What is the Black Helix? The Black Helix is not, regrettably, anything to do with those old pencil cases that looked like massive calculators, but rather, a mindbending game that switches between the virtual world and real life. Imagine if a pixel could punch you in the face. That.

So, this new Alternate Reality/Transmedia game is running through March 2011 and wants to take things a step further, presumably ending up with some Tron-style bloodsport which sucks you through the screen.

There’s already over a thousand players who are engaged in this interactive game, which include live events, phone calls, parcels in the post, real world tasks and a final role playing event. It sounds mental doesn’t it?

Unlike most ARGs players of Black Helix will become part of an as-yet unwritten story with the game itself responding to the players and the alias names with information, research and sub plots developing over the game, eventually all ending up in a unique book.

If this sounds like the kind of mental, brilliant, life-stealing fun for you, then you can join the game at any point over at theblackhelix.com. There’s videos, photos and clues that have been unearthed so far for your perusal.

Of course, there’s a social networking element to it as well over at facebook.com/theblackhelix and twitter twitter.com/blackhelix

The plot revolves around the kidnapping of the kidnapping of 27 year old PHD science student Jess. The latest story development is that on the 10th March, the character Zero Tolerance revealed himself, seeking support for a common cause to reveal the truth about Pharmucom and Jessica Harrington’s kidnapping with a video.

Players within the game rushed to join the cause at http://www.toleratenothing.org and help Zero Tolerance by uploading all their research to his site. 3 Days later, Zero Tolerance had infiltrated a secret drop at a Dock in Belfast, as a security camera engineer.

Seriously. Look

This Zero Tolerance was able to capture one man from the scene and keep him alive. If you want find out more about what was going on that night, he is being held at a secret location to be interrogated. To make sure that Zero Tolerance gets the right information he called out to the in game players for questions which would help uncover the mystery.

The LIVE interrogation is taking place on the 15th March at 9.30pm (GMT London) and the questions have been crowd sourced from the players in the game.

If you sign-up to this, you may as well quit your job now. This looks like a life-ruiner worse than Football Manager.

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In May, Jay Leno was due to retire from TV and spend his days droning witlessly about cars and getting chin massages.

But that was never actually going to be the case. There’s such a dearth of middle-aged male millionaires who aren’t as funny as they think they are on TV right now that Jay Leno was never going to stay retired for long.

And now we know what Jay Leno’s next show will be – it’s his old show, basically – on the same network, in the same studio and broadcast 90 minutes earlier so even more people can get contaminated by watch it.

It’s fair to say that there are two types of people in the world – the type that finds Jay Leno funny and the type that’s medically allowed to operate heavy machinery.

However, you can’t deny Jay Leno’s popularity – whether it’s because he’s been the voice that lulls America to sleep with slightly rubbish jokes and interviews so bland that they may as well be conducted by a knitted frog in a hat for 15 years, or whether it’s because people love watching middle-aged men make blusteringly inappropriate gay jokes to minor actors, Jay Leno is inexplicably beloved by millions of weirdos.

And that causes a problem for NBC. Years ago Jay Leno decided that he was going to retire from The Tonight Show in 2009, so NBC quickly moved in and made sure that they signed up Conan O’Brien to take his place. But then as 2009 got closer, Jay Leno got ants in his pants and decided that maybe he wanted to stay, but he couldn’t stay, and all the other TV networks were like “Hey, come join us!” and Jay Leno started spinning around in a daze and took out six storefront windows with his giant chin because he was so disorientated. Figuratively.

But now the problem has finally been solved. Jay Leno has announced his new show, and it’ll come as good news to anyone who liked his old show. Because, well, it is his old show. But here’s the thing – it’s going to be broadcast at 10pm instead of 11:35pm. The New York Times reports:

The new show, which will begin next fall, is expected to be set in Mr. Leno’s longtime studio in Burbank, Calif. Mr. Leno is expected to retain many of the most popular elements of his “Tonight Show,” including his monologue and bits like “Headlines” and “Jay Walking.” One “Tonight Show” staff member said the new program would not be a variety show.

Theoretically this could be a winner for NBC. Jay Leno is a much-loved performer who’ll be exposed to an earlier timeslot – and therefore a much bigger audience – with his new show. This could mean he’d get the jump on all the big-name guests, leaving the late-night talkshows to blunder through interviews with reality TV stars and authors of books about amusing rock formations.

There are downsides to this gamble too, though – by putting his show on at 10pm five times a week, Jay Leno’s competition stops being David Letterman and starts being CSI and Without A Trace and other wildly popular police dramas that he’ll have trouble keeping up with.

Plus, putting Jay Leno on at 10pm means that NBC is giving over three hours of every day to three different versions of the exact same formula. Not only is 15 hours a week of chat massive overkill, but it’s going to make people resent poor Jimmy Fallon more than they already do, if that’s even possible.

Finally, though – and this is the biggest downside of all – how long will it be before America discovers that it only found Jay Leno funny when it was drowsy and on the verge of sleep? We’re going to hazard a guess here – it’ll be about 12 seconds.

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