Where the Rubber Hits the Road...

Condoms make me laugh.

Well, not the latex itself, but more so the brand names. And I guess they don’t make me laugh so much as chuckle ironically. It just seems to me that whoever it was that decided on these names just wasn’t using his head (or the right one anyway). Think about it:

Trojans? Listen, Troy fell. The Trojan defenses failed. The walls of Troy were penetrated. Sure, the Trojans defended their city for a decade against thousands of marauding Greeks, but when it really came down to it, when push came to shove, they let a big horse-load of Greeks in the backdoor.

Then you’ve got Ramses. Who was the genius on this one? I think that it’s just plain brilliant to name a birth control method after a guy that had 200 kids. Plus, unless I’m mistaken, wasn’t Ramses the pharaoh that had the little skirmish with Moses and the Isrealites? So that means firstly, that all his people got plagues, and secondly that he really wasn’t that great at keeping things contained. I mean he let the slaves split the Red Sea and escape to "the Promised Land," which, as luck would have it, was a land of milk and honey.

Sheik? I really don’t think it’s a good message for kids these days to name a condom after a guy with a harem full of women. It’s certainly better than having 200 kids, but who knows what goes on in there? Besides, take it from me, having a harem is hardly worth the trouble.

Lifestyles? For some reason, it just sounds sketchy to me. If there were a lifestyle channel on TV, I wouldn’t watch it.

I guess there’s Durex. I can almost accept Durex. There’s not a whole lot wrong with the name. The name seems to be indicative of strength and durability. But still, I’m suspicious, I feel like you're tempting fate... like naming a condom "Never-Fails," you should just never say never. "I’ll have two tickets for the Titanic please." I remember we used to have "Duralex" drinking glasses in our kitchen when I was growing up. They were never supposed to break, but we sure managed it.


You know, looking back over this post, I’m starting to realize that it reads like a bad stand-up act: "What is it with condoms these days..." Oh well, I don’t think I’ve ripped it off from anyone because I first wrote something like this in Dave’s Big Black Book of Mystery, which was the early print predecessor of the blog and was stolen out of the back seat of my car in late 2002. I just hope that whoever that asshole was got a kick out of it… why would you steal someone’s journal?

Anyway, I’ll leave you with one more condom story. A friend of mine worked in a pharmacy while she was in college. One day a twelve year old kid walked up to the counter with a 12-pack of condoms (one for every year of his life I suppose). When she raised an eyebrow, he didn’t shyly place the package on the counter and pay, instead he gave her "the wink and the gun" and said, "Hey, No glove - No love, baby!"