Tequila Cigar

Welcome to the Nice Ashes, I'm Nate. I'm Mike. We're going to do, what are we doing this episode? Tequila Cigar, Rock Paper Scissors Championship, and the Brooklyn Subway shooting. Brooklyn Subway shooting. Alright. Done deal. Let's get these tequila cigars going and for those of you who don't know or haven't watched the Arnold Schwarzenegger video that we told you to watch, we're going to, Mike's going to walk us through how to set these up.

Yes. Now in the original video, he cut it and lit it and then put the tequila on. We did not do that last time. We didn't do that last time. We had really soggy cigars. Yes we did. So let's cut them. Light them. We got a little, a little funkage there. Yep. I had a little funkage as well. What cigars are these now? These are the exact same cigars that we smoked a couple episodes ago. The Bin Maduros. The Bin Maduros. Right.

Yes. We were pretty evenly not impressed but not overly disimpressed either. Yeah. They were not the greatest thing in the world. Yes. Not the greatest thing in the world. But now let's see because we have had, we have smoked these before. We know how they taste or vaguely don't taste and let's see if Arnold's tequila cigar can save us or these. Well let's light her up. Of course. Here we go. It's a little cold here in the smoke shack so I'm guessing that that was the root of my lighter's issue.

Okay. Perfect. So now we're lit. We are lit. Most of the time I light, I wet my cigars before I caught them but since we're doing tequila cigars I figured I wouldn't this time. And I just followed suit. Yes. So the key to the tequila cigar is you get yourself your little brush with tequila and you brush it on. And you can use mom's turkey brush. It's okay. I don't know what kind of brush this is. I like them though. I use them for like coating oil on bread before I bake it. Ah okay.

He uses his for tequila cigars. I use mine for tequila cigars. I think that this is Sarah's not mine. We are a couple in our 30s and we lived single for many many years. So we have a... And now you have a silicone brush guy. Yeah I'll get a silicone brush together that I have no idea. Now this is fairly wet. Yes. I should do mine. And you should brush yours. Yes. I will now brush mine. We have to dip the tip once they dry out. And we'll see. It's like painting. Yes. But with liquor.

But with liquor. With Costco tequila. Yeah. Not a sponsor. Not a sponsor. Oh we need to talk about King Cobra sometime. Yes. We did talk about him. A little bit. Yeah. A little bit. Yeah. Alright. Mine has now been coated. Perfect. And I will take mine. You'll take yours. And dip the tip. But not for 30 seconds. Yes. Alright. I did. Five seconds. Alright. I have to wait for mine to dry. I would say at least partially dry. Yeah. Alright. Okay. I'll wait for a moment.

Definitely some moisture on the tip of mine. But. It's all part of the experience. Yes. It's one of those unnerving things where it's moisture on the tip that isn't yours. But in this case it's not from somebody else. It's from tequila. Yes. So. You want me to dip it? No. Do you think I should dip it? I mean you can. Mine's getting dried out. Yeah. Well you already dipped yours. Alright. Five seconds. There we go. There we go. Five seconds.

I will say that this is better than the original already. Yeah. Could be the tequila talking. In fact it probably is. It's the only thing different about it. It's much better. Initially the puffs are. It tastes good. Yeah it does taste good. It definitely does. I don't know. How would you describe it compared to the other one we smoked? Just straight out of the bin. The other one was really flat. Yeah. It rounds it out. It does. It adds a lot of body to it really.

Which is crazy because there's just a little bit of tequila on the outside. And you know I never believed that in college. A little bit of tequila goes a long way. A lot of it is tequila goes a lot further. I know. It's pretty impressive. But this is our second time trying the tequila cigars. And the first time as Mike said our cigars were quite soggy. Yes. By the end. But it was late in the evening. And we had already partaken in quite a bit of adult entertainment. Yes we had. Booze and cigars.

So this one we're trying a little bit better. And we are still face to face in Mike's smoking patio. Or porch. Patio porch. It's a porch. It's a porch. It's a multi-use room. Yeah. The dog's kennel. The bookshelves. And for all you listeners at home. Or in your car. Or at work. Wherever you may be. The gym. Mike's dog did find the fourth leg. Shortly after we stopped recording on the last episode. Yes she did. Yes she did. Now she's out there looking for another one.

And we are drinking the hazy IPA. Boson from Trader Joe's. It's $4.99 for a six pack. I did some research. It's brewed in Monroe, Wisconsin. They've got a really good business where they do a lot of contract brewing. So they've got a lot of brews and restaurants or other places can pay for them to label that beer whatever label they want. And that's what Trader Joe's does. You can actually work with them to get your specific type of beer that you like. So this one's got a little bit of orange.

It's a hazy IPA. It's not one of their standards. So Trader Joe's must have worked with them to develop this beer for them. But they do all the Boson which I incorrectly called Boat Swain. Which is how it's written. But if you pronounce it the right way it's Boson. So don't send me any hate mail on that. They also have another beer there at Trader Joe's that's similarly priced but it's more of a lager and it's also by the same brewing company in Monroe.

They've got three different breweries under their hat. So far I'm liking this much better than the original. My cigar has pretty much entirely absorbed all the tequila that I put on it. And this is Kirkland Silver which is an extremely reasonable tequila that you can get at Costco. And I like it. Probably buy a bottle a year for the summertime. And now I've been jabbing away and Mike's pulled ahead in the smoking rate. I agree with everything that he's said so far.

Much nicer than the last time he smoked this. Oh yes. It turns I can't remember how I came across the video with Arnold. But he swore by it and it's like well let's give it a shot. And we did. And I'm impressed that it made this stick actually I like it. Yeah actually enjoyable. This is actually very good. Yeah. All right. So before we get into what we talked about we're going to be getting into. Let's talk very briefly about Star Trek Picard. Oh OK. So now I've seen the whole first season.

Why would you play with that? You've seen the whole first season. Mike Mike likes to fidget with things. He makes the loudest things to grab and I just watched him do it. But anyway so I've seen the whole first season. I was really excited because as a big not anymore but as a big fan of Doctor Who in the past the reboot starting with Christopher Ecclesian. They set with Doctor Who a maximum number of times that he could regenerate in the original series from the BBC.

And they were getting close to that and I was kind of getting excited because how do you kill a character that until previously has never been able to be killed. And then how would you kill a franchise that's made you so much money. And they did their thing to get around it. But what intrigued me about Picard initially was here's a Starfleet captain and he's done. He's retired. He's got his vineyard now and he's got his dog and he's just hanging out.

And I was like OK well let's see how he wraps up his life then. You know I mean basically let's see the end of his life. He's not the Starfleet captain. He's not you know in a position of power. You know he's just basically a civilian. And let's see what they do with it. And I watched the whole first season and it was there was maybe one episode that I was like super gung ho about. And seven and nine comes back and just goes apeshit and destroys a bunch of stuff. It's really cool.

But what I'll say is they kind of turned Picard into an action hero. Like every episode is actiony actiony actiony and it's like come on this isn't Kirk. Like who sells things with his fists. He sells things with his mind. You know. And you saw one episode. I saw the very first episode and then I don't have Paramount Plus. So I watched some of the reviews and the reviews were convinced me to not watch the show.

The only reason I watched the whole first season is I have a buddy and he's like you've got to keep watching it. You got to keep watching. I want to talk to you about it. And you know I watched the whole first season and at the end of the first season here's what they do. Well so they make it so anti Star Trek to begin with where they're doing some kind of persecution of cyborgs like data. Right. So anything that's AI is like now the Starfleet is having a witch hunt for AI.

Even though they had data working for them forever. Sure. Right. And you know you just can't help but think like this is just shoehorned in you know for the current social commentary going on. Which is fine. Star Trek has always been about social commentary and acceptance of others. But in this instance they were kind of like retconning the entire next generation onward where they had symbiotic life forms. Synthetic life forms. And kind of like retconning it to make Starfleet evil.

You know and certainly as fans of Kirk and even Picar to some extent like yes they sometimes will go outside of their dictum outside of their you know responsibilities to further the greater good. But this one kind of makes all of Starfleet just evil. But the way and so Picard's brain thing from next gen. He had a brain. I don't remember what the brain thing was but it's basically incurable and operable whatever.

And they gave him that I don't remember what episode in the next generation but it comes back in this and the way they solve it is they download his consciousness. And then they put him into a cyborg at the end of the first season. And so now it is no longer Picard. Picard is essentially dead. But this is his consciousness living on in a cyborg like data. Sure. So it's not even Picard anymore. So now they can theoretically have this cyborg Picard or make as many copies of him as they want.

And Picard can live on forever and ever and ever and ever. Which is basically the laziest and cheapest way to prolong your protagonist's life. And instead of giving us some really good writing about how does Picard choose to end his life with his brain condition flaring up again. Does he go say goodbye to everybody? What happens? Now he's just he lives forever. He's a robot. He's invincible. And they gave him I mean they gave him like a lifespan based on an algorithm type of thing.

So he doesn't know exactly when he's going to die. So it's just like a cheap way of saying well there we fixed that brain thing. Like why not why not just make one of the medical doctors say hey I just cured it in my lab. You want to be the first human trial. Sure. But it's fun. You don't have to spend so much time on it if you just make him a cyborg. Now he's a cyborg. Now he's a robot. Like it's not even Picard anymore. Really. I mean I don't know. I mean we can make the argument.

I don't know. That might come up in our in our lifetime or our children's lifetime or something where you can download your consciousness to a robot. Then are you still you or you're not you. Like at that point I don't know. I mean I'm not. But anyway we watch or I watched the critical drinker who's now done with watching Picard. Oh OK. And he's like I'm done with it. I can't. It's not Star Trek anymore. They're making everything hateful. And that's not even bringing in discovery.

So. I'm having some issues with the draw on the cigar. I mean I am. I don't say you are not but I certainly am. Which is fine. Which is fine. It's still more full bodied than the other one. The next time I smoke these I will be doing a cigar. So I watched Picard. Yeah and I would I would highly encourage you not to. The. I saw so many reviews and they were all negative. It kind of reminds me of new starch Star Wars. It's just wretched you know or knew anything really to an extent.

Yes I mean the Mandalorian was an exemption from yes a lot of that. But it didn't really involve a lot of characters that we knew a lot about. Right. They created the Mandalorian character for the show. He interacts interacts with some characters that we may have been like peripheral characters. Yes. Which is great because you don't need to know a whole lot about them.

There's not a whole lot that can mess up with those characters because we never saw enough of them even watching Clone Wars and things like some of these characters come back. And you know they're not back long enough like a so it comes back. She's not back long enough to really get a sense of like what she's been through. Right. Where she is now and she's getting her own spin off thing which I hope they do well. Not like I'm extremely excited for the Soka. Yeah. Yeah I'm very excited.

I'm excited about that and Obi Wan. I don't know about Obi Wan maybe. Yeah. We'll see. One of my favorite episodes of Rebels was Obi Wan and Darth Maul on Tatooine. And when Darth Maul catches up with Obi Wan and he wants to kill Obi Wan for you know placing him in half. And right before Obi Wan kills him Darth Maul goes make sure that we're avenged.

Or something to that where basically Darth Maul is realizing that both Obi Wan and himself were just pawns in this bigger scheme of like the Emperors. And so it's like you really could feel for this villain. He's a villain yes but like he's kind of coming to terms with the part that he played and it wasn't the part that he would have played had he kind of been out from under the Emperor. So I think you know if they do the Obi Wan series right I think it could be really really good.

But it's just kind of like the Picard thing where they could have really taken it and brought it down to like the basis of human like how does Picard cope with death. How does he cope with himself dying. You know we know how he copes with the Borg you know and then some of those inner hatreds and inner struggles. But how does he cope with himself you know. Absolutely. That could have been really fascinating and they just they I don't know what they did. They didn't do that.

I wanted when I heard that they were going to redo new Star Trek. I wanted them to do Captain Warf. Captain Warf would have been great. You could have had O'Brien in there and you know we have some of the older cast and then get a whole bunch of new people you know and then continue the story that way. Yeah. They don't have to bring back all the old cast but yeah I mean Warfarin and O'Brien have the most Star Trek episodes out of any of the characters. Everybody loves them.

I've watched the Star Trek and I've watched every episode of Star Trek. And the movies before Picard and I'm not watching Picard or Discovery. I've heard really bad things about Discovery. You know I guess I'll just sum them up with the things that I've heard is it's more about the what the critical drinker calls the message. The societal message where you know everybody needs to have their you know pronouns and their bios and all of that and everything's good and great.

And we love everybody equally and everybody has equal chances and equal opportunities and equal outcomes. So it's more of that and less of actual story or character development or things that make a story a story. Yes. You know and you can you know what you can put that kind of message into your stuff and still have a fantastic story. Absolutely. You know you can have anybody you want as a protagonist and still have a fantastic story.

They can be any gender they can be any orientation they can be any race. You still have to do your writing due diligence and make a good story. We talked about that before too. Yeah. You can have diverse stories and diverse and lesser known stories. I wrote a really good book called Exit West and it was basically it was kind of sci fi because there were these doorways that appeared everywhere. But you never knew where the door went. And once you went through it you couldn't go back.

But it was all doorways on earth. And so it was kind of it was talking about like refugees like escaping situations and things. But in this it was sci fi and they're using these doorways to get to different different places. But it was a fantastic story. Like I thought it was great and it was very eye opening and I could correlate it because I have a brain and I know how to read and make connections. I could correlate it to what they wanted me to correlate it to which was refugees.

But they never ever really came out and they didn't hammer that point home over and over and over again. Sure. It wasn't like the news where every half hour they tell you the same story so they make sure you get it. You know you can do it and let the reader or viewer make those logical. Absolutely. Absolutely. But yeah so I think maybe we should talk about these Brooklyn subway shooting. Because a lot of the a lot of the shootings in America in the past have been done by white boys.

Some white men depends. Mass shootings are typically white male teenager territory. Yes. And this one was a black man in the subway. And I saw people online that were still blaming white people for this shooting because he's a black man and he was held down by the white man. Yes. And therefore it's the white people's fault. Well I guess you know if he didn't have any agency in his life and maybe I guess you know theoretically if he.

I guess if you're going to say that but is that is that the fault of a white society. Are we even a white society. A lot of this stuff is like. What the heck do they call it. Well it's like term it's like the racism of soft expectations or whatever you know or it's like our low expectations where. We all face bad things and obviously some people face significantly worse conditions than others. True. Will not deny that but you can't blame.

You can't blame all the circumstances that go wrong in a life on other people. You know people are largely responsible for the bad things that happen to them. It seems like. At least partially you know at least partially. Partially and I feel that you know white or black or whatever. Straight or not or any of that stuff. There are some things that will hold you back. System wise. Absolutely. You know even even for me you know being a type 1 diabetic.

I have to have and I don't know how many people know this. I have to have my doctor every so often fill out a form that goes to the state of Minnesota. That says that I'm legally OK in my doctor's opinion to drive a vehicle. Otherwise I can't get a driver's license. Do I feel that that's fair. I've been diabetic since I was four. I've never never had an episode. I never passed out. Due to my blood sugar I've never been hospitalized outside of the initial time when they diagnosed me with it.

Never hospitalized in you know 31 years. But I still have to have my doctor fill out this form that says that they think I'm OK to drive. And I don't I don't think that that's right. I'm not going to shoot up a subway station or a subway restaurant over that. But it's not fair. I don't think you know somebody that's had a proven track record for over 30 years. I shouldn't have to go you know ask and beg for this form to be signed. You know and yeah OK I get it. It's not the same thing.

It's not the same thing as you know maybe a black person being passed over for a white person or a you know any other kind of injustice that might happen in their life. Absolutely. But I think it comes down to what's what's an appropriate response. Right. And then and then why why when you know why people shoot shoot up places everybody goes I had the white person they're evil and then they've been shooting up people forever.

You know imperialism this and that. And then when a black person does it well it's the white people. Why is it the white people. You know and it's just is your social message is your message that you want you know equality for everybody or is your social message that you want more equality for people that aren't white.

Right. I mean and that's where you got to you got to get honest with yourself. Like if you want white people to be less equal than everybody else or straight white people to be less equal than everybody else then just say it. Just say it. Just tell me that. Like I don't need this kind of like well you've had white privilege for so long.

Okay. Well I'm not Elon Musk. I don't have blood emerald money you know white privilege. Right. I don't have Donald Trump million dollar loan small loan from my from my daddy. Right. White privilege. Well that's it's very in vogue right now to have those politics. There's like the Me Too movement really stuck out to me. It's like you're acting as if every man everywhere has Harvey Weinstein levels of power over the women that they work with.

Yeah. And I can assure you that I do not have any power over any of my coworkers. Male or female or otherwise you know like it's just doesn't my life doesn't work that way. My enlarged decide it doesn't work that way because I'm still like you know all of the things all of I switched roles over a year ago within the company that I work for.

And I'm still getting entry level wage and I've been with the company for almost seven years now and it's still entry level. And it's like but I have seven years experience and in our parents times that would be you'd be you'd have it made right. You know you'd be you'd be there you would have been there. But that's not the way that it is anymore. And it's not it's that way for everybody. Oh absolutely right.

They don't care gender race or anything they just need to make sure they have enough of each you know for HR purposes. But by and large they're just giving everybody entry level wage. And meanwhile inflation is 8 percent and it's been the highest inflation since before Mike or I were born. Yep. This is the highest inflation we've ever seen.

And you know people are still giving out 3 percent merit increases which is really listed as a 5 percent cut. Yeah. Getting cut 5 percent of your pay. So you know I don't know where all this white privilege is. And certainly we probably have benefited from some absolutely nowhere. I'm sure you know what it's not like somebody hands me something and says here this is because white privilege.

You know and I don't want it to be that way. You know I want everyone to have an equal opportunity if somebody else is better than me then they should get it. But they shouldn't get it based on things that have nothing to do with job performance. Right. And then the same with me like I shouldn't get things because I'm white. I should get things because I'm more competent. Right. Or not. Or I shouldn't get things because I'm not. You know right. Whatever it might be.

There's a lot of people smarter than I am. Almost everybody's smarter than me. And a lot of people work harder than me. Absolutely. You know but life isn't fair. I just got my tax assessment this year for this property and they raised my value up by 25 percent. Yeah. Property value because they're building a housing development. Yeah. Well. Farther out of town than I am and it's like so now they're going to tax this place as though I could build a housing development on it. Yes.

But that's my privilege that you have property. I guess so. Yeah. In a manner of speaking they're going to tax before too. But by and large like all the government officials up here are white. Oh yeah. Absolutely. So. White are Native American. Yeah. Yeah. We have a couple of city council members that are Native American. OK. In this town. But as you know the listeners might not know that Native Americans are the main minority where I live.

I don't know what the percentage is but they're the main minority. So it makes sense that we'd have Native Americans on our city councils. Yeah. But I think to bring it back to the subway subway shooting if you're feeling wronged and if you're angry you know picking up a gun and going to shoot people that have actually nothing to do with your situation.

It's not the right course of action. No. I mean think about it. You're going to the subway to shoot random commuters because you're angry about your lot in life. Right. I guess it doesn't make any sense. You know I'm not going to say anything else because of you know big government and yada yada. But you know when France had an issue and they built a whole bunch of guillotines and took all their politicians down and gave them a real close shave across the neck there.

That makes more of a difference than shooting up a mass transit hub. Absolutely. I'm not advocating for that. I'm just saying I'm just saying that it would be a history even with the price of lumber these days. It's a little cost prohibitive to do that but you could still do it. I'm not saying you should. I just want to make that clear. I'm not saying you should. We definitely should not.

But politicians and corporations are the ones that kind of control our country and we shouldn't be mad at each other. We need to be mad at the politicians and the corporations. Absolutely. Which reminds me of something else that I have learned is that even if even if all of us like and myself and anyone listening and all the people that don't listen if you're not in a high up if you're not like a CEO of a major corporation.

If you're not a politician all of us citizens regular citizens any color any creed any whatever we could cut out and be 100% sustainable and and in all of our stuff we'd have no waste ever. We could if we could do all that. There would still be about 100 corporations are responsible for over 70% of pollution on the planet. So just remember that when they tell you to drink out of a paper straw.

Right. And I did see a funny meme I know I don't know what memes quite a bit but it was have turtles even tried a paper straw I feel like if they had they'd understand. Nothing advocating for you know like overly wasteful but I mean you've got companies that sell basically bottled water.

Right. You know we in America there's really nowhere in America except for maybe Flint Michigan where you would need bottled water right there's only that way. There's some don't need that way. There's places in the world that need it. Absolutely. But you can do it in a way that's not in a plastic bottle that will fill up landfills and I've read many times that the US military is the largest polluter.

The largest part portion of our budget. So is that causation. I don't know. I don't know. But there might be some correlation there. Maybe so. 180 military bases or whatever nonsense it is. So let's lighten the mood a little bit. Mike has gone to town on this tequila cigar. Yeah I like it and I've been jabbing and which is strange because I've listened to some of our previous episodes and I tend to talk quite a bit. I'm an introvert and I don't like talking usually.

It must just be Mike's eyes. It just brings it out in me. I always have when we're not in person together I always have a little picture of him on my desktop and I just like to look at him as if I'm talking to him. But he stopped by the other day down at our place and I was telling him we were talking about sports because he had just finished bowling. And I told him I'll regale you all with this story as well or for our southern listeners I'll regale you all for with this story.

I had I was flipping through I don't know why but flipping through TV when I back when I had I don't know cable I must have been you know bachelor and had cable included or something with the apartment. But I stumbled upon ESPN five or something ESPN two three I don't know how many they have but it wasn't the main one where you watch most of your most of your regular sports ball things. It was one of the other ones and it was the world championship of rock paper scissors.

Now you told me about this. I did. And I was initially not disbelieving but we even talked about it but you weren't sure. I'm honest to God I was not sure if it was not sure a joke or if it was real. And so and I really enjoy Monty Python and a lot of satire things don't look up as a movie that is pure satire. But it's too soon because it's it's kind of the whole coven you know is there coven isn't there coven is the threat isn't a threat. You know I think we don't have to talk coven.

But I think coven was over when the vaccine became available for everybody. Largely the threat you know our case is rising. Sure. You know what I'm vaccinated. Don't care. I've been vaccinated and I've had coven. Yeah so is Sarah my my wife had coven shipping she had delta and I had a Omicron both vaccinated as well. Yeah. But you're here. Yeah. I wasn't even sick. Yeah I got really lucky. Yeah. And one of my coworkers had coven his whole family got it and he still can't taste.

He's feeling better but he can't taste or smell. I guess sometimes that's permanent and sometimes it can take up to like three months for that to return. So I mean it's out there is definitely a thing. I have a friend who is an alcoholic who quit drinking after coven. He couldn't taste he he likes his login need his IPA. OK. Can't taste it. He still can't taste it. He's still not drinking. He was like it's just not the same. Yeah it's not the same.

I told my co my co-worker said he can't you know he can't taste and he's hoping it comes back. I said oh great you can eat all this spiciest stuff you ever want. He goes oh no I still get the heat. I just don't get the taste. So like he's still like his body still reacts as if he were eating a spicy thing which he is. But anyway it's off topic a little bit. The rock paper scissors. Yes. But if you can get vaccinated and you haven't been vaccinated yet like just do it.

Unless you've had coven. Unless you've had coven then you're fine. Yeah. But you know it's like the third or fourth or fifth booster you know and it's like I don't know. I mean I get the flu shot every year. No big deal. Like whatever. We need to move from the pandemic phase to it's just always going to be here which I believe they call endemic. Yes. It's just here. So it's here. Sorry. Whatever. I don't know anything about it. I'm not a doctor which I've said before.

I'm not a lawyer which I've said before. This is not medical or legal advice. No. But you know like if you can be sick but less sick I'll always choose the less sick. Like I don't want to be like extra sick. But anyway but I like satire and don't look up as like a satire on the whole. COVID deniers and COVID. Whatever the opposite is like over the overly productive COVID people. Where it's like I can't I can't look at another human being because they might have COVID. Yes.

Which I guess is kind of similar like when HIV and AIDS first kind of got on the scene. Lots of people we just watched the eyes of Tammy Faye. I didn't know much about her. She's a TV evangelicalist who embraced. Jim Baker and Tammy Faye. Yes. Embraced AIDS patients on the air and she was very I guess proactive about making sure that everybody knew that they were still people and they were still welcome in her vision of Christianity.

I didn't know that. You know I would have the tendency to poo poo. I would also have the tendency to poo poo on her and I guess Jim Baker is not that nice of a dude. But she was she's a very interesting person in her own right as a TV evangelicalist would be. But you know her acceptance of people that would meet as an atheist in my mind that would meet Jesus's definition of fellow man.

Where he embraced prostitutes and you know people that weren't perfect. You know it's not from what I've gathered from his version of the Bible. The New Testament is the Old Testament was kind of like you know you fall in line or you get in the back of my hand. You know you don't have to be perfect and nobody could be perfect. And even even lots of other philosophies even say that like look you're going to make mistakes. You're going to not follow this philosophy. You're going to mess up.

But this is all just to drag out having to tell you about this fucking rock paper scissors world championship which is a thing. So I was watching it and I thought it was satire. Like I was honest to God I was like is this is this for real. And I couldn't tell. And normally I've got a really good like satire meter. You know this is for sure 100 percent satire. And this is not satire and these people are serious. This one it was it was throwing it way out of whack.

And so that's why I watched it longer than I normally would have because normally I don't watch anything on ESPN. But they had it and they had all the cameras. OK. And they had all the reporters. You know it was almost like watching the Super Bowl or something where they had all these cameras and all these reporters and they had all the stats and all these all these let's just say players athletes.

Yes. And it was hilarious in a way because they would do these rock paper scissors matches and they'd be over and you know like 25 seconds however long it takes to throw one of the three symbols. And then they would interview these players and there was this one and they interviewed it and I remember excited I wasn't sure if I should like be laughing or I should feel sorry for them.

But they were like I was homeless and we found a full like happy meal bag or Big Mac bag or something in the alleyway. And my my homeless buddy and I were like well who gets to eat today. And we decided we do rock paper scissors and I won. And then like now I'm here at the World Championship Rock Paper Scissors and like if that's a satire like hilarious. Right. If that's real life I mean that's sad. That's the state of America.

I can't laugh. So the whole time I'm just trying to watch this to figure out if I should or shouldn't be laughing at this whole thing. And then I never really thought much about it other than it was an interesting little tidbit that I would tell people sometimes and they were like overly into sports or something like oh yeah well I watched the World Championship Rock Paper Scissors. And I don't remember who won and I don't remember you know there's everybody all genders and races and.

Sure. Absolutely. It was a diverse cast. Yes. And to kind of piggyback off of the female athletes episode there are lots of women and I don't think this is one where I don't think like physical ability physical stamina muscle mass has nothing to do with Rock Paper Scissors. No. Really. I mean some people might say well they could you know change your hand real quick like it's a reaction time but that's not muscle mass that's not.

Right. That's like a twitch muscle potentially maybe. Yeah. No expert. Something sports wise. We're not sports trainers either. We are not we are not trainers and we're not qualified. Yes. We're not even qualified to smoke these cigars except legally we're old enough. Yeah exactly. And by the way I have to change the subject. I am fast Mike smokes. I am nearly done. I've got twice as much left as he has. I am nearly done and it was really good.

Yeah it's much better. I want more tequila on mine though. Is that OK. Can we do that. Add more tequila. Have we ever. We've never done it. We've never added more. I'm a strict moralist when it comes to those sorts of things and I believe that you should do it if it feels good you know. Yeah. We're not hurting anybody other than ourselves.

That's what our neat brethren do. Yeah. Do it if it feels good. I'm just going to I'm just brushing the last little bit of my stick here and by last little bit I mean half of the fucking cigar. This episode is a little more explicit than other ones but we knew it would be because it's titled Tequila Cigar. Yep. And also we filmed we recorded this one back to back with our last episode and we've been drinking through it.

And we've been drinking throughout and we started at 10 o'clock in the morning. Something like that I think. Pick up a nine. Yeah. So. Huzzah to that. Yep. Oh much better now. You think so. Oh yeah. Put more tequila on yours. And people say I'm a bad influence. Oh geez. So and I'm not 100 percent sure but I looked up the World Rock Paper Scissors Championship Association whatever and it's an actual thing.

And they've got a UK league and they've got a World Champion League and they've got a United States League and kind of one of their blurbs is where anyone where anyone can be an athlete. All right. So I didn't really look into what being an athlete actually means. All I can tell you is that the Rock Paper Scissors Championship thing is legit. I don't know if it's televised every year. It was at least televised once. OK. I don't know if they do it more more like.

Is it more like the post-diffarians you know short where they're trying to say that anyone could be religious and anyone could have a head where religious exemption for state issued IDs. Are they saying that anyone can be an athlete so that anyone can have access to I don't know athletic scholarships or the glory or whatever it might be.

I haven't looked into it that that deeply and perhaps I should have but I thought more interesting than looking in and actually knowing the facts was to sit here and pontificate with our tequila cigars on what an athlete actually is. OK. That makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. I mean because we could look it up and find the answer. But that's less fun than saying I will. What do you think an athlete is. And what comes to my mind is NASCAR like our NASCAR drivers an athlete.

They experience a lot of G forces. They do. I mean it's not easy on their body. Yeah. But then as an astronaut athlete. Yeah. No I would say they're a scientist. Check this out. Our drag racers athlete. That's what I thought you would say. You say drag racers. Oh I thought you said drag dancers. No I'm not a drag dancer. But is a video game player an athlete. No. Well I mean they do basically the same thing. They manipulate controls.

A NASCAR racer manipulates controls is the fact that a NASCAR racer and athlete because they're in a life or death situation potentially. So what is an athlete. You know if a race car driver can be an athlete by manipulating controls then can't a video gamer. But but and that may that's maybe like too into the weeds is a rock paper scissors player participant an athlete. You know he's a poker poker player an athlete. My nephew refers to video games.

He's 17 senior in high school. He refers to video games as e-sports. And he was a hockey player of course being from northern Minnesota. Pretty generic. Yes. And he bowls with me in the summer. He likes to poo poo on bowling because his dad was never a good bowler. OK. I would consider something like golf to be athletic. Well I think golf is athletic but it's not athletic in the way of football where you don't necessarily have to be in prime physical shape.

Sure. You know what I mean. Same with bowling. Same with bowling. Same with what's that one where you have brooms on the ice. Oh curling curling. You know you don't have to be in prime physical peak condition to be a car to be a career to be a golfer to be a bowler to be a dark star darts thrower. I mean is throwing a billiards I guess like if dart if darts and billiards if you're athletes if you're an athlete then sure.

Rock paper scissors is. Arguably yes. I mean it's definitely competitive. It's competitive. You know board games are competitive. Are you an athlete if you play board games. I would I would vote no. Are you a B-sports player or whatever. Yeah. Are you a cardboard athlete. Cardboard athlete. Oh my God. You know I mean I don't know. Why does everything have to be an athlete. I don't know.

Well I can tell you when my nephew calls e-sports e-sports it drives me nuts. Oh I play video games. I would imagine. I love video games. Oh who doesn't. When I was his age I did. I played video games a long time now. I've kind of been getting back into video games. I would like to get back into video games but who has time. You know I got I had just a trim. Yeah. You got a podcast to record. I got a podcast to record. I got other stuff going on.

So much life is happening. Exactly. Exactly. You know I don't know. I've been getting back into video games because I am now two hours away from one of my other best buds. And so the podcast is a great way for Mike and I to spend time together and chat and then my other buddy plays video games. And so we've been doing you know co-op video games online. And so it's just a nice way to stay in touch. Yep. Absolutely.

I've he's like oh you should play this one solo. And I'm like yeah probably probably not going to happen. You know especially with a toddler. It's not like oh yeah. You know I work all day and then you know like yeah I'm going to skip work and go play video games or I'm going to like not spend time with my toddler and go play video games.

Like no. You know I've got the two nights a week. I do what you know one night a week is our podcast and then one night a week I play online board games with a buddy and then I play online video games with my other buddy later. You know so I still go up and spend some time with the family and everything. Then the two nights and then the rest of the week is you know family time and stuff.

So you got to find a balance I think. Well of course. You got to be able to do things that you enjoy too. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean I enjoy building stuff but yeah. It's not like I paint bathrooms for fun. Yeah. Speaking about painting bathrooms the premium pink is my vote. We already have the we already have the pink. Oh I can show it to you.

Which pink? Which pink? I'll have to show it. Is it the premium pink? I don't think so. I can't remember what it was. Okay so they've got a they're going to repaint their bathroom. They've got a very light blue toilet. And sink. And sink. But the toilet is really the one that stands out. Absolutely. Very pastel blue. And so I really want them to they've got some paint cards up on the up on the wall there and they've got some brighter pinks.

And then the premium pink is more of a pastel pink which I think would go really well with the toilet. We picked the pastel pink because I don't know if you saw we were going to put wallpaper up on the one wall facing away. And that's got pink flowers in the background. So they painted their laundry room. And it was funny because Mike's Sarah posted on Facebook before and after pictures but she didn't clearly label which is before and after.

And so there was one where the walls were all white. And there's one where the walls were all this very bright purple. And I was going to comment but I didn't. I was going to comment and say thank God you got rid of that purple. But the purple is what they painted it. So it would have been a joke. You know but the purple looks great because it's a nice nice purple. When we bought our house our trim was purple. But it was like a gross purple.

And then my Sarah repainted it all to white because that's like a normal person color that you paint your trim. So but the purple they picked is a nice looking purple. It's like purple rain purple. Yeah. Prince would be proud. Prince would be proud. Yeah. Yeah. So I think we settled the athlete thing. Anyone can be an athlete if you want to. Anyone can be any any gender they want to. That's not really important.

I mean you know people put a lot of importance on it. And now it's not really. It's like you know people are still talking about the Will Smith thing and the slap and everything. And it's like it's like who cares. It's not important. You know I don't know in my mind it's like it wasn't it wasn't even a full on punch. Right.

You know what. I'm not saying it's OK. Like I'm not saying it's OK to go and slap somebody. And I'm not saying it's OK to go to the subway and shoot people up. I mean that's not that's not the thing. I think the main takeaway is if you can't take a joke if you can't appropriately direct your discontent at your station in life then that's an issue. You know that's the issue. It's what are the proper channels to follow.

And I understand that the system is not set up for proper channels and it's not set up to give proper channels to those that are being wronged. Like that's not that's not it. But with things like this like Mike and I we're like dude we have some of the best conversations. We're drinking and smoking cigars. We should do a podcast. And Mike goes oh yeah why not. And here we are. And if we can do it anyone can do it.

And if you have an opinion and you have something you want voiced and you want put out there like it's easier than ever now to do it. It's easier than ever. Absolutely. To voice your concerns. It's easier than ever to partake in the greater societal conversation with social media with with things. And I think with social media we should talk about Elon a little bit.

We certainly can. We talked about it before the episode. Yeah we had a little in between episode conversation about Elon and some people are very very smitten with him. Mike and I are not smitten. No because we understand where he came from. He came from blood diamonds blood emeralds and his dad's money. He bought the title of founder of Tesla. He didn't he didn't create it. He didn't found it. He didn't.

He didn't do anything. He we agreed I think that he has a little bit out of the box way of talking or you know outside of the box way of talking or a reverent way of talking which ingratiates him with lower class people classes lower than him not. Yeah not not not as a negative not as a negative put down. I'm just saying like he talks that way so that he gets people in classes lower than his class to like him. He's not talking like Mitt Romney. My favorite meat is hot dogs.

Yeah. You know and so I've seen some things online where they were people have been saying if you oppose Elon Musk buying outright Twitter, then you are in favor of censorship. And then we had a little chat and I want you to get into it with me here because you know it's it's Twitter. They're a company. They're not the government. They are not the government.

They don't they don't have. So if you're not the government, you don't have the the burden of the First Amendment. You don't have to abide by the Bill of Rights because the Bill of Rights is Congress shall not pass any law that infringes on your freedom of speech. Congress shall not pass all of them say that all of them say that. Right. And the First Amendment wasn't enumerated to the states right away. And took time. Yeah. And guess what.

Twitter is not Congress. Twitter may pay Congress for all we know. I would say and we've talked about it. It is a workaround in our society because these corporations are largely creating government policy. Yes. And I won't disagree with you. And sometimes it's sometimes people get frustrated talking to me about this kind of stuff because when I talk about some of this stuff in my mind I'm envisioning it as we have the true separation of church and state.

We have the true separation of corporations and government. We have the true separation there. And the government is only there to protect citizens not there for their own personal financial gain which is not true because we saw with COVID a lot of them sold off stock. And did insider stock trading and all that. They don't care about us. They just want bigger bank accounts for whatever reason. I don't know why. Like they make more than than any of us could ever hope to make.

There's a cultural thing with the money. When you get that much money. They are competitive. It's competitive. Yeah. Money grabbing. And they get into the NFTs. Yeah. And it's like why about the first one of the first times I was exposed to NFTs was this person painted heavy heavy air quotes painted. I can sell an eight foot by six foot invisible painting and they sold as an NFT and in the NFT document or whatever you get.

It says you if you want to display this properly. You need a six foot by eight foot space in your house. For what for nothing. It's invisible. It doesn't exist. Like it literally doesn't exist. This artist took a crap on his toilet and thought, I'll bet you I can sell an eight by six invisible painting. For like millions of dollars. Well, it's a six ed world. But in my ideal world. Darya reference. Like, yeah.

Like, you know, Twitter. Hey, if Twitter wants to ban, you know, Jews, their private company, they can do it. You know, it's funny is the it's the it's the far right that's angry about Twitter censoring speech because, oh, no, they banned Trump. Well, they're a person, they're a private entity, allegedly, and they were up in arms and they wanted this baker to not have to bake lesbian or same sex cakes. They didn't want homosexual cakes coming out of this bakery.

And then so they went and found that, hey, a bakery is not the government and they're not subject to First Amendment laws. And now they're all up in arms because Twitter, another private allegedly company, is banning Trump or people with hate speech or people with whatever people with opinions that are outside of, you know, Twitter's whatever Twitter's decided window.

Anyway, outside of their scope, where they find to be acceptable. Yeah, which is not healthy. I think everybody can agree that the best thing for like, let's say a neo Nazi because we can all agree and you Nazis are bad. Yeah, best thing for a neo Nazi is to put their bullshit out there. And then to have Cornell West come and slap them down occasionally.

That's better for everybody. Because then you have these people done in a little bubble. Yeah. Well, we talked about this in between episodes, but we talked about, like Bill Gates and I just read a fascinating thing about Bill Gates and one of his answers.

He was doing an interview with Kevin Terry Pratchett, or somebody somebody that was an author and was very concerned about kind of these situations. And the interviewer said, aren't you worried about the internet, kind of allowing anyone's voice to be heard and to be interpreted as an authority on the subject. And Bill Gates said, absolutely not with the internet will have so many more controls to be able to see who is legit and who's not. And I think with recently with COVID.

And, you know, with parents that, you know, told us to be careful on the internet and now posting things that we look at and say this is not being careful on the internet. I think that, you know, it was one of these things where quotes that have been proven false, you know, where Bill Gates thought that it would be very easy to tell. But you know what, people don't read. People don't do due diligence.

They don't read. They don't research what's right or wrong. And sometimes I get into real big clongeries about am I actually, you know, last episode we were talking about crybullies and things. Am I being, and they have a whole Reddit. Am I the asshole? Yeah, I read that one. Yeah. Well, they have them for all sorts of things, you know, but sometimes they aren't. Sometimes they're not. But it's with a crybullies is very, very hard to tell.

Sometimes it can be. Sometimes it's supposed to be subtle. It's supposed to be subtle. It's intended to be subtle. If you have a good crybullying, you never know. Exactly. But then that's the thing is you have to do the research and kind of going back even episodes past with, you know, black, rednecks and white liberals. I mean, you have to look at the history. Absolutely.

And where these things sort of come from and how they originated. And if you don't, then you're just at the whims of the popular voice. Right. Everybody has an agenda. And that's very popular now to not question certain agendas and to question other agendas. And, you know, these things move and shift throughout time. It's just like, I think the ultimate sign though of a bad agenda is when they actively discourage you from questioning it.

Yes, that's a red flag to me. Yes. If it's like, no, you don't question this. No, you have to think for yourself. And that's why I became atheist because I was not allowed to question the faith. Right. And since then, I have talked to a wide range of people that are devout in their religion. And I've had the most amazing conversations with them. And they understood who I was and where I was coming from. And through our conversation, I understood who they were and where they were coming from.

I wasn't trying to convert them away from their faith. They weren't trying to convert me to their faith. We just had a very good conversation. Sure. Whereas like, I understand you're an atheist. I understand you're a Jew. I understand, you know, whatever religion they were or are.

We just had a great conversation because a lot of that stuff is very fascinating. Absolutely. Very, very interesting. And I applaud them for their faith. But you have to be able to have those open and honest conversations. Absolutely.

And when somebody says, well, we don't question that, well, guess what? I'm going to question it. Right. And if you're not going to give me the answers, then I'll go find someone who will. Right. Silencing opposition is usually a big sign that you're lying. You're illegitimate. You're not telling the truth. You're trying to hide the actual truth.

A lot of political doublespeak is that way. Oh, absolutely. All the time. All the time. Yeah. My employer, various employers in the past, I've had various employers use doublespeak. And it's like a common HR thing. I think everybody experiences that. I'm sure you've experienced that. Oh, all the time. Yeah. I'm sure everybody who's listening experiences that wherever they are, too. It's like, you just don't want to be honest and truthful because the truth is usually pretty messy.

My annual or quarterly review with my boss and my boss's boss and my boss was quitting. So they were out of the picture and my boss's boss said, I want the truth. You know, I value the truth above all. You know what I did? Gave her about 40% truth. Any more than that, I'd be fired. Right. Right. Like honest. Honest guy. Yeah.

That's our society right now is in a difficult place. We always are. It's always the same. Yeah. It's more it's different, but it's the same. Right. Yeah. I mean, you know, it was not it's not COVID. It was not the war in Ukraine. It'd be something else. It was not the war on terror, the war on drugs. It's pogs or Pokemon cards.

It's like I remember when Trumpster was talking about Frederick Douglass, like Frederick Douglass was still alive. Yeah. That's like people defended him. It's no Frederick Douglass is pretty important person in our history. Right. I've read Frederick Douglass's work. Yeah.

He shouldn't. He should have known that Frederick Douglass. It was a historical character. Yeah. I mean, yeah, a historical figure. Yeah, we make these figures into characters. Who really knows what friggin Ben Franklin was really like? Who knows? We turned into characters.

You can you can do as much reading as you want, but ultimately it comes down to your interpretation or the interpretation of other people. I mean, Ben Franklin published an autobiography. So but even that, like, if I were to write an autobiography, I'm not going to tell you all the times I like sat and cried.

Right. It's propaganda. It's propaganda. It's still trying to make it as truthful as I want it to be. But you're not going to get, you know, Nate broke down and cried right here. Right. Like, I'm not going to say I'm not going to spend five chapters on still crying. Yeah. So everything, you know, it's like when you read things, even if they're speaking like an authority, you have to take it with a grain of salt because there's only so much you can kind of glean from things.

And it's really interesting because a lot of historical biographers and things, they take all these sources and everything to try and get the most accurate if they're a good one, if they're a good one, trying to get the most accurate, you know, portrayal of this character. But you still are have kind of the rose colored glasses of the era of the biographer who's writing it.

Right. I went to Mount Vernon a couple years ago and I came away not really liking George Washington. And it's like pro George Washington propaganda Mount Vernon, obviously. Yeah. But you're talking about the richest guy in the country who was a fucking drug dealer. Yeah. Right. It brings a whiskey rebellion into full focus when you realize he was the largest whiskey seller and he was pushing his competition out or facilitating his competition being pushed out by taxes. Yeah.

And all these slaves and I was in there, I was at his plantation in August. It's hot, horrible hot. And I'm from Minnesota. So he's really the DC area sucks. It's horrible. It's horrible. And I realized it's accentuated by the fact that I'm living in negative 20 for months out of the year. So I'm more acclimated to the lower temperatures. But oh man, it was terrible. I'm like what, what a shit face.

But in I think in George Washington's defense, and this was in the Thomas Allen book, he bought as many slaves as he could. Yep. Because in his will, he gave them all freedom. Yes, he did. You know, he's not nobody's all bad or all good. No, they're not all good or all bad. And the most interesting thing out of that book, one of the most interesting things was that a lot of the founding fathers wanted to abolish slavery from the get go, but they couldn't do it and have the nation.

You know, and it's the same thing that Lincoln said, if I could, if I could save the nation by freeing all slaves, I would if I could save the nation by keeping slavery, I would. Absolutely. You know, is the is the higher ideal the nation, you know, our Constitution is that better served being a nation or is it better served not being a nation.

And these are thoughts and concerns that you and I, we don't have any concept of. So we weren't there. No, we weren't there. They were thinking about other things. And they were thinking about other things. And they were thinking about Britain. Britain was the massive world controller of the time and they knew split up. There's no chance. Absolutely. No chance to defeat Britain. Britain.

If Britain would have been more progressive in their time and ended slavery in 1770 or 1780. Yeah, there would be no America, because they would have easily beaten the rebel forces. Oh, you know, our American forces. Yes, they are rebel forces, the colony.

Yeah, the colony forces, if they would have freed all the slaves, but they didn't want to do that, you know, Cornwallis would have just freed all the slaves. Yeah, there would be no America at this point. Not the not in the way that we see it. Yeah. And you can you can look back at history, black and white. But that's not the true history. No, there's there's shades of everything and there's reasons people.

And a lot of times people do things for self preservation. The indigenous population of this nation was enslaved before black people were imported and they killed them off. Not all of them. Obviously, there's indigenous people around today. But you don't see a lot of history written about that either. You know, it's not convenient to talk about Native Americans, which I think a lot of all because I live where there are a lot of Native Americans. Yeah.

But or even the Chinese that blasted through the mountains. Oh, my God. Yes. Yes. The Chinese that built our railway system, largely in the West, at least. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So I mean, there's lots of things. And I think there's lots of lots of different angles that the people that we have learned about in school peripherally.

You know, we know, OK, George Washington, he was the first president. OK, cool. Moving on to the next chapter in the book here. But if you actually dig into some of these characters, they're very nuanced. Oh, very, very nuanced. John Adams was talking about women's suffrage in the 1780s. Yeah. And see privately, not publicly. Yes. He knew his career would be over. Yeah. If he started talking about women's suffrage. But he believed that they should vote. Yeah.

And also, it's not like a foreign concept. No. And how self-aware. I mean, like, that's a good in my mind, in my mind, that's a good politician or a good statement or good representative of the of the country. If you know that something should be a thing like women vote, right. Freedom of slaves, those things. But you also know that you have to be so, so delicate about putting it forward or putting things in place to make it happen in the future.

It's kind of like that. It might be a Buddhist saying where you plant a tree, knowing that you'll never enjoy its shade, but your future generations will. Sure. I don't know if it's Buddhist. You know, but there's a saying like that. If you plant a tree from seed, you plant it knowing you're not going to benefit from its shade, but your future generations will.

And, you know, you can decry the founding fathers all you want, but they set in place things that allowed us to get to where we are currently, which is not perfect. I'm not saying it's perfect. Right now is a better time to be alive than any other time for sure than any other time ever. But they set things in place that allowed us to do all of the things that we have done that have been good. Absolutely.

They've also set in place things that allowed us to be terrible. Right. I mean, they weren't perfect beings, that's for sure. No, and they're not in Fallonville. No. But they certainly set things up to where if we want to make a change, we can. Right. And I don't want to attack the founding fathers either. It's been vogue now, but when we were in school, it was the pantheon of American gods.

Yeah. The type of learning, post Cold War, like, Ra-Ra, Go America, right before September 11th and all that sort of thing happened. And even after, I think we kind of went more into the, well, now we've got a turkey. Now we have a turkey. In the room. We have a turkey. I'm not sure if, I'm not sure where it came from. But Mike is done with his cigar. I'm just about done with mine. We highly, highly recommend the tequila cigars.

Absolutely. If you have a cigar you don't like, just dip that thing into tequila. Follow the protocol that we've laid forth or Arnold has. Yes. Don't make it too soggy. That's a very easy mistake to make. Yes. Especially if you're drunk. It's very easy to make a mistake. Thank you for listening and we'll pick you back up next episode. Bye bye.