State Flags


Alabama- Origins of the flag:
Originally confused with the Governor's signature.

Alaska. One of the coolest of the flags. Designed by a 13-year-old. California should have hired him.

Alright. This is politically motivated. It's the great thing about having a blog. You can create whatever the hell you want.
The Supreme Court has confirmed that Municipalities can take land away from middle class landowners and forcibly sell it to rich landowners. In theory, this is OK, since all the land was stolen from the Indians in the first place, but Connecticut took lawn fascism to a whole new level by forcing homeowners to sell their homes in favor of higher income housing.


By the way, despite the hypocrasy of its state motto "He who moved us sustains us"- It is a nice flag.

Brokeback Banner
I pause here to mention one class of flags: The relationship flag. This is appropriate since Delaware is the first of these.  Lots of sailors and farmers, and some lumberjacks are included in this set.


Here are the men who appear in pairs on the state flags.The only two which actually embrace on the flag, are the two Kentuckians in the center.
So the big question is: Is this subliminal message part of a 200 year old gay agenda? Well, these fellas' relationships have certainly outlived their dress styles, so it may send the message that heck, if two men can live together on a flag, why can't they marry?

And indeed, the subliminal advertising is working. The only state among this group (Wisconsin, Delaware, Kentucky, Maine and West Virginia) to pass anti-gay marriage legislation is Kentucky. This is because Kentucky is the only state where one of the figures actually represents a politician, and would therefore be much more appropriate on the flag of New Jersey, but certainly the open embracing of any politician, male or female is viewed with revulsion by the general populace.

By the way, the only two flag featuring female couples are NY and NJ, which I may elaborate on later. By and large, the majority of flag couples are male.
Idaho and Virginia are the only two flags which feature a couple as defined by, well, those who would have the state define what a couple is. And wait 'til you see Virginia's.

Masters of the redundant: Delaware

 

1. Wheat sheaf= farming
2. Corn= farming
3. Ox= Um, I don’t think we mentioned that we are a unique state because we farm.
4. Farmer= Guess what we forgot to mention?
5. Oh, we make cute little model ships, and make bad color choices when we put on a uniform.
6. Oh, and the motto is Liberty and Independence, pretty nearly synonyms.
   
7. The colors represented the colors of George Washington’s uniform, so of course we couldn’t put the militiaman in buff or blue, or he’d disappear into the background. So what are the logical choices instead? Pink and Green!!

  The flag of Delaware wants:

1. Some indication of farming

2. Some indication of industry

3. Some indication of prosperity

4. To say it was the first

5. To show it has military might.

6. Some image of shipping

7. To show the idea of liberty.

This is how they did it:

One theme you'll see emerge is my feeling that a good design shouldn't go to waste. Since East Germany no longer exists, no one can object if we steal their well-designed seal. So here's my design:

Now isn't that better?

The flag of Delaware wants:

1. Some indication of farming-

Wheat

2. Some indication of industry-

hammer

3. Some indication of prosperity-

kept the diamond

4. To say it was the first-

largest star of the thirteen originals.

5. To show it has military might.-

Well, we beat the commies and stole their flag, didn't we?

Capitalism Rules!!!!

6. Some image of shipping- 

sextant

7. To show the idea of liberty.-

The thirteen stars.

How 'bout it, Legislature?

Maybe New Jersey can take their national anthem.

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Florida: Or How to Torture Old People with a Flag.

Eyesight Alert!

Here’s a great idea:

Take a state where most people are too old to see a candidate’s name on a ballot, let alone a tiny picture on a flag thirty feet above their head, put a big “X” on your flag, and shrink the pretty picture to the point that experts at NASA have to point the Hubble down to see it.

 

Florida: The first of a class of flags not for the visually impaired. In fact, not even for the visually average.:

 

Florida

Georgia

Idaho

Kansas

Kentucky

Minnesota

Missouri

Montana

Nebraska

New Hampshire

Oregon

South Dakota

Utah

Vermont

West Virginia

Wyoming

 Of these, only Vermont, New Hampshire and Missouri (ironically called ”the show me” state)  have emblems which are harder to see.

Floridians! It’s a nice picture!! Lose the X!

My friend Mike suggested I include the Forgotten Left Turn Signal, which is the state bird.

 

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Georgia. 

Oh Man. Where do I begin? In the gazebo, the spurned lover awaits with his sword. In the breeze, chinese lanterns in the shape of fish keep him company.  The Gazebo has been "tagged" by some politically-minded graffiti artist. 

Meanwhile, through some miracle of cooperation, one of the fish lanterns, which bears the legend "WIS   MOD" has become twisted around a column so that the backside of the fish is turned around, and the word "WISDOM" is formed. The other fish has also become wrapped around a column by a miraculous wind. 

What makes this especially amazing is that the LATERNS ARE BEING BLOWN IN OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS! No problem, the enterprising chinese lantern maker has predicted the correct wind vector and has spaced the word "MODER             and placed  ATION  on the other side of the banner precisely so that a word will form when the wind's just right. Sadly, the whole scene is rendered in monochrome yellow on blue, making it impossible to see.

But, hey, I'm not going to object. Georgia is suffering from Flag Trauma. Since 1878, Georgia has changed state flags six times, clearly showing that every state has some issue it simply can't handle. In New Jersey, it's auto insurance, oh and Governors serving full-term. We (NJ) are also the only state in the union that doesn't have a state song. Maybe that's not a sword in that spurned soldier's hand. Maybe it's a naked flagpole, which the Georgian holds to symbolize the futile search for the perfect flag. Ah, brother-in-pain, I too seek-

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In the annals of “What were they thinking”? a special prize must go to Lord Paulette (Maybe he was trying to overcome a girley name). He seized and burned all the Hawaiian flags in 1843 (similar to this, but different sequence of stripes), as part of a British Invasion of Hawaii. What was the dude going to replace the flag with? It was pretty darn British in the first place. Talk about cutting your nose off to spite your face!

 

So what did the Hawaiians do when the British took over? This is the cool part. They simply ignored the British. The British could find no one to carry their bags, or shovel their manure, or foist a Byzantine bureaucracy upon. No Hawaiian would even talk to the English. No one. Not even a whisper. The British relinquished and the Hawaiians defeated the British by non-violent means, long before Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. And after it was all over, the Hawaiians kept the Union Jack on the flag as if nothing had happened.

 

In your face, imperialists!

 

The British had to get in one last dig, kind of the way they did when they separated East and West Pakistan from India- but to a much kinder degree. They screwed up the order of stripes on the Hawaiian flag, so that the flag that was recognized as the sovereign flag of Hawaii was striped white-red-blue, not red-white-blue. So all those flags that weren’t burned by the British were made obsolete, and had to be burned anyway, and the Hawaiians, very amenably, considering all the British had put them through, adopted the new stripage as the official flag,  

 

I didn’t know any of  this flag history ahead of time, but now I think the Hawaiians might have the coolest history of any state, and maybe even have the most to be proud of  of any state -and that’s coming from someone from New Jersey!

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