​It's Feb. 14 -- the best day of the year!

No, of course we don't mean Valentine's Day (ew.)

It's National Condom Awareness Day -- and 2012's holiday has gotten even more special for you and your special lady or man-friend: New York City's Department of Public Health and Mental Hygiene is releasing a version of the mobile phone app for Windows phones and BlackBerries today that will point you to the nearest pro-bono prophylactics. And it's free! (Before it was just for iPhones and Androids.)

How does the program work?

The app determines users' location via GPS technology and then gives specific directions to venues that offer the free NYC Condoms throughout the five boroughs -- including the sites' hours and what other safe-sex products these locations offer.

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​Love is supposed to be everlasting. Unfortunately for many, the only permanent thing to come out of a relationship is an incurable sexually transmitted disease.

And that's why Cyrus Sullivan, of Portland, Ore., claims that he runs STD Carriers Disease Control and Prevention Services, a website that lists claimed and confirmed carriers by their names, locations, descriptions, and sometimes their photos.

The database is completely open to the public -- you don't have to login to browse the listings, and many of the recently added carriers' pics are displayed prominently on the site's front page. Users submit photos freely. There are about 1,500 listings.

From the workmanlike design and sluggish flash slideshow and bizarre comparisons between Pearl Harbor's "hostile Asian men" and STD awareness, you might get the impression that Sullivan, who also runs an online reputation-management business, operates with a tongue-in-cheek M.O.

And you'd be wrong: Sullivan is for real and his work (for better or for worse) is heartfelt, -- and he has updated his site just in time for Valentine's Day.

From the mission statement: "It is our goal that by promoting the sharing of information that we can ultimately protect you health from dangerous diseases while protecting your civil liberties and providing quality entertainment."

Oh boy.

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​The above image (via Reddit) is an excerpt from a Durex condom print ad from India. In it, a woman coyly chews on her nails with the thought, "hmm...did he? didn't he?" floating above her head. Full image after the jump.

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​Closing out the week on the condom beat, it's come to our attention that there's a new condom out there, being sold by our friends at Condomania who, as we wrote earlier this week, are selling an Occupy Wall Street condom and also kindly giving it away free to protesters. (The company asks that you be patient with your requests as they've had a busy week; they will get to you!). But we couldn't resist asking some more questions, because, well, when you have something of a condom expert on the phone, what else can you possibly do? Adam Glickman of Condomania informed us that there's a new condom, just out this week, that may change condoms forever.

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​Yesterday a piece in the New York Post detailed the scandalous, scandalous ways of Occupy Wall Street protesters. To wit, some of them may be hard-drinking, heavy-drugging, sex-having criminals. The Post found one who admitted to the media that he was on the lam and hiding out in Zuccotti Park (he let the newspaper publish his photo, proving that along with being a drug-addled criminal, he is not very smart). But! On to the sex part, the Post found one person who said this: "I haven't hooked up with any guys ... but one of my friends did have sex in a tarp with a guy last night." Did they use Occupy Wall Street condoms? We can only hope so. Not only because they're free to protesters, but because of everything that we learned about safe sex in middle school. Also, yes, there are Occupy Wall Street condoms.

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​"Jackpot" for the Prospect Park cleaning crew over the weekend meant condoms. Wrappers and rubbers comprised much of the trash collected by the the Prospect Park Litter Mob, a volunteer group concerned with "Brooklyn's largest remaining stretch of forest," and their community-minded actions earned them a little New York Times feature on the City Room blog this morning. It's racier than most city news tidbits, especially in the Times! The picker-uppers focused mainly on the Midwood section of the park, "known as a place gay men cruise for sex," and so the army of eight filled 22 bags with trash. Among the garbage, "upwards of 2,000 condom wrappers and 600 condoms." By our math, that means we're missing about 1,400 used jimmy hats; either Brooklyners get environmentally conscious postcoital and decide to use trash cans, or some people have mighty strange souvenir collections. [NYT]

​Despite a New York State Supreme Court ruling that "Obama" condoms are protected by the the First Amendment and that condom wrappers, regardless of what they say, "should be treated like books," a/k/a not require a vending license, José Andujar, a Times Square street vendor of Obama-branded condoms (tagline: "It's the ultimate stimulus package for hard times") has again been arrested by the city. This is Andujar's third arrest in a year for "unlicensed peddling," and the city vows to keep busting him until they get an outcome on their appeal of the ruling, which sounds like not quite the way it's supposed to work. Still, according to ObamaCondoms.com, the company does a fairly brisk business online, which answers our question as to whether anyone actually wants to purchase Obama condoms. Apparently, yes. They also come in McCain, Palin, and "Oil Spill." [NYP]

​Imagine you had an alternate reality in which everything was "luxury." You'd drive a luxury car instead of taking an average to shitty non-luxury subway, live in a luxury apartment, wear luxury clothes, eat in luxury restaurants, be named whatever your name is but with "luxury" in front, and so on. Everything luxury! Luxury everything. Your condoms, in that case, should also be luxury, and/or luxurious. Or both! Fortunately, there are strides being made in the luxury condom market. They are called Naked condoms, and they are "one of the most upscale brands in the growing business of luxury prophylactics." This means you will pay $56 for a box of 12, compared to $12 for a pack of 12 Trojans.

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WWYMD?

​Sex among teens is always fraught topic. Take the recent announcement by Philadelphia's Department of Health that they would be mailing free condoms to anyone who asked and was between the ages of 11 and 19. Outraged parents came forward saying that 11 was far too young to be having sex, and how dare the Department of Health promote that behavior with their free condoms! On the other side of things, we have a "fashion line" called "What Would Your Mother Do?" dedicated to selling underwear and tees that will helpfully remind teens not to have sex, via messages on waistbands like "Zip It," "Not Tonight," "Dream on," and even, yes, "What Would Your Mother Do?"

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​From the network that brought you Skins, a slanted version of the British teen drama featuring drugs, booze, and scandalous sex, and Jersey Shore (we'll save our breath explaining that one), MTV presents: SEXIDENTS, the failed attempt at a sex-education campaign. Bravo, MTV, you have yet again convinced everyone that you still suck.

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