It's not fair – I'm being assaulted from all sides with the most amazing mind-controlled gadgets that leave me drooling with desire. For example, I just ran across this Telekinetic Obstacle Course in the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog:

Do you recall that Star Wars Force Trainer that I was waffling on about a few weeks ago in my Cool Beans: May the Force Be With You blog? As you may recall, this includes a headset that measures your brainwaves and wirelessly transmits the results to a base station that includes a ping-pong ball in a tube. You train yourself to use your brainwaves to control the fan driving air through the tube, thereby controlling the height of the ball.

Well let me tell you that this is a lot harder than it looks (yes, of course I bought one – do I look like the sort of man who could resist a temptation like this?). The amazing thing to me is that my wife (who knows as much about technology as I know about synchronized swimming) almost immediately had the ball doing her bidding before she quickly grew bored and wandered off into the sunset. By comparison, I've spent hours slaving away with the beast and am only gradually starting to gain control over the little rascal (the floating ball ... I have no control whatsoever over my wife).

The reason for this Cool Beans blog is that Dean (who does mysterious things in the office next to mine) just pointed me at the Telekinetic Obstacle Course in the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog.

Arrggghhh. This also looks to be very, very cool. In addition to the headband that picks up your brainwaves and the main base station, you get a collection of "parts" that you can use to construct your own obstacle course. This means you can create hundreds of different variations with different levels of difficulty.

There's also a video on the Hammacher Schlemmer page, although – interestingly enough – the guy who is performing the demonstration doesn’t actually tackle the course. Instead, he dons the headband and makes the ball go up and down (I could do that), but when it comes to actually doing something useful he waves his arms around and waffles until the end of the video ... all of which tells us that this isn’t as easy as they would like us to believe.

But it does look jolly cool. This would make a fantastic game for my son's 15^th Birthday party (to be held in around 10 days time as I pen these words) to keep all of his school chums amused. The only thing that's saved me from myself is that – due to overwhelming demand – Hammacher Schlemmer say that they can't ship these toys until February 2010. On the other hand they do have the Jedi Mind Control Trainer immediately available for $99.95 (which is less than I paid for mine ... mutter mutter, grumble grumble).