Lasers, as a sci-fi staple they're up there with aliens, eternal night, robots sent from the future and Lance Henriksen, so it's good news to sci-fi fans to hear that a laser weapon is ever nearer. Hoorah! More weapons to eradicate our fellow man, just what we need in this current climate of fear, blame-mongering, hatred and contempt!

While lasers are something straight out of popular sci-fi, I think the world is edging ever closer to a sci-fi akin to that of Philip K Dick. If there's ever been a paranoid drug fiend, he's your man. He deals with the blurring line between the real and imagined, constantly confusing the reader with multiple realities, dead-ends that look like answers, cruel jokes, non-linear timelines and highly elusive conclusions. His characters are swathed in an eerie despondency, a hopelessness, a feeling of being trapped eternally in a mirror house of confusion and falsehood. That, I think, is closer to the realities we face each day.

But anyway, don't let that grind you down, lasers are cool! Imagine a laser this powerful in one of those laser toys for cats. Here kitty, kitty, here kit- ZIMP! MEOW!! Where'd kitty go? And where'd all this fur come from?

If I hadn't watched a video of two science guys I've never met, performing this experiment and speaking with authoritative voices, I would never have believed it. Because that's the kind of solid proof I need, if I see it on a screen, it must be true.

Who'd've thought something so simple and seemingly innocent would be fraught with such hidden dangers? I've been using sticky tape for years, does that mean I've got radiation poisoning? I'm sure my bones have weakened slightly, only yesterday I was walking up some stairs when my left fibula shattered and I fell over, only to put my hand out to break the fall, when all I broke was my hand, which then crumbled into dust. I'd sticky tape it back together but I'm afraid to...

There is one good thing to come from this, Stan Lee could create a brand new superhero, say one that for all his young life has collected beer mats (let's say his dad's a no good bar fly, adds a certain pathos) to stick into a scrap book and he always used sticky tape...cue frantic panelling showing radiation affecting young Jimmy's cellular structure and turning him into the glutinous Gummy Boy! Kind of like Spider-Man but he shoots sticky tape (double-sided!) from his wrists and can wrap a present in seconds without the finished product looking like a gift-wrapped ground-zero. Amazing, huh?

Right, now let's sell the film rights to Warner and make ourselves some easy millions!