
Now it's not sour.
I let it sit for a couple of minutes.
Yeah.
So yeah, I mean, it's interesting, like the concept of freedom.
And I think it I think it we can tie it back and I think it'll make sense.
It could just be reaching and stretching on our part.
But the concept of freedom and what you're allowed to do or what freedom means to you.
And if you're a fan of Team America, freedom costs a buck oh five.
But probably now with inflation like 350.
But it's like you want everybody to be free.
You want everybody to have freedom and be happy.
And no, you and I want that.
I think a lot of people say they want freedom for them, but nobody else really mean that
they want exactly exactly.
I want people to be free to do what they want as long as what they want isn't hurting other
people.
Well, yeah.
And and other people are like, I want everybody to be free as long as their their view of
freedom is the same as mine.
And that's just not freedom.
You know, and you and I want people to be free.
We've talked about this.
And by and large, I don't I don't care what people do.
You know, if you want to do really hard and dangerous drugs, that's on you.
You want to drive a 2004 mostly rusted out Honda Civic that you're trying to get to 400,000
miles.
That's on me.
I mean, you.
I mean, if you want to go backpacking and not bring any water and try to survive using
a filter and river water, that's your choice.
As long as you're of the age of majority.
Right.
I went winter camping and stuff before I was 18.
Oh, so did I.
But I went with, you know, like other adults in the Boy Scouts.
You know what I mean?
Like, oh, no, we might.
I went camping with like my other teenage friends.
Yeah.
It's easily kind of frozen.
Yeah.
So I wasn't bringing a wall tent and a heater like I do now.
Well, that's kind of the thing, man.
Like I've done so much camping for being in Boy Scouts since first grade that when somebody's
like, do you want to go camping?
Like you're good at it, right?
You're an Eagle Scout.
I'm like, well, I'm an Eagle Scout and I'm good at camping, but I'd really rather just
stay in a hotel where I can get a shower and, you know, like the continental breakfast or
whatever.
I don't really need to be out in the woods camping.
The term good at camping, is that said by people who don't know or who aren't, who haven't
gone camping?
I mean, how do you be bad at camping?
Oh, you can be really terrible at camping.
Let me tell you the ways.
You can put the rain fly on the wrong way or just decide you don't need a rain fly.
You can put your ground tarp on the wrong way so all the dew collects underneath your
tent and you wake up in an inch of water.
You can decide not to stake down your tent.
You can put your tent in a dangerous location.
You can not know how to start a fire.
You cannot bring the appropriate supplies that you need to take care of yourself while
camping and then you have to rely on said Eagle Scout to bail you out of whatever situation
you got yourself into.
So there's lots of ways to be bad at camping and, you know, like I still enjoy camping.
We went to a big concert and we forgot our rain fly and I had to go buy a big ass tarp.
Okay.
But yeah, we thought, I thought it was in the bag with the tent.
But you at least knew it was missing and you needed it.
So that's not, that's not the same as being bad at camping.
But you could, you could be bad at camping.
You can be bad at a lot of things and I'm bad at a lot of things too.
And I still enjoy camping, but I enjoy more being able to bring everything that I want
to bring and like a little bit more modern stuff.
I mean, I love, I bought a Dutch oven, you know, and I just love cooking in that thing
and just making food, but it takes a long time to cook in there.
And but it's really good food and it's easy cleanup and whatever.
And like sitting on the campfire and you know, but it's kind of like the weather has to be
good and I don't really want to go camp and if it's going to be raining the whole time
and I don't know, I guess I've done so much camping.
I'm kind of like a hermudgeon about camping now where it's like, yeah, I could, but I
mean, it's fun.
It's fun if you have the right people to go with, I guess is more so.
It certainly is.
I know that I hate camping in the rain and, but I still go paddle fishing every year and
it rains or snows or both every fucking year.
It's miserable every time.
Don't get stuck someplace without your tent.
I can tell you that I had to do that when you're asleep on the floor or somebody else's
tent.
That was no fun.
Yeah, that's the one thing.
I wouldn't call that bad at camping.
That was just bad at being stuck on an island.
Well, there's always those circumstances that come up and even no matter how much you try
and prepare, you're going to get caught at one point in something that was not ideal.
The one thing that I need to get yet is decent sleeping because as a kid, I could sleep on
a one inch inflatable air mattress, but now I'm kind of like, I need something comfortable
to sleep on when camping, but we've got a nice big tent.
Yeah, we have a huge tent.
We can fit a queen size bed in it and nightstands.
Yeah.
See, that's important.
You didn't go to scout camp with a queen size bed and nightstands.
There would have been all sorts of, let's just say, bullying.
The Boy Scouts were bullies allegedly in Wisconsin.
I think they're bullies everywhere.
I don't mean it in a super mean way, but you certainly would have gotten some jokes
thrown your way if you were like, well, okay, so can somebody help me carry my nightstands
into my tent?
And people would be like, what?
But for scout camp, we slept in canvas A-frame tents and there was no floor.
They were old military style.
So you had to pack all of your stuff.
You'd get one of those totes from Walmart or Target or something and you'd pack all
your stuff in there because it was a dirt floor and you were sleeping on the army cots,
also made out of canvas.
And when it would rain, the water would run through your tent like a river.
So if you packed a duffel bag, all your stuff's wet.
So you're not really bringing a queen size bed and nightstands to that.
That's when Sarah and I go together.
This year we're going to go minimalistic and I'm going to sleep in a hammock for paddle
fishing.
Oh yeah.
We'll see, we'll see how that goes.
I got all the underquilt and the good sleeping bag and insulated pad and all that sort of
junk so that when it gets down to zero, I'm not going to freeze to death.
That's the biggest goal.
Might not be comfortable, but I won't die.
Yeah, for sure.
So we'll see.
It'll probably end up being 65 degrees and sunny and beautiful the whole time.
That's the hope.
That is the hope.
Yep, yep.
I have about an inch left.
It's not burning my fingers, but you're not enjoying your cigar anymore.
Yeah, probably not.
I mean, it's fine.
I've been poking it.
I don't know.
It's just so tight.
It's so tight.
Yeah.
So for those of our listeners who might fall asleep listening to us, I hope you wake up
when I'm like, so tight.
It's a shout out to the comments section.
But anyway, that we don't even have, that we don't even have.
But maybe we will at some point.
Maybe we will find a way to interact with some of you out there.
I hope that you haven't been enraged by our topic choice this episode.
Like Mike and I said, we want everybody to be free to make their own decisions with the
understanding that at certain ages, bigger decisions aren't necessarily the forte of
young people.
But I really do.
I feel like there needs to be some protection for youth and there needs to be a logical
exception to the main rule where it is necessary because, you know, and you and I both said
it, like it's necessary.
Like that's the only cure for the gender dysmorphia.
Thanks for listening.
Be safe.
Have fun.