"You have to tie it with a ribbon"
February 26, 2019 3:32 PM   Subscribe

We used a recipe from 1844 to make homemade condoms, and it was grosser than we expected.
posted by not_the_water (30 comments total) 18 users marked this as a favorite


 
I had always wondered how they sealed the end; never occurred to me that they would come that way from the sheep.
posted by Mitheral at 3:45 PM on February 26, 2019 [4 favorites]


Pretty similar to making sausage casings, which I suppose is no surprise. Just a different part of the digestive tract.
posted by backseatpilot at 3:55 PM on February 26, 2019 [1 favorite]


These were less gross than I expected. How gross were they expecting them to be?
posted by aubilenon at 3:57 PM on February 26, 2019 [12 favorites]




I wish they'd tied a ribbon on the banana! That was great, I always wondered how exactly they were made, thinking of sausage casings.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 4:00 PM on February 26, 2019 [1 favorite]


Neat. I was a little surprised that it was two women doing this. (Well, one woman doing, and one standing around looking uncomfortable.) Would this have been women's work in the Victorian era? It sounds like from their comments that there was at least some level of mass production (day's wages, and all that).
posted by basalganglia at 4:18 PM on February 26, 2019 [2 favorites]


Yeah the fact the cecum is the blind end of an intestine is important. Otherwise you wouldn't have a closed end.

You can still buy lambskin condoms. I love that the marketing advertises "skin to skin", only in this case it's your cock's skin against the intestine of a sheep, which then is against the skin of the vulva. "Skin-to-skin-to-skin-a-lamb-sandwich" didn't market test as well. I've never actually seen one in person, but given the "KLING-TITE™ band to hold condom in place" I guess they still have the needs-a-ribbon problem.

(Obligatory warning: lambskin condoms provide no protection against STDs including HIV.)
posted by Nelson at 4:24 PM on February 26, 2019 [21 favorites]


Pretty similar to making sausage casings, which I suppose is no surprise. Just a different part of the digestive tract.

Have sex with one end of the sheep's large intestine and you're praised for preventing disease; have sex with the other end and go to jail.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:35 PM on February 26, 2019 [33 favorites]


Pretty similar to making sausage casings, which I suppose is no surprise. Just a different part of the digestive tract.
The same blind end from cow/steer is used as a very large casing. Eg. for capocollo/finocchiona.
posted by Evstar at 4:42 PM on February 26, 2019 [3 favorites]


Cecum? Not with this, you won't.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:02 PM on February 26, 2019 [14 favorites]


Come on, it's "Cecum? Damn near killed him!"
posted by a halcyon day at 5:06 PM on February 26, 2019 [11 favorites]


Cecumthing, say something.

Would this have been women's work in the Victorian era?

I would have guessed child labor, since it is detailed manual labor with an element of danger from the lye.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:36 PM on February 26, 2019 [7 favorites]


and it was grosser than we expected. yt

---

These were less gross than I expected. How gross were they expecting them to be?


If I may offer another data point: these were precisely as gross as I had envisioned. No more, no less.

I feel I have achieved something here, but I am not quite clear on what.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:37 PM on February 26, 2019 [14 favorites]


Have sex with one end of the sheep's large intestine and you're praised for preventing disease; have sex with the other end and go to jail.

But do they call me Johnny Wallflower the front-page poster? Noooo…
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 6:01 PM on February 26, 2019 [27 favorites]


And put the other end in your other other end and they call it Sunday dinner.
posted by loquacious at 6:48 PM on February 26, 2019 [6 favorites]


Just like grandma never made, fortunately for me.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 8:22 PM on February 26, 2019 [1 favorite]


True, bananas weren’t invented until 1867.

Never Always read the comments.
posted by not_on_display at 9:43 PM on February 26, 2019


You hear a lot about the mythical first person to ever look at an egg and say "hey, this thing just came out of that bird! I think I'll eat it!" or something like that, and now I'm wondering about the first person to ever slaughter a sheep and find a closed-off part of the guts and say "hey, I know what I can use THAT for!!!"
posted by yhbc at 10:26 PM on February 26, 2019 [4 favorites]


and now I'm wondering about the first person to ever slaughter a sheep and find a closed-off part of the guts and say "hey, I know what I can use THAT for!!!"

I take it you've not spent much time around adolescent boys?
posted by maxwelton at 11:17 PM on February 26, 2019 [4 favorites]


You hear a lot about the mythical first person to ever look at an egg and say "hey, this thing just came out of that bird! I think I'll eat it!"
Eating an egg doesn't seem so strange to me. The first person to milk a cow however, had issues.
posted by Ned G at 12:18 AM on February 27, 2019 [3 favorites]


only in this case it's your cock's skin against the intestine of a sheep, which then is against the skin of the vulva

Hmmm... lab grown meat could solve this. Culture you and you partner's intestinal cells. Layer your cells on the outside, you partner's on the inside. Grow it on a closed end form. Humanskin condoms! Creepier than lambskin condoms? Creepier than lambskin condoms.
posted by Mister Cheese at 1:47 AM on February 27, 2019 [6 favorites]


Humanskin condoms! Creepier than lambskin condoms? Creepier than lambskin condoms.

Culturing the skin of you and your partner doesn't seem creepy, but the culturing and marketing of celebrity-DNA condoms would definitely be creepy.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:17 AM on February 27, 2019 [2 favorites]


This thread is hysterical and you have all made my morning. (Gets a little creepy toward the end, tho...)
posted by jacquilynne at 7:43 AM on February 27, 2019 [2 favorites]


As the toilet-door doggerel goes: “In days of old, when knights were bold, and condoms weren't invented, they put their socks around their cocks and fucked until contented”.
posted by acb at 9:47 AM on February 27, 2019


You can still buy lambskin condoms ... I've never actually seen one in person...

My, um, friend has tried these and let's just say there are some reasons they're not so popular. They're not very stretchy, which seems odd and wrong. They have a slight yet piercing medicinal smell. Nothing about them evokes cleanliness or comfort. They do feel different, though. Condoms are so important, so necessary. They are also terrible, I hate them.

Cecum was, incredibly, used in the 1920s-1930s to make the gigantic gas bags for airships, in a grisly industrial process that I would guess had a lot in common with the actual production of cecum condoms back in the day. Bill Hammack explains a bit.
posted by Western Infidels at 10:25 AM on February 27, 2019 [2 favorites]


in this case it's your cock's skin against the intestine of a sheep, which then is against the skin of the vulva

Surely, just this once, it should be "vagina"?
posted by The Tensor at 12:50 PM on February 27, 2019 [11 favorites]


I can't watch the video right now so I don't know if they go over this, but is my understanding correct that most of the market for the present-day product is a function of Jewish law? I read that probably back in the 80s. I'm wracking my brain to remember the specific cite because it's a prominent factoid in my history, but this Hebrew-riddled riddle (Yiddish maybe?) is as much as I've been able to find and so I'm coming up blank even with the internet being available.
posted by rhizome at 3:41 PM on February 27, 2019


The first person to milk a cow however, had issues.

I don't really think it's that weird, especially when you consider:
1) Humans are mammals so drinking milk is literally one of the first things we ever do in life.
2) Cows are also mammals that give milk to their young in exactly the same manner.
3) If you're a non-lactating human and you find yourself charged with the care of a milk-needing infant maybe you think "What if I give this infant cow milk?" and lo and behold it more or less works.
4) You think "Damn this it a lot more milk than this infant needs, oh hey it's delicious!"

Now, as for the first person who let milk get all contaminated with yeast and turn lumpy and nasty and still ate it, that motherfucker was nuts.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 4:15 PM on February 27, 2019 [3 favorites]


is my understanding correct that most of the market for the present-day product is a function of Jewish law?

I can't imagine that this would be the case. A quick search for "condom" in conjunction with "halacha" indicates that the use of condoms is forbidden by Jewish law, although most discussions revolve around birth control and not disease prevention, and all the sites that discussed it seemed to be Orthodox. There was no mention of lambskin condoms and certainly nothing along the lines of "if you're going to use condoms, use these ones".
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:59 PM on February 27, 2019 [1 favorite]


Mr.Encyclopedia: "Now, as for the first person who let milk get all contaminated with yeast and turn lumpy and nasty and still ate it, that motherfucker was nuts."

How hungry do ya figure the first guy to eat a haggis was?
posted by Mitheral at 9:18 PM on March 7, 2019


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