Poor Impulse Control.

Similar to the character Raven in the book "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson, (it's a fantastic book and you should go read it now instead of this post) I am also getting a phrase tattooed on my forehead. Unlike Raven's, my tattoo will be voluntary, and I'll use small letters because I don't have a giant, slab-like forehead. It will say "Attention to detail is limited at best."

Why? Because that had to be my favorite line in my finally-posted blog review over at humor-blogs.com.

Reading parts of this review was like being in first grade all over again.

The report card criticisms were always the same. Johnny doesn't pay attention. Johnny doesn't apply himself. Johnny is always talking to his neighbor. Johnny won't stop touching his crotch. Well, that last one was actually from Miss Welch, my high school French teacher, but you get the idea. Check it out if you get the chance. Most of the comments were great, and Diesel does a fantastic job with the site. Every blog that gets reviewed always seems to get some unfavorable comments. I am pretty sure that these guys are on permanent retainer over there.

In other news, under the guise of "Well, I have to open it to put the batteries in," I played with this for a half hour yesterday. (Don't worry, that link is safe for work. Or is it? You take your chances on this here blog. )

If you are a geek like me, and had a microscope when you were a kid, this thing is pretty amazing. It's supposed to be a gift for my nephew, but I may have to keep it. It would be either really fun or a complete disaster to take it to a party. I haven't decided which yet. I supposed it would depend upon how much everyone had to drink before you broke it out, and how many nerds were in attendance.

After I put the batteries in, I sat down on the floor in front of the television and just swept my hand across the hardwood a few times to gather a little bit of detritus. I discovered some interesting things at 200X magnification. For one thing, I discovered we need to clean the floor way more often. Aside from that, it's an impressive piece of technology for $40. What did I see? Well, there was something that looked like a giant slab of freshly cut fish that turned out to be a tiny section of Christmas tree needle. Something else that was a bright fluorescent blue-green looked be a sand crystal or something that happened to glow in the particular wavelength of the LED light source.

If you get one of these, just don't look too closely at your own skin. It's shiny and wrinkled and has giant telephone poles poking out of it -- and seriously, you won't want to be in it any more.

And that was just from looking at my arm.

ps - I'm currently working on scanning some of my amazing childhood artwork, so stay tuned for that. Let's just say I was not a talented young man.