The mind-controlled gaming headset is on it’s way and it promises to read your thoughts, (versus using a manually operated proxy interface). Sound scary? Well it is. The Emotiv EPOC and is a lightweight and sleek neuroheadset unveiled at the Game Developers conference in San Francisco, and will set you back an estimated $299. You can use it to map different thought waves to perform different actions in video games, and it will positively perform according to the player’s mind. Accoring to EPOC Designs:

The Emotiv headset uses a set of sensors to tune into electric signals naturally produced by the brain to detect player thoughts, feelings and expression. It connects wirelessly with all game platforms from consoles to PCs.

It is slated to recognize 30 different emotions, to name several …

Immersion, excitement, meditation, tension and frustration; facial expressions such as smile, laugh, wink, crossed eyes, shock (eyebrows raised), anger (eyebrows furrowed), horizontal eye movement, smirk and grimace (clenched teeth); and cognitive actions such as push, pull, lift, drop and rotate (on six different axis) as well as a completely new category of action based on visualization, the first of which is the ability to make objects disappear.

Beta testing sessions for this puppy will finally be held in March and April of 2008. While I am sure there will be definite issues in detecting the exact degree of what one player is doing - or thinking - I say, forget gaming, I want to be able to control basic computing using this baby as a secondary interface! Imagine, “Oh, this website is lame” I burrow my eyebrows, and the browser is x’ed out. “I’m just not in the mood to listen to “The Final Countdown” right now!”, I sit akimbo and it skips to another favrotie track of mine. And then, just between you and I, I can set it up where every time my boyfriend watches amateur porn online (pervert) it closes out when he winks. Mwahahaha! Evil? Psh, semantics!

*Video of Emtoiv in action after the Jump …

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I have posted about awesome alcohol infused art in the past, but Dutch arteest Marti Guixe has just raised the bar.  I give you, museum exhibition, GAT Fog, which stands for — the Gin and Tonic Fog Party! It uses meteorological technology, typically utilized by farmers to create the installation, to instead, pump gin and tonic into the air! I don’t know if the gin will give me liver cancer, or the tonic a heart block, but I am willing to risk it. Imagine the possibilities with this thing! Just put it in my room, turn it on, and start inviting people over. Mac execs, who neglect to give me a free Mac Air, yep, a half hour in the GAT room - it’d be mine. Tom Cruise, so I can kick him in the hair cut without a fight and toss him into a pint of beer where he will then drown to death - easy as pie!

Thinking about it though, the first time I used the GAT in my basement, something weird happened. I mean I was just chilling out, wasted, and half asleep with my mouth on the nozzle, when out of no where my boyfriend comes in and starts asking me to perform all this ludacris, idiotic tasks like “take the dog out” and “fix some dinner”. And my drunk behind actually went and did them! Of course, I do not know how happy he was when for dinner I made cereal and accidentally mistook bourbon for milk. Whoops. Yeah, no wonder that tasted so horrible. He won’t allow me near the GAT anymore, demon.

As if gamers who are already going ungodly hours without sleep playing Mario Galaxy needed help from their favorite speed demon, there is a new* Super Mario energy drink -”Power Up!” - ready to catapult their asses into sleepless brain damage. Now you can host your gamer parties with these puppies - and vodka. Or stay up long enough to get the princess alone to prove maybe she isn’t cock tease. Ehhhh, unlikely.

The 8.4 oz drink, which proves no sector is safe from Super Mario Bro’s grasp, apparently tastes like “blue-raspberry”. Which is a shame because I was hoping it would follow through with its mushroom advertising on the can. I guess it’s not all bad though, considering the last time I ate a mushroom like that Winston Zeddmore showed up on my doorstep and cajoled me into drinking my weight in bourbon and then driving my ex boyfriends car into a river. Yikes, shouldn’t have let me keep those keys.

(*Yes, this drink was released in past times, but with recent questioning I discovered many people did not know of it’s awesomeness. Now you know!)

Dear Santa,

This is JD Sphinx, Zubazpants.com writer. I am writing you my only Christmas wish, to be taken to Madrid to see the pac-man Christmas tree! I know it sounds like the stupidest creation ever, but listen! It is a fully-animated version of the classic arcade game, rendered across thousands of colored LEDs. Of course when they say “fully animated” they really mean it moves as fast as an inebriated sloth - but I can look past that. You see Santa, despite its shortcomings the pac-man tree really shows me the meaning of the Christmas season - video games! After all, what would be grander than waking up Christmas morn to this sparkling beauty. I’ll gaze at it while sipping from my frothy mug and showing grandma pictures of the 50 hottest video game chicks in PC gamer - “Look grammy, a nipple, can you believe it?” I’d call to the children to come hither from the fire place and admire the tree. Of course after learning it’s not an actual arcade game they can really play, a vicious wii saber fight would ensue.  Little Kip would further damage his patched eye and Aunt Betty’s nativity scene would be demolished in the scuffle, but damn it, that’s what the holidays are all about! I know the tickets to Spain may be costly, but wouldn’t this be easier than selling my wedding ring and massive beanie baby collection for thousands? I mean neither of those things truly mean anything to me, but you know the husband, he’s ugly, he has nothing else. That’s where you come in Santa! So please, one trip to see the pac man Christmas tree.

Sincerely,

JD Sphinx

::Additional horribly shot video of the tree in action after the jump …

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All good things in life should come in permanent and inseparable two’s. Peanut butter and jelly, football and enormous tailgates, me and George Clooney and, of course, art and cocktails. German arteest H.Broecker knows exactly what I mean. A new exhibition in Dresden, Germany featured his piece “Drink Away The Art”. Several flat, plastic containers were mounted onto the wall, which dispensed fruity and colorful cocktails.  Mmm … cocktails. Glasses were placed on the floor, where visitors could snag one, get right and then wander like staggering idiots through the city streets, flashing their privates and blaming “the art, man”. And for those of you who hate art, this little interactive diddy puts a hole in your liquor soaked blanket, sorry. Awesome, awesome invention.

This reminds me of that time in preschool when our art activity of the day was to blow bubbles into heavily pigmented paint water through a straw. I accidentally drank some it - whoops. I was embarrassed of course, and felt like a moron at first, but not as moronic as the middle aged preschool teachers who let their four-year-olds take a straw to PAINT WATER.