I’m one of the few Americans who realizes today is “Flag Day,” and it’s only because this pathetic nothing of a holiday falls two days after a far more important National Day of Remembrance, i.e., Jim Nabors‘s birthday.

As a card-carrying sociopath and Nationally Certified Selfish Person, I refuse to participate in all group activities, whether they involve national pride, ethnic singalongs, or political tribalism. Because I may criticize one group, the world’s human cattle reflexively assume I must identify with some other group, which isn’t the case, and which I’ve explained 20 million times, but which most of you remain too dim to grasp even on a rudimentary yam-digging level, so I wind up shrugging and realizing it’d be like trying to explain lesbianism to a house cat—no matter how slowly you speak, they’ll never understand, anyway. The only time-tested method to prevent sheep from thinking like sheep—and from assuming that everyone else thinks like sheep—is to slaughter them.

Therefore, I don’t hold any particular warmth toward the American flag. But from a graphic-design standpoint, it’s definitely less striking than the Union Jack…

…or the “Stars and Bars” of the Confederate Army:

As Americans, we don’t pay the CIA tens of billions of dollars yearly to sit around with their thumbs up their asses, so I’m assuming that at least $200 of that annual budget went to design the “Flags of the World” page on the CIA’s official website.

I quickly perused the page’s thumbnails, and here are the flags that caught my eye.

The award for “Most Metal” flag is a tie between Albania’s black eagle and Bhutan’s white dragon:

The award for “Most Psychedelic” flag is again a tie—this time, between Seychelles and Macedonia:

Here’s Greenland’s flag:

Could use a little more green, no?

The award for “Most Unnecessarily Busy” flag design goes to the British Indian Ocean Territory. It looks like a small Union Jack surrounded by turbulent water in which the Queen, smoking a joint, is drowning:

The prize for “Kookiest” flag goes to the Isle of Man—or, as it appears, the Isle of Three One-Legged Men Pulling a Daisy Chain:

Germany’s flag serves as a somber reminder that when you lose a war, you’re punished with a much less-exciting flag design:

I’m including the Philippines’ national flag merely because I’ve never been able to get a straight answer from anyone about whether a single island in the Philippines is referred to as a “Philippine.” I realize a single person from those islands is a “Filipino,” but everyone hedges when I ask them whether one island constitutes one “Philippine.” Does anyone know?

And lastly I include the flag of Montenegro because in this day and age, after all that we as a country and as a planet have been through, I’m frankly shocked that people still use the word “Negro”:

—JIM GOAD

Related posts:

1. THIS GUY STARTED THE WHOLE “DON’T FUCK WITH THE FLAG” THING
2. BLACK FLAG ROGERS
3. WHAT FREAK FLAG?
4. TV CARNAGE: RED FLAG
5. WHO IS THIS?