Perhaps Trojans could save a few pennies if they looked to nature for their advertisements!!
True factoid:
Did you know that the average man's penis is about 3 times the length of his thumbs? :)
Condom hairbands
The Chinese are finally working to cure and prevent AIDS (see Aine's Take), but they have not been able to prevent the shipment of illegal condoms (bad ones) to places like Ireland (where millions were confiscated by Irish authorities last year) and other unsuspecting countries (perhaps they aren't trying?), but they are also unable to prevent used condoms from being made into other objects! In Guangzhou, for instance, many women have enjoyed buying colourful hair rubbers for a fraction of the usual cost; these could and can be found in market stalls and other venders around the city. The only problem is that they are made out of used condoms, something that a physician who goes by the unfortunate name of Dr. Dong (at the also interestingly named Hospital of Armed Police) said could make people feel sick, and pass on dangerous bacteria.
The women who discovered the materials these cheap bands are made from apparently did not know about the illigal Chinese condom exports, as they believed their condoms had been sourced from "foreign garbage," not Chinese.
Myths in the condom world...
This comes from an American condom internet sales site: Fiction is one thing, but puleeeezz!! :(
"The first modern adaptation of the condom was developed in 1921, when a factory worker in Akron, OH, Alfred Trojan, accidentally dunked his erect penis into a vat of vulcanized rubber. His condom empire now consists of $50 million in sales to over 40 countries around the world, but his once-proud penis was reduced to a blackened, shriveled twig."
What a bathroom!!
Could this be the ultimate voyeur's bathroom? And who's the guy in free fall??
Dr. Condum and Charles I and II
Although there was no Dr. (or colonel) Condum (who was supposed to have been Charles II's personal physician and inventor of the little c), as has been the legend for centuries - re: the etymology of the word condom - Charles II did supply his soldiers (and some of his hanger's on) with linen and fish gut condums. He did not use them himself, is my thought, though, because, though his wife, Portuguese royal Catherine of Braganza, never had children, his many lovers, to include Nell Gwen, managed to produce seven little heirs. Legitimacy was apparently not an issue for this VERY sexy monarch!
As for poor Queen Catherine, certainly not one of England's most "remembered" queens, she DID become the first English queen to be a tea drinker. She even added sugar!
Disasters and soaring condom sales
It is interesting that condom sales seem to go up whenever people are "scared." For instance, after North Korea's nuclear tests a few years ago, reservations at the "love motels" popular with couples who wanted a quikkie (not married couples, obviously) and condom sales soared in the South!! The same thing happened in Eastern Europe
when there were noises about borders of the former Soviet Union were closed to one group or another - the threatened were the ones buying the condoms!! Does this make sense, given that when one is convinced the end might be near, why worry about protection? Enquiring minds want to know!!
Gendering
It is perhaps surprising in this day and age to realize how few of the world's men (and women) understand what - or more accurately, who - determines a baby's gender. Recent research indicates that a woman's ovum may carry the genes that will mean that a child will tend toward the lean (or not), whereas a man's contribution carries the determiner of height. That said, few people realize that it is the man (you know what I mean!) who determines the sex of a child...if only Henry VIII had understood this (and all those nobles who jettisoned their wives because they believed them to be infertile!), who knows how differently English royal history might have turned out!! Fewer heads would have rolled, that's for sure!
Have you seen Julia Roberts in "Mona Lisa Smile"?
It's a great flick and well worth watching, especially with your daughters! It is a painful reminder of just how recent the discussion of sex - and educating all about safe sex - really is. The movie takes place about 8 years after the close of WWII, at one of America's foremost "women's" universities (Welsley) and is so true to life, it is scary. Never, ever, can we allow ourselves to go backwards, in the bad ol' days of behind the door discussions of how not to become pregnant - the school nurse is fired for handing out the sponge! - but it often seems that people like George Bush and his team would have us return to those days when women, even those who attended university, were told that everything they did should be in preparation for marriage and motherhood.
Nineteenth century...oddities??
Men, historically speaking, have always had their homosocial outlets, where they meet - have met - for sports, political exchange, food, drink, and "other" all guy bonding. But surely some of the late 19th century's all-male pursuits bordered on the bizarre - or were they just terribly Freudian?Along with theatres, saloons, and concert halls devoted to entertaining all-male audiences, there were also the peep shows and dime museums, where they paid a dime to see scantily-clad women displaying, "freaks," and best of all? Large glass jars containing preserved female genitalia.
Loving history...
On the history of "love"...
Love marks:
After the Battle of hastings in 1066, Harold Godwinson's dead body was identified by his tattoo, which was the name of his lover, Edith Swan-neck.
Love bits:
Lovers in the 17th century would pluck a flea from their beloved and keep it in a tiny gold cage round their necks, allowing it feed daily on their own blood. John Donne wrote a pem that included the famous lines: It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee/And in this flea our two bloods mingled be." In French, public lice are papillons d'amour, butterflies of love.
Quotable Quotes...about sex and other human ailments
Instead of fulfilling the promise of infinite orgasmic bliss, sex in the America of the feminine mystique is becoming a strangely joyless national compulsion, if not a contemptuous mockery. Betty Friedan (1921 - 2006)
Women need a reason to have sex. Men just need a place. Billy Crystal
(1947 - )
Mortal lovers must not try to remain at the first step; for lasting passion is the dream of a harlot and from it we wake in despair. C. S. Lewis (1898 - 1963), 'The Pilgrim's Regress'
I'm too shy to express my sexual needs except over the phone to people I don't know. Garry Shandling (1949 - )
I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty. George Burns (1896 - 1996)
Sexually,we are all competing for the same seat on the bus and the thing that holds it together is the tightly held conceit that we are all sexual gods. How can I believe in my own uniqueness when there's a cat out there exactly the same as me? Jeff Melvoin, Northern Exposure, Altered Egos, 1993
A man can sleep around, no questions asked, but if a woman makes nineteen or twenty mistakes she's a tramp. Joan Rivers (1935 - )
In America sex is an obsession, in other parts of the world it is a fact. Marlene Dietrich (1901 - 1992)
Does it really matter what these affectionate people do-- so long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses! Mrs. Patrick Campbell
One thing I've learned in all these years is not to make love when you really don't feel it; there's probably nothing worse you can do to yourself than that. Norman Mailer (1923 - )
Life is a sexually transmitted disease. R. D. Laing
The World's most famous lover
I used to love Casanova - he looms large in the Humble Condom - but when returning to his rather LONG autobiography as I research my next book, I found some disturbing comments by him about his "attractions" to some of the girls he saw frequently whilst living in his beloved Venice. Sadly,when he was in his fifties, it seems he fanticized - at least it reads as if it is all in his MIND - being intimate with the girls. The disturbing part is that these "girls" were just that - nine and ten-year-olds! The idea of such a mighty "love" figure being a pervert is grim, to say the least!
As it turns out, there were some very serious plays written for the Venician theatre which featured relationships such as those Casanova seems to be suggesting. Pedophilia, horribly, is not a 20th/21st century perversion; yet, the optimist in me hopes he was displaying a terribly misplaced machismo...