Banana flavoured condoms

The BBQ Pit
1

Ok. This is a bit of a side story.

I was in the courthouse, awaiting the justice to pronounce his opinion.

The justice needs to rule on one fact, vis, was I, or was I not, involving myself in crimen injuria when referring to the arresting cops as “cunts” and “fucking arseholes”.

I have some reason to be less than satisfied with where my tax money has ended up, but I pled guilty, mostly because I was actually guilty of the crime. Honesty does pay off. I get a criminal record but it is expunged if I behave myself for several years.

So, yes. I chose to plead guilty.

What really, really broke my comprehension levels, though, is that in this country, South Africa, which has amongst (or highest) the highest HIV rate in the world, we had condoms in the cell.

Sure, this is a good thing. I would like to be able to suggest to the gentleman who is about to sexually assault me, that perhaps, during his 3 minute bout of pleasure, that he does not assist the possible passing of a communicative disease. Fortunately all of the gentlemen in my cell were far more interested in cigarettes.

And this is all good. I think free cigarettes would be a great update to the legal system, but instead, they gave us free condoms. Banana flavoured condoms.

I mean, jesus motherfucking christ, if I am to be raped or I am a rapist, in neither case do I fucking care about the fucking flavour. Thanks guys, appreciate the gesture, but I just don’t like banana (or, whichever ester it actually is)

Condoms are free here. Generally just “horrible latex-and-lube-flavoured”, I have no idea why they chose “horrible latex-and-fake-banana-and-lube-flavoured” as the go-to for horny gents in a prison cell.

Update: US$11 (yes, eleven dollars) fine. Criminal record, etc. No mention of the lack of variety, nor actual banana content in the ingredients.

2

TL;DR- So, you didn’t slip on a banana peel…?

< Bob Dole approves this message >

3

Coulda been worse. Coulda been Eggplant flavor.

4

The fact that they have any kind of flavor at all suggests TPTB put a lot of creepy thought into this.

5

The prisons probably just end up with the least popular condom flavors, since they’re most likely to be in surplus.

6

Or sausage!

7

This is, indeed, exactly what happens. My wife works in South African civil service, in a department unrelated to prisons but that runs facilities with ablution blocks. Which means free condoms. They get surplus stock at a lower price, for the free condoms they put out at their facilities.
Similarly the banana-flavoured ones were often the free ones in our university toilets.

8

I learn something new every day.

9

They also come in strawberry and grape, she says.

They are all flavoured now apparently because of complaints in the early 2000s that the old ones were very chemical. But which flavours is apparently a result of which surplus flavours are available.

10

Now I have to live with the thought that there exists something worse tasting than a government issue banana flavoured condom.

Thanks for that.

11

Please, please tell me you didn’t taste one for “scientific” reasons.
Tell me, instead you listened to the scuttlebutt(gah!, did I just use that word?) in the jail. Or took a curious sniff?

(Did I miss the thread of your misdeed that was $11 bucks worth of a crime?)

12

I have yet to produce the courage to taste one.

The crime was “crimen injuria”, ie, insulting the police. The reason I was insulting them is that they had just pepper-sprayed me, without provocation.

The reason the police were there at all was because for reasons unknown, I was being evicted from a bar.

That’s OK, right of admission reserved etc, but I had done nothing wrong except to quietly drink beer and surf the internet on my phone. The owner called the police. I can only guess “mistaken identity” because this was a bar in a far-away town, which I visited last more than 2 years ago.

I am close to a perfect customer, in my opinion. I don’t talk, I sit by myself, my only interaction is to order and pay.

13

IME, eggplant doesn’t have a flavor, except for whatever you cook it with.

14

Maybe you should have pled guilty to insulting cunts and assholes…

15

How many days were you in the jail? Was it terrible?

And how is insulting police only cost $11? Do you have to pay court costs?

Easily that would cost $1000 here(ok, I’m guessing, but it seems like it would)

16

Just one night. It was not pleasant. Cold, noisy, scary looking blankets, around 20 people in a large empty room. OTOH, better than cells I have been in in Zimbabwe.

US$10 is a large amount to the average farm labourer, minimum wage here is roughly US$1.50/hour.

Court costs: free. I could have involved a lawyer, but that would get very expensive for me, and likely not much gain. I used the free public service lawyer.

17

I’m glad it wasn’t longer, and the legal system sounds…interesting, but am I too late to mention the fascinating factoid my daughter told me some time ago?

“Banana flavored” food items don’t taste anything like bananas because the flavoring was based on the Gros-Michel cultivar that was nearly wiped out by a fungus in the 1950’s. The standard grocery store bananas we eat nowadays are Cavendish, and they have a milder flavor along with a resistanceto that fungus. Since commercial growers learned nothing from their experience and are now growing this variant exclusively, the entire banana crop is also very susceptible to being wiped out by the next pathogen.

But banana-flavored condoms, I’m sure, will persist.

18

I thank you for your insight.

I am aware that “banana flavored” is not a real flavor, it is merely an ester that “sort-of” tastes banana-like.

However, for science, I am willing, tomorrow, to do a taste-test. I will purchase a banana, a large quantify of some non-banana flavoured liquid (eg, water) and attempt a comparison.

May god help me in this, because, Jesus Christ, fake banana in its normal form, children’s sweets, is both abhorent and possibly illegal.

19

Yeah, my reaction to learning that artificial banana flavoring is based on another variety of banana with a stronger flavor was to fervently hope that they don’t taste like that.

20

Ah yes crimen injuria a charge origanally created so that a scandalised old lady could have you charged after seeing your penis while she perched 2 floors up on ladder outside your bathroom window. Its an old bullshit law that still gets abused today. Mostly as way to get around the right to free speach in the constitution. It has blatantly racist origins and should be scrapped.