It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

Now that black Friday is over with, it's time to actually put thought into the gifts you're buying for the holidays – namely the ones for yourself. Go ahead and buy a nice, big present since everything is on sale. I don't know about you, but everything I bought on black Friday was for myself, as I, too, am a poor college student. Anyway, here are a couple gift ideas inspired by recent technology.

For those of you hooked on gaming, you no longer have to pretend to shoot your enemy... or your friends for that matter. A new vest, which can be hooked up to consoles from the PC to the Nintendo Wii, will actually cause pain in its wearer, at least according to Popular Mechanics. For you non-gamers, the Wii is a gaming console that has a wireless remote instead of a typical controller and is one of the most sought-after systems today. Fortunately for vest wearers, the impact they feel will be nowhere near as intense as if they actually got kneed in the abs or shot in the torso. The "pain" is generated by eight air pressure cells within the vest which react to the action on the television or computer screen.

If you do not want to invest in the vest – since it is $189 plus shipping – you could always push your opponent into a coffee table and blame it on the Wii*. Really, Wii-related injuries are not unheard of; take a look at the Web site Wii Have A Problem and see all the different ways people have been hurting themselves with this system.

Another gift you could give yourself is a tattoo – without the commitment of having it forever. Ink company Freedom-2 has developed a tattoo ink that can be removed from the skin with only one laser treatment, as opposed to the six or seven that it takes with the standard tattoo ink.

This new ink uses a microencapsulation method that will hold the ink in place under the skin. However, when gone over with a laser, the ink disperses and is absorbed by the body.

And in the ever-humorous words of Discover Magazine, these tattoos "work like scratch 'n' sniff," in that a chemical is held together in a little ball when left alone but disperses when agitated.

So go ahead: get your girlfriend's name on your arm or that tribal sun you know you'll regret tomorrow.** I don't recommend that you actually scratch and sniff it, though, especially when it's new – that could make the ink blotchy, and it probably won't smell like strawberries.

*Please, don't really do this, since I don't want to be held responsible for your moronic actions. Frankly, I don't even want to be responsible for my own moronic actions, but I have no one to blame but myself.

**See above.