St. Petersburg, Florida

There is no explanation for the atrocity of this flag. Arguably, St. Petersburg, Florida, is one of the nicer places to live in the United States. Sure, you have to dodge the occasional hurricane. And global warming turn the city into a modern day Atlantis. I couldn’t find an explanation of this flag anywhere. Five Skittles colored bands with a superimposed reversed out pelican. That’s what I’m talkin’ about. I love a large sea bird that swallows up fish live and then vomits the fish sluice into the distended gullets of its young. Nothing represents the senior citizens that call the Gulf Coast home than a pelican. The modified gay pride flag colors of the bands represents the ambiguous sexuality of the majority of the city’s residents.

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia. I actually don’t have too many problems with this one. But one question stands out. Why the sword? I think it’s a little uh… militant. Maybe in a culture where beheading isn’t a still-used form of capital punishment – but for Saudi Arabia, I think it’s too soon. I get a very stabby/slashy vibe from this one. The script reads: “There is no God but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger.” That’s fine and good. It’s even a very beautiful script, and the green is very pleasing. But Saudia Arabia’s oil-based economy is surely not green. Nor is its mostly desertified landscape. But I guess that’s neither here nor there. Anyhow, if they’re serious about being badass and having weaponry on their flag, I suggest something more modern, like Mozambique…

Plano, Texas

If you didn’t know Plano was a city in Texas, you might think it was a mom and pop company that manufactures drywall screws and decided, gosh darn it, to finally decided to ask their son Rex (who goes to the junior college down in Westwood) to have his class design up a nice corporate logo to stick on the letterhead. If you’re going to put that little effort into a flag representing your city, what are we supposed to think about Plano? It reminds me of the retarded cousin of the Philapelphia Phillies’ logo circa 1978. Points off for using that horrible slanted font.

Kansas

Poor Kansas. There’s not much to recommend about this most landlocked of states. It’s the home of Senator Sam Brownback. The state that on a macro level actually is flatter than a pancake would be were it large enough to cover the state. Its name is a total rip off of Arkansas, though it’s pronounced differently to disguise the lack of effort. One other area in which the state of Kansas threw in the towel rather than work hard is its flag. To start off, the word Kansas is spelled out in big block letters. That’s a huge no-no in flag design, plus the font makes the state look cheap. Next you have a center circle filled with all kinds of early 90s clip art, including a farmer, a cabin, bison, Indians, a riverboat and a wagon train. Nice try with the mountains, but nobody’s buying it. Notice how color graditents are used to excess to make the flag impossible for a child to reproduce. Finally, across the top of the circle is the state motto: “Ad astra per aspera,” which means “to the stars through difficulties.” Which doesn’t make any sense. NASA is not based in Kansas. The whole package is topped off with a beautiful clip art sunflower.

Mora County, New Mexico

This fine specimen was first used as set dressing on the TV drama Gunsmoke, circa 1963. Any flag that is intentionally yellowed ensures that travelers to the area can count of a lot of  “hertiage” activities. To judge from the flag, those activities include roping short horned cattle, shooting cannons, catching rainbow trout and doing something that looks like either watching fish jump out of a kettle over a campfire or viewing Native American feathered headdresses. The shape of the county is handily drawn over all these activities, making it very helpful to those who don’t have GPS (catch your trout in the northeast corner, but it’s best to boil them in the northwest quadrant.)  The New Mexico sun and its rays are depicted in a lovely, natural shade of umber.

Qatar

Qatar is a badass nation that breaks all the rules. Who else would dare to start the name of a country with a Q and then have the audacity not to follow that up with a U? And the flag is even more out there. Instead of following the standard ratio of lenght to height or 2:1, Qatar’s flag clocks in at 28:11. What kind of ratio is that? The flag’s design is a tribute to a rare Charles Schultz creation. It represents the single time Charlie Brown changed the stripes on his shirt from yellow and black to maroon and white. In Islamic cultures, it’s taboo to depict graven images, but the Qataris love Chuck B. so much they had to break the rules yet again. To disguise the representation, the flag depicts a cropped and zoomed in section of the shirt, flipped 90 degrees.

Antigua and Barbuda

Readers will come to see that the best flags usually don’t belong to island nations. For a nation whose names means “old and bearded,” though, this flag is a pretty good fit. I could totally see this design on a Cosby sweater on a clearance rack at Kohl’s, where it would be sure to be snapped up by women shopping for their old, bearded husbands. This flag suggests a downward arrow, and no flag should be so subliminally negative. Also, displaying a black sky… not so postive. At least the blue sea and white sand speaks of a Caribbean paradise.

Saskatchewan

Let me start out by saying the flag of Saskatchewan would be way more popular if it featured a Sasquatch rampant instead of a flower. Second, it’s a very long flag: a 3:1 ratio, but all the stuff could be fit in a traditional 2:1 ratio rectangle. But maybe the point was to demonstrate the vastness of the prairie. Third, I don’t think any flag should attempt to demonstrate any specific sub-species on its flag. The flower in question is a prairie lily (Lilium philadelphicum.) But I no more know what that looks like in real life as I do a Sasquatch. Also, the animal in the crest should actually live in the land the flag represents. Sticking with the prairie theme, I recommend a prairie dog. They’re way more approachable than a lion. The sad thing about this flag is that it was the winner among more than 4,000 entries in a 1960s flag designing contest.

Mercer County, Ohio

Here is one of those flags that was surely designed by a gold-star committee on flag designing. Everything symbolizes something. The beige bands at the bottom represent the different crops of the area (apparently, corn, soybeans and corn again.) The bricks at the bottom of the lighthouse symbolize the 14 townships in the county and are an obvious afterthought. But this flag is also full of false advertising and/or outright lies. The lighthouse would make you think it’s located on Lake Erie or some other large body of water with at least a non-muddy beach. Nope: Grand Lake St. Marys (which is manmade) doesn’t have ships, so doesn’t really need a lighthouse. The rainbow rays of light emanating from the beacon of the lighthouse would make you think Mercer County is a gay mecca. Wrong again.

Belarus

The Belarusians don’t have a lot going their way: it has a long history of oppression by nearby powers, population decline, a state controlled economy and the distinction of being the last dictatorship in Europe. One thing that surely isn’t helping the mood in Minsk is this clunker of a flag. According to my research, the red portion (top two thirds) symbolizes Belarus’ glorious mideval and Soviet past, while the green represents the future. Now, I might make the future part a bit more than one third of the flag – that’s a little pessimistic, but that’s just me. The vertical symbols down the left side are representative of the nation’s heritage and unity. But I think it makes the flag look more like a rug. If I knew nothing else, I would guess this were the flag of one of the “stans” or other places known for rugmaking. The sidebar also looks like a pixellated screenshot from and Apple II. I bet schoolkids have a hard time drawing it. Some sources note that the flag must be topped with a golden ornament/flagpole finial for solemn ceremonies. If there’s something that would finish this flag off any better for solemn ceremonies, I can’t think of it.