This has nothing to do with The Simpsons Movie.

I insist that all my game controllers for one console be different colors. It makes it easier to tell them apart. You can argue that numbered lights on current-generation game controllers make this no longer necessary, but it is still easier to differentiate multiple, otherwise identical-looking objects by color than by which one (or two) of four little lights is lit up.

As a PlayStation 3 owner, this is a problem. The Sixaxis is currently available only in a slightly translucent midnight gray. Surely it will be available in other colors eventually, but that does not help me now. Either I buy multiple, identical-looking Sixaxises (Sixaxes?), or I limit myself to single-player--offline anyway--games and game modes.

Or so I thought.

Via Uncrate, a Web site that covers cool men's products, I have discovered ColorWare: a car-quality painting service for game consoles, game controllers, iPods, Zunes and select computers.

For $75 I can buy a PlayStation 3 Sixaxis controller in one of 28 colors. That's $25 more than suggested retail price of a Sixaxis, but these things are used for years and years. Spending an extra $25 per controller in 2007 is not going to bother me in 2012.

ColorWare also allows people to send in their already-purchased Sixaxis controllers to be painted for $25 each.

Single-color problem solved, but now I am overwhelmed with color choices.

Playing with the color picker on ColorWare's Web site, I decide that the Sixaxis looks best in Caution (yellow). I am about to order a Caution-painted Sixaxis until I realize that as much as I like yellow, buying a game controller in that color is not a good idea.

Yellow is the current trendy color. Currently I like it more than all other colors, but come August, when yellow is no longer trendy, I (and everyone else in the world) will hate yellow. If I am to use something for years and years, I have to like the way it looks for years and years.

Perhaps Smoke (white) is the best choice for my second Sixaxis. Midnight gray is almost black, and having two game controllers in almost opposite colors would be a nice contrast. That and white will never look completely awful.

Before I order, I decide that a Sixaxis in any color is a waste of money. Vibration, not in the Sixaxis, is likely to be in future PlayStation 3 controllers. I think that vibration is a gimmick, but I would rather have it than not have it.

I'll use my PS2 to PS3 Adapter Controller Dongles with my PlayStation 2 Cordless Action Controllers until then and pray that a must-own multiplayer game with required tilty-ing does not come out before the Sixaxishock.

Can someone explain how color trends work? No one sets them. They just happen.