It's like when your antacid tablet gives you indigestion

We - and by that, I mean all of us - often spend money unnecessarily and frivolously. For instance, you don't really need a car that can reach speeds over 130 mph to take Sis and Bud to their church youth group meeting, and no one can tell the difference between the high-priced beer, wine and whisky, and the cheap stuff that I serve guests prefer.

So it's not only wasteful, but also sometimes harmful, to spend more than you need on something.  Here's a case in point: something called EOS lip balm - which is endorsed by worldwide lip experts Kim Kardashian, Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears - is being sued by some former users.

Because...it made some peoples' lips break out in a painful rash (so they say...)

According to the story, this lip balm comes in little tiny packages with tasty fragrance added - such delightful aromas as vanilla mint, strawberry sorbet and summer fruit.

The little packages will cost you $3.29 each.

Meanwhile, if you watched the Today show on Sunday, before the playoff football game that was played in temperatures below 0°F, you saw meteorologist Dylan Dreyer share the tip - to protect your exposed flesh in that sort of weather, smear Vaseline all over your mug.  And sure enough, later that day, Seattle coach Pete Carroll, deprived of the chance to show his magnificent head of hair because he had to wear a hat, clearly had his face protected by a thick layer of petroleum jelly.

In the early days of American oil exploration, people found quite by accident that the gooey residuey that formed on the shaft of an oil pump healed cuts and kept workers' hands smooth and tender. Robert Augustus Chesebrough, a British chemist, saw this and saw his fortune right in the palm of his hands, as it were. He marketed the stuff as Vaseline, and today, people who find their lips inflamed, allegedly by this lip balm, will need to buy some to put on their mugs.

It would be better for those who spend $3.29 for little pods of EOS lip balm to go to Dollarville and get a hefty tub of off-brand PJ for a buck and daub that on their kissers.  

Having part of your body injured by something that is supposed to help it would be like cutting yourself while opening a BandAid, or getting a headache from trying to open an aspirin bottle.  Or having your fire extinguisher go up in flame.

Or needing lip balm because your lip balm bothered your lips.