More SPF Please

In the movie Spinal Tap, there is a scene that my husband and I refer to all the time. "Why don't you just make 10 louder?" "But this one goes to eleven." Doesn't make sense unless you've seen it. Go see it. When I first saw the movie I questioned my husband, "How come I've never heard of this band?" He just laughed at me.

But Nigel wasn't that far off on the obsession of making things greater than they need to be. The idea of a guitar amp being "one louder" is so crazy. Let's make everything better by just enough to make it useless. An amp that goes to eleven,a calendar as big as your desk, a PDA that doubles as a cell phone (and a cell phone in your pocket) and chapstick with SPF 18.

Nowadays, everyone is making chapstick or lipgloss. Blistex is still around and so is ChapStick. I know cause I own both brands in like 15 different sizes, flavors and colors. But other companies are starting to make lip stuff too. Companies you wouldn't think would venture out to the lip world. But they are pioneers in their industry. Who am I talking about? Coffee makers ofcourse!

Well, I only know of one coffee maker so that last claim is just my observation. Consult your local coffee makers to find out if they are part of my claim. Then report back to me.

Some of my co-workers went off to Minnesota for a meeting with Caribou Coffee (CC). Upon their arrival back to the office they brought some little CC gifts. Things like chocolate covered coffee beans, oh they are good but loaded with carbs. Watch out for those! And chapstick called "Lip Stuff." Well they are quick and to the point with the name eh? I got one tube of "Lip Stuff" and while reading it I noticed that it has SPF 18. Wait, 18? This seemed like an odd number. So I pulled out all my other chapsticks. I generally carry 3 or 4 in my purse. I read each one. "ChapStick Vanilla Mint has SPF 15 and Blistex Pro has 15 and my other Blistex, DCT, has 30." So why an SPF 18? This tube has 3 more SPF's than my other two so it must be better. What's the point? So I started thinking, if I need maximum protection, I'll choose the DCT, SPF 30. If I don't care as much, SPF 15. And if I care enough but I'm too lazy to open the jar of DCT, then I could go for the 18.

That could have been my thought process but it seemed to complicated. I've decided to just go on flavor. Vanilla Mint today or just regular mint? Three more SPF's isn't going to make it better, the minty flavor is. A PDA as a cell phone isn't all that great when you have cell phone in your pocket. A calendar as big as your desk is useless when you have your computer on it. And Nigel, one extra number on your amp isn't going to make you any louder. But Marty DiBergi couldn't get that through to him either.