TV today fucking blows. Of course there are shows I love, but for the most part everything I see totally fucking sucks. I get more enjoyment out of watching infomercials on dog food than sitting through any of the 45 incarnations of the CSI franchise. Honestly, how many times do I have to watch a cool/sexy scientist poke corpses with a pen while listening to Paul Oakenfold tracks? Enough is enough.

When ever I come home after a hard day working for the man and turn on the telescreen, all I want to see if some good old fashioned entertainment. Instead I am blinded and sedated by a blur of psychic-cop investigation hybrid shows, reality TV fiascos where blonde human cliches eat African spiders the size of their big fake breasts, or blood filled new feeds 24 hours a day straight from the front lines of the fucking apocalypse. So I ask you all: Where has all the fun gone?

Behold Ark II. Substantial proof that 70's entertainment kicked major ass. (Apparently VH1 forgot to mention this during their exhaustive 16 hour mega tribute specials.)

I guess I was too busy eating paint chips and jumping out windows as a kid to notice the awesomeness of this show. I think if you paid a team of Stephen Hawkings a billion dollars and gave them a keg of Ritalin to keep them sharp they would be hard pressed to come up with an idea for a show as fucking fantastic as this. Here is a description of the show from the 70's:

"ARK II: Live action futuristic drama about a roving scientific team in the 25th century looking for lost civilizations in a souped-up mini-van after a great disaster has ravaged the Earth. Terry Lester as Noah, Jose Flores as Samuel, Jean Marie Hon as Ruth, along with Adam, the talking chimp."

That was back when you couldn't CGI true imagination. (And when monkeys were giving the starring roles they deserve.) For more on the world of Ark II click here. And for even more on the amazing world of 70's TV, go here.

(PS: Adam, you have the most amazing smile. You make all your costars look like rejects from "Welcome Back, Kotter". You are a bright shining star. Never forget that.)

A completely blind British man has been shown to possess an apparent "sixth sense" which lets him recognise emotions on people's faces, according to British scientists. The researchers say the 52-year-old was able to react to pictures of human faces showing emotions such as anger, happiness or fear.

The man, identified only as 'patient X', has suffered two strokes which damaged the brain areas that process visual signals, leaving him completely blind. But his eyes and optic nerves are intact and brain scans show that he appears to somehow use a part of the brain not usually used for sight to process visual signals linked to some emotions.

When researchers from the University of Wales showed the man images of shapes such as circles and squares, he could only guess what they were, and had a similar lack of success determining the gender of emotionless male and female faces. But when presented with angry or happy human faces, his accuracy improved to 59 per cent, significantly better than what would be expected by random chance according to the researchers. He achieved similar results for distinguishing between sad and happy or fearful and happy faces.

However, he was unable to tell apart images of animals which appeared either threatening or non-threatening. Brain scans showed that when the man looked at faces expressing emotion, it activated a part of his brain called the right amygdala, which is known to respond to non-verbal emotional signs. The findings, published in journal Nature Neuroscience, suggested the man was able to process information gathered by his eyes in a different part of the brain from the visual centre.

Dr Alan Pegna, who led the study, said: "This discovery is ... interesting for behavioural scientists as the right amygdala has been associated with subliminal processing of emotional stimuli in clinically healthy individuals. "What patient X has assisted us in establishing is that this area undoubtedly processes visual facial signals connected with all types of emotional facial expressions."

Pretty amazing, huh?

This is so wrong, but I just had to share. Do you think this "technique" actually works?

"Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere." -Carl Sagan

Here you can dare to dream. Send a message into the far reaches of outer space for free. On Keo.org , you can leave a message that will be placed in a satellite scheduled to be shot into space in 2006. The satellite is slated to return to Earth in 50 thousand years, with your message for future people to read! Even if this turns out to be a bogus scheme to steal people's email addresses, what a wicked idea. Instead of getting all Shatner in my message, I decided to leave a rather non poignant one. here's mine:

Dear future Earth,

I really hope this message is being read by humans and not a race of killer robots. If for some strange reason this message happens to get noticed, I hope it can be delivered to one of my distant relatives. They'll probably be happy and thrilled to know that 50 thousand years ago one of their "noble ancestors" was a complete and total jackass. And if those ancestors of mine happen to be rich and powerful, I ask that a giant golden statue of me be erected in front of their space mansion. With a helper monkey.

yours truly, Recon

Check it out here! So cool..

Happy Holidays, everyone. Unlike our good friend King Diamond pictured here, I definitely do want presents for christmas. This year, I have decided to once again take the mark of the beast and get myself an ipod. I had the original ipod, but once the headphone jack broke I vowed never to buy one again. I tried so hard to resist the temptation of getting one, but riding the train everyday with the white earbud cult staring at me from every direction, I can't help but thinking they're all secretly judging me. "He must be too poor to join our brotherhood" they seem to say with their callous stares. I work in music, so somehow I have managed to fool myself into thinking I need one. All I know is I'm not going to use the white headphones. I will hide my ipod. It will be my secret ipod. I don't want other members of the cult to think I've joined their godless ministry. Tonight I am going to play poker at Yeung's house in Hoboken, and the only reason I'm sharing this is because I shared the last 2 times I played and won both times. Call it superstition. Wish me luck, I'm off to get that scrilla!

According to the strange sites I've been seeing lately, North Korea is teeming with genius super children. Whatever Kim Jong Il is doing to these little kids, it seems to be working. (When you see them play xylophone like Tito Puente on crystal meth, you'll know what I'm talking about.) Watch them play their communist instruments with absolute robotic perfection, all the while smiling as if their life depends on it. Fascinating. I shudder to think of the training regiment they must go through for them to be able to play that well..But I guess anything beats working in the ice mines..http://robpongi.com/pages/com...

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;   &n bsp;    McEvil.

Hello all..Wednesday has come and gone and we are one day closer to the weekend. Congratulations to those of you who have made it through Monday and Tuesday. Doctor Nanda sent me this link today, and I just had to share. It's a site called Grouphug, and it's basically an anonymous confession site. There are currently 160,587 confessions on the site, ranging from gross, to scary, to hillarious, to just plain strange. After going through these for a while, I realize how amazing it is to read other people's secrets. It's like being able to go through someone's diary without all the guilt. Here are some of my favorites I found so far:

"When i was 19 i saw a coke can move by itself on a table i've been freaked out ever since."

"I was drunk at a bar and thought someone stole my jacket... so I stole someone else's ... when I woke up in the morning I realized I never wore my jacket and was now a thief..."

And here's my favorite so far:

"Four years ago I took too much LSD and had to move to the country without telling anyone in order to get my head together. I finally regained a sense of perspective while at the same time becoming a well known alcoholic (small town). I have since returned to the city and want/NEED to take some more E and LSD but am worried that this time it will shoot me through forever. If it does I would not be so bothered but cannot help feeling that I will become spiteful because of being a negative by-product of the system rather than rebelling from it fully. I will never come to a logical conclusion about chemical drugs. I love my mother. I do not know why I own a computer. "

Fucking Brilliant! That last sentence is pure genius. If he didn't own a computer, we would never have been able to read that awesome confession! Anyway, check the site out here : http://grouphug.us/ and be sure to post if you find some good ones!!

    & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;         & nbsp;   &n bsp;   &nb sp;   &nbs p;     ;   Dear Japan: I love you.