St. Thomas, Ontario

I’m probably going to get some guff for this one, because Canadians seem to be oddly defensive about their flags. Supplying construcitve criticism about their beloved maple leaf gets about as far as suggesting limits on gun show sales in Texas. Anyway, the flag of St. Thomas, Ontario, is a bad one and it deserves some analysis. First of all, the lime green shade is…different. And not really in a good way. In fact what appears to be a wagon wheel may in fact be a slice of lime. Three highly stylized maple leaves look more like fig leaves to me, so you have to wonder what’s the Canadian government is covering up in St. Thomas. And I’m not sure, but I think that’s a primitive switchblade in the upper righthand corner. Either a switchblade or two boards nailed together shoddily.

Zulia, Venezuela

One of the new requirements Hugo Chavez has of Venezuelan states is that they find a way to honor him in their flags. Since Zulia is last alphabetically, they had to scrape the bottom of the barrel for ideas. They chose to represent Hugo Chavez’ favorite Halloween costume: Relámpago Bolivariano, o en Inglés, Bolivarian Lightning. Every Halloween, Chavez squeezes into his ever tighter Spandex unitard, which is blue on top and black (very slimming) below. He makes his transit across the solar disc in the cockpit of an F-16 fighter jet, and throws cardboard lightning bolts out into the countryside. It is said that those who come to possess an intact bolt will receive thre barrels of high-sulfur oil.