As I do more often than is prudent, I am posting about something I have very little personal knowledge of. From the beginning of the AIDS scare until just recently, I was a married woman. And I spent the biggest part of that period trying to get pregnant. In case you didn’t know, people who are trying to  get pregnant do not use prophylactics. Unless the doctor needs a “sample”. But the material that flows my way is just too funny NOT to share. But (like most of my posts) this subject should be shielded from bosses, children, and sensitive souls.

You can have custom-designed condoms! Yes, get your name, company, or special message printed on the package from The Condom Club. Great for advertising, party favors, or wedding mementos. (via Repliqa)

Condom packaging through the years. With commentary. This is where I got some of the illustrations here. (via Everlasting Blort)

In Japan, they are much more likely to show you what the product looks like on the package. In cartoon form, of course.

Condom fashions! (via Grow-A-Brain)

Its amazing how a new packaging design can make such a difference! You’ll be impressed (one way or another) by Pronto.

The VD Song.

The Enormous Penis song.

Three Ladies

Three ladies were having tea and talking about life.
"I think my husband is having an affair" says the first "I found a pair of panties in his jacket pocket".
"What did you do" the second lady asked?
"I went into his office over the weekend and I stapled them to his office door, right where his secretary, co-workers, and boss would all see them."
The second lady said "I think that my husband is having an affair also. I found a condom in his jacket pocket."
"What did you do" the first lady asked.
"I took a pin and pricked it full of holes and then I put it back" said the second lady.
The third lady fainted.

Musical condoms.

National Condom Week slogans.

This video, named the Dildo Diaries, features Molly Ivins describing the bizarre Texas laws restricting the sale of sex toys. NSFW!

Inexplicable Euro-sensation Gunther Levi recorded this song about his penis, referred to as a his “Tra-La-La”. 

North Carolina sculptor Joel Haas also has a story blog. This one certainly got my attention!

The Chocolate Coins

by Joel Haas
At first I thought I had found a trove of chocolate coins!

One of our favorite chocolate candy treats in the 1950s was chocolate coins wrapped in stiff gold foil. With a design front and back, and lettering just like real coins, the candies were sold in little faux nets bags to resemble “pirates purses.” The challenge of eating chocolate coins was carefully removing the stiff gold foil, preserving the design of the coin. Slowly and carefully, we’d reassemble the empty wrappers later, to make play money. We never got chocolate coins except on special occasions like Christmas, or Easter.

BUT….

Here it was July, and I had found about a dozen of them right here in the drawer of Dad’s bedside table!

Conflicting emotions flooded into my young mind. What an unexpected treat! How could Dad have kept all these chocolate coins to himself all this time? He was always generous with me and my brothers when it came to chocolate candy and treats. I was hurt he had been holding out on us!

I examined the coins in greater detail. The gold foil glittered and the only thing keeping me from tearing open several of them and gobbling them down was trying to balance in my mind how many I could eat and Dad not notice them missing? I had never seen this brand of chocolate coins and they were not in the usual pirate’s bag purse.

Too, all the coins were the same size. Other chocolate coins ranged in sizes from about the size of a nickel to a quarter to an old fashioned silver dollar. All of these seemed to be about the size of a 50 cent piece.

Gingerly, I pried one apart. The sides did not come apart as easily as the chocolate coins I was used to.

When I finally got the wrapper off, I was surprised and disappointed to find what looked like a greasy, twisted rubber band or a flat mushroom. Carefully pulling it out, I gave it an exploratory nibble. YEECH! It was definitely rubber bands! Rubber bands, but definitely, very weird rubber bands. Poking at the middle of it, I found I could unroll it like a long sock. It seemed pretty greasy, but I was curious, “how far could this thing be unrolled?”

Quite a long ways, as I discovered, but just as I had unrolled it as far as it was going to go, my mother came into the room.
I might be in trouble.

On the one hand, I might be able to get out of it by showing Mom that Dad obviously had been holding out on us all with the candy coins. On the other hand, these were not the usual candy coins. A neutral course was best, I decided.

“What is this?” I turned to Mom. Whatever normal chastisement I was due for went right out of Mom’s head when confronted with her small son holding forth a fully unrolled condom.

“That’s your father’s,” she said flatly.

“I know,” I said gravely. “I found it in his drawer.”

There was a short silence. “What is it?” I persisted.

“It’s a machine part covering,” Mom said --- the first thing that popped into her head. Then, without further ado, she retreated, leaving me unchastised, relieved, and deeply puzzled.

My father was legendarily unmechanical. A Philips head screw driver was the most complex tool in the house. What possible machine could he be using this on?

Well. There was one machine.

My father, Ben Haas, was a professional writer. The only machine I had ever seen him use was the model 1923 Underwood manual typewriter on the desk in the bedroom. It was the tool of his trade and I had seen him take it apart to clean and repair it.

I walked around to the desk, holding the “machine part covering” in front of me. I tried stretching it, but there was obviously no possible way this was going to cover the entire typewriter. At best, I could stretch it over a few keys or let it flop limply over the carriage return leaver. Would Dad come back and find I had taken one of his “machine parts coverings?” Would he be mad and punish me for going through his bedside table drawer?

The only way out I could see was to show I was a good and dutiful son. I needed to show I had seen to covering his machine parts in his absence when he had obviously forgotten to do so himself.

But how did this rubber tube fit on a typewriter???!!!

I was beginning to panic.

Suddenly, I had an insight. It was the roller platen! I had seen Dad unscrew the ornate brass knobs on each end of the roller platen, remove it, clean it and replace it. That had to be it! I easily unscrewed the knobs and removed the platen. With great difficulty, I managed to encase the whole length in the stretchy “machine parts covering,” and get the platen replaced. The knobs wouldn’t go back on, so I carefully laid the encased roller on top of the typewriter, setting the knobs to one side.

I closed Dad’s bedside drawer, taking the “machine part wrapper” with me--- it would make great play money along with the rest of the gold coin wrappers my brothers and I had saved.

Then, I left my parents’ bedroom, closing the door quietly, not mentioning my good deed to either Mom or Dad, figuring I would either be in for a scolding or praise soon enough.

I have no idea whether my father came home shortly thereafter and, finding a condom on his typewriter, took it as a not so subtle hint from my mother that he was working too much and should pay more attention to the home front. Maybe Mom went in the bedroom, and quietly removed the “machine part covering,” replacing the roller platen so Dad would never suspect his precious typewriter had been “violated.” Or, maybe, they found it and both had a hysterical laugh over it.

Neither of them ever said a single word about it to me.

 This handy guide to "designer condoms" was lifted from Theater of the Absurd.

A Girl's Guide To Condoms

- by Mimi Coucher
WARNING: Boys cannot read this. If you are a boy and are reading this, stop immediately. The following article is chock-full of highly intimate girl secrets that will be 10 times more embarrassing than any TV commercial for feminine-hygiene products you've ever seen. So quit it. I mean it. You'll be sorry.

Condoms Demystified
There are basically three kinds of condoms: unlubricated latex, lubricated latex, and lambskin. The lambskins are no good because they haven't been proven to be a barrier to infection. Anyway, they're really made of lambies and that makes us sad, especially around Easter time. (The real reason we don't like them is that they actually smell like lamb. One is tempted to lubricate them with mint jelly.) There are variations on the basic latex condoms. Some condoms are prelubricated, with spermicidal jelly, even. Others are not. Strictly B.Y.O.K.Y.

The strangest variation by far is the ribbed latex condom. Why are these condoms ribbed? This is supposed to be stimulating? Should one attempt to play washboard tunes on it? This is just part of a big problem with condoms. Condoms were, and are, designed by men.

If Girls Designed Condoms...
What a wonderful world it would be. Skip the ribbing, skip the lube. If women designed condoms there is no question that they would be padded. "But size doesn't matter!" comes a chorus of voices. (The loudest voices come from boys who are peeking. Stop that right now. Turn to the sports page immediately.) Sure *length* doesn't matter. But give any girl a small dose of truth serum and ask her about width.

Admit it. If padded condoms were placed on the market, hordes of screaming women would storm their local druggists and dash out with tote bags full. Unfortunately, it wouldn't work. After all, there is that ticklish issue of boy sensitivity, which we can't overlook, even if we occasionally want to. Padded condoms would rob boys of the skin-to-skin senstion they already claim condoms rob them of. And we can't have that.

No, we modern women, being kind and sensitive lovers, would design whisper-soft condoms, completely transparent and microscopically thin. The paisley, rainbow, and floral-print condoms we designed would be strictly novelty items, kept for special occasions only. Ditto the condoms with cute sayings: "Hang in there, baby, Friday's coming"; "My girlfriend went to Florida and all I got was this lousy condom"; and the classic "I'm with stupid" (arrow pointing back toward the boy). Other specialty items would include the male-ego condom, which, like black olives, come in three sizes: jumbo, colossal, and humongous. Naughty subversives would enjoy the Karen Finley assortment, colorful, decorative condoms that turn ordinary penises into bananas, hotdogs, yams, and more.

But I digress. The best place to buy condoms is your local massive drugstore that has them on display, self-serve, just like corn pads or athlete's foot spray.

So go shopping. Dress cool, hold your head high, read labels, make your selection. Be assured that most popular brands come with little instruction booklets much like the ones found in boxes of Tampax (uh oh --don't mix them up!). While at the drugstore, be sure to purchase at least one of the following items: Tickle anti-perspirant, Ban Roll-on, or any of the Calvin Klein line of men's grooming aids. You'll need these for important condom experiments at home.

At home, be alone. Light candles. Play inspiring music; any record by Rick James will do. Remove one of the condoms from its packet. Examine it carefully. Then put it to work. Experiment with your slippery new friends; whip those sons-of-gummi-worms into shape. Recruit those deodorant bottles and practice, practice, practice. And how about some new nicknames for the old standbys? Love skins. Slicks. Wet suits. Silk stockings. Eight-by-two glossies.

Soon enough, you'll be happy and relaxed, perfectly in control of those silly little slips o' sin. But wait. Something's missing. Oh yes, the hard part. I mean the good part. I mean, both.

It is far, far easier to start them on condoms when the relationship is young. In fact, the condom is a terrific tool of seduction when you're ready to make the leap between the sheets. Call that someone on the phone and say to him, casual-like, "I just bought a new kind of condom and I'm dying to try it out... want to come over?" Or when out on the town with your paramour, and the clock on the clubhouse wall says thump thump thump, push that hunk against the wall and growl, "Listen, buddy. I've got a condom in my pocket and I'm not afraid to use it. We're going home."

Before you know it, you'll be a veritable connoisseur of condoms. You'll allow them to drop casually out of your purse in front of attractive men at cocktail parties. You'll dispense them to friends, give lessons, perhaps even roll your own. "Oh, handsome boyfriend," you'll soon sigh, "I've always wanted to see you in rubber."

And he won't mind one bit.

Recent history
We've Come A Long Way...We thought we were pretty darn smart, all right. In the '60s we became liberated and bravely marched into our neighborhood women's-health collective, had our blood tested and our bodies examined, and marched out armed with a pink carousel of little tablets and a new attitude. We related to our sex partners, we discovered the joys of uninhibited physical thrills, we took our pills regularly.

In the '70s we were sorry for it and went en masse to our gynecologists to be fitted for diaphragms. We carried them everywhere, became geniuses of delicate timing. We tried IUDs, flirted with cervical caps worn at jaunty angles. We researched and discussed the issues with candor and aplomb; ask any high-spirited modern girl and she'll tell you all about the G-spot, male menopaus, the Hite report, impotence, arousal, pregnancy, the Kama Sutra, birth control.

Ready for the '80s? Hell, we thought we were ready for anything. Anything but this. No woman, not even the most avid reader of sex manuals or sophisticated connoisseur of amour, is prepared for the experience of walking to the corner drugstore and asking the freckle-faced adolescent behind the counter for a package of... condoms.

OLD FACT: Condoms aren't sexy. Neither are rubbers, sheaths, prophylactics, Coney Island white fish, raincoats, skins, safes, rubber booties, socks. The package says, "Sold for the prevention of venereal disease." The boys say, "Sold for the prevention of love". Oft compared to taking a bath with socks on, the condom ritual was the classic bane to the romantic advances of bumbling '50s teens.

NEW FACT: Unless you can account for all the blood transfusions, intravenous activities, and sexual escapades of your partner and your partner's partners, you'd best get used to the idea, right now. "Say," you blink innocently, "shouldn't the boy be taking some responsibility for this dangerous transaction?" Yes, of course. But I wouldn't count on it. You know how they are. And here's a horrifying thought: not only are you protecting yourself against your partner, you're protecting your partner against *you*.

Oh, cheer up. It beats abstinence.

Buy Now, Lay Later
Don't even pretend for one minute that you're never going to do "it" again. You will. First take: you enter a quiet, out-of-the-way drugstore that has a display of walkers and bedpans in the window. Confident that no one you know will ever spot you here, you stride over to the kindly old pharmacist at the back of the store. "Excuse me," you venture a little shakily. "Where are your rubbers?" You are gently guided to a Totes display in Aisle Three. To save face, you buy a pair of men's size 11s and ditch them in a corner trash can, determined to do better next time.

Second take: the next store you choose is a little larger, and crowded. But you can't find the condoms anywhere. There is a line at the cash register. You stand in it, patiently, rehearsing your lines. You arrive. "Excuse me," you politely whisper to the surly loud-mouthed Iranian behind the counter, "where are your prophylactics?" "Right here," he shouts. "Whatkind ya want?" "Uh, Trojans, I guess." "Lubricated or nonlubricated?" he bellows. "Ya want ribs? We got the ribs kinds." By this time, the entire store is involved in the drama, the crowd behind you is silently hanging on your every word, and you're sure that that's your third-grade teacher who just walked in. "Oh, uh, skip it, thanks. I'll just tell my little brother that he'll have to buy his own."

Don't be discouraged. Buying condoms is a tough job, but somebody's got to do it. And here's a heartening fact that I bet even *you* didn't know, Ms. Modern: marketing tests prove that women buy more condoms than men do, and have for years. That's why, ever since the late '70s, condom packages have featured air-brushed photos of couples holding hands at sunset. They thought we'd like that. We don't, but it will have to do till pictures of Mick Jagger, Mel Gibson, or beautiful shoes come along.

Thought for Today: Yesterday in Egypt, archaeologists discovered the burial site for the 50 children of Ramses II... Fifty children! What I want to know is, who decided to name a condom after this guy?  -Conan O'Brien

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