Popping the pill everyday can be quite a chore.And having the patch peek out from underpants and T-shirts can be quite unnerving and unattractive.But taking birth control pills is a lot less painful than getting a hypodermic needle stuck in your penis.And sporadic patch slippage is a lot less embarrassing than shoving your manhood inside a spray can that personally coats your member with a customized condom — talk about killing the mood.Reproduction researchers have made several technological advancements in male birth control methods in the past decade. Apparently, condoms and female oral contraceptives are so five minutes ago — either women are finally fed with up with doing all the work, or maybe men are tired of being left out of the contraception circle.Since the advent of the birth control pill in the early 1960s, women have basically held the responsibility of preventing pregnancy.Female birth control methods account for nearly 75 percent of contraception, according to the Male Contraception Coalition, an organization whose goal is to spread the development of male birth control.  Other than withdrawal, which accounts for 27 percent of unwanted pregnancies, men only have two contraception forms to choose from — condoms and vasectomies, according to the Male Contraception Information Project.And condoms will probably remain man’s best friend because only about 6 percent of males undergo vasectomies, and reversals are not always a sure thing, according to the Male Contraception Coalition.Some of the most recent male birth control methods include a dry-orgasm pill, which basically makes a man shoot blanks, and a spray-on condom, in which the man inserts his member into a can while interior nozzles spray latex, or the invisible Band-Aid of condoms, onto the penis.Why men would want to wait an extra two minutes before sealing the deal with some hot chick is beyond reason.And taking a pill that could eliminate a man’s sperm count seems pretty hard to swallow.That old warning about not wearing those crotch-tight Wranglers may not be such a danger after all because researchers have come up with similar heat treatments to counteract spermatogenesis.But as threatening as a remote-control sperm tap or sperm-diluting injections may sound, many men around the world are interested in male contraceptives and are more than willing to take a load off women’s shoulders.Nearly 55 percent of men surveyed claimed they were interested in trying new forms of male birth control, according to a 2005 study conducted by the Schering-Plough Corp, a worldwide health care company. Around 40 percent of American men said they had the guts to have a birth control device implanted or injected into their penis.That’s a shocker considering most men are usually too lazy to even wrap it up themselves.But don’t toss your pill pack quite yet, ladies.Although hormonal contraceptive treatments are 100 percent effective in clinical trials, 10 to 15 percent of men are unresponsive to the treatments, according to the August issue of Time Magazine. This failure may result from the fact that male birth control methods have the responsibility of fighting off millions of sperm, while the pill only has to deal with a single egg.So it looks like women are just going to have to suck it up a while longer and continue wearing the pants in the pregnancy-preventing family because, as usual, men aren’t quite ready to make that kind of commitment.Drew Belle Zerby is a 22-year-old mass communication major from Vidalia.– – – -Contact Drew Belle Zerby at [email protected]