Yeah, I Wear Lip Balm; Wanna Fight About It?

Blistex Executive Makes Fool Of Himself At Lip-Balm Conference | The Onion: "Many claimed the all-natural lip-care company Burt's Bees received the worst of Granley's insensitive remarks. Granley failed to recognize Burt's Bees CEO John Replogle and then overlooked the senior executive's outstretched hand after it was determined that the two of them had met several times before. In addition, Granley offended Replogle when he told him that Burt's Bees' products tasted a lot better than he remembered."

Every few years, I have to buy a new tube of lip balm. This has been a down-hill problem ever since they discontinued Star Trek: First Contact Borg-themed lip balm in 1996.

I fuckin' loved that stuff.

Anyway, once I ran out of Borg balm, I tried to find a replacement: ChapStick, Cherry ChapStick, something called "man gloss" which was designed to be clear, sheenless, and aroma-free. I eventually worked my way through an entire tube of Burt's Bees something-or-other, and when that ran out recently, I trekked to my local supermarket for two things: bags upon bags of Reese's cups for Halloween and another tube of Burt's Bees. I settled on the honey balm for two reasons: it had the highest percentage of all natural ingredients among all the Burt's Bees products present, and — in case you may have missed this — it is made of honey.

I love honey. I appreciate that bees are so dedicated to pollinating flowers and throwing up all the time just to make it. It's bacteriostatic. It's healthy. It makes tea better for you when you're sick. I love honey.

So I bought a tube, and now every time I put it on I feel a tad like Sgt. Grumbles. The problem is that I'm unsatisfied with it — the honey of course keeps my lips from getting bloody and infected, but it makes me lick my lips more, which actually makes them more chapped. When I recently figured this out, I tried to continue applying the honey balm with greater frequency and willfully prevent myself from licking my lips.

The result of this project was a couple days of having gritty little bits of my own skin rolling around on my lips as the dead tissue sloughed off and I had to wipe at my lips constantly to keep them clean. Not fun times. The honey balm itself didn't seem to have the chap-healing capacity that a cheap tube of ChapStick would have and, in retrospect, that makes sense. Still, you'd think that with as much market share as Burt's Bees has, their products would be performant. I feel that I'm going to be tearing through this tube because it's effects are so minor that I'll have to use a lot of it just to compensate.

I also have the feeling I won't be getting it again. Finding old tubes of the Borg balm on the Internet remains a possibility, though one I admit gives me mixed feelings.