As I fancy myself something of a clever wordsmith, at least on good days, I always admire a good turn of phrase, a line that perfectly describes the subject at hand or even — bonus! — makes me smile or laugh out loud.

I’ve encountered two such items in today’s web surfing, which I’d like to share with you now.

The first comes from Phil Plait, the Bad Astronomer, who, in talking about yesterday’s news that scientists have successfully tested an immensely powerful petawatt laser, explains that:

…one petawatt is 1000 terawatts; peta is a prefix people will get to know in a year or two once terabyte drives prove too small to store very many illegally downloaded BluRay movies.

That’s a pretty good one, but the comparison that really earned a chuckle came from Boing Boing Gadgets:

[Item X] should cost more per ounce than heroin filtered through the limbic system of Tom Cruise.

Heroin filtered through Tom Cruise’s limbic system? How absurd! How perfect! What kind of twisted, beautiful mind comes up with something like that? I can only doff my hat in wonder and respect…