IKEA Monkey

God damn, that’s a smile. Here’s another.

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This may be peak Yanni. He of the soul patch, mustache, and synthesizers has announced a new album called Sensuous Chill, to be released on January 29. 

Sensuous Chill. The name says it all, doesn’t it? There’s gonna be some harp. There’s gonna be some sax. There’s gonna be some alarmingly progressive dance beats thrown over the zipping-bee shrill of an army of violins. There’s gonna be vibes galore.

It’s easy to imagine Sensuous Chill killing in a bunch of different environs, too, right? Maybe like the Pyramids? Hopefully the Pyramids, because it would be embarrassing if it didn’t kill when Yanni performs it as part of an upcoming PBS special, called Yanni: The Dream Concert – Live from The Great Pyramids of Egypt. Yanni’s motivation for bringing Sensuous Chill to the Great Pyramids? Uh, pyramids are sexy, obviously. Yanni says, “I wanted to create a sensuous melodious and sexy environment for the listener; and I wanted it to last a long time!” Yes, Yanni. Sensuous Chill should last as long as one needs to be sensuously chilled.

Yanni is also going on tour, should the PBS special not be enough. Below you’ll find a full list of all the places you can take your lover to chill sensuously in public.

Popeyes' Spice Packed Wings feature fried chicken wings tossed in a dry seasoning blend.

I paid $3.99 for an order of six wings which also came with Spicy Pepper Ranch for dipping.

The breading on the wings were super crunchy and pretty thick. They were fairly dry rather than greasy. Inside, the meat was juicy but there wasn't much to go around as far as chicken wings go.

The dry seasoning offered a smokiness with a good amount of heat and hints of garlic, onion, and salt. Rather than the wings being tossed in seasoning, it seemed instead like the seasoning was tossed onto the wings. Which is to say, the wings were covered in seasoning on one side and were mostly bare on the other side. The bites with the seasoning were intensely flavorful but also drying and too salty.

The Spicy Pepper Ranch offered the typical tang, cream, and herbiness of ranch dressing but also added a solid kick of heat and a varied bell pepper-like end note. I liked it but would better appreciate the flavor with plain wings or tenders rather than well-seasoned ones.

Overall, Popeyes' Spice Packed Wings were pretty good, especially if you like a lot of crunchy breading on your fried chicken. The seasoning was tasty but could be distributed a lot better. They also make me want to try tossing various instant noodle seasonings on plain fried chicken.

This evening, denizens of the New York village by the name of Whitesboro will vote whether to replace its current seal with a new one, because the current one shows a caricature of a white dude strangling an offensive caricature of a Native American, complete with feather and crimson skin. Gosh, what to do!

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   “No. STOP. I do not HOLA LOVERS while I am hydrating. It’s in my contract.” Read More ...

A few years ago, we brought you a story about a pet store thief removing two puppies from a pet store by shoving them down his pants. Last week in Portland, OR, a pet store’s surveillance cameras caught a man on camera who used this method to conceal a pricey python and walk out of the store unnoticed.

The store’s owner checked camera footage after an employee noticed that the python was missing, and eventually they spotted the alleged thief picking up the snake… and slipping it down his pants. The creature was a black pastel ball python that the shop sells for $200.

The video shows the man casually walking around the store and then out the door, trying to act like a person who does not have a python stuffed down his pants.

“He’s lucky it wasn’t feeding day,” observed the owner. “Feeding days are on Mondays. And they’re very hungry.” Pythons, as you may recall, suffocate their prey by squeezing them, and your pants probably isn’t an ideal place to keep one of them.

Police : Pet Store Thief Put Snake Down Pants [FOX 29]

Saturday's $900 million jackpot was the biggest ever.

A dog whose owner had boarded them into a makeshift doghouse. All photos by the author

The first thing you see when you arrive at PETA headquarters in Norfolk, VA, is the line of people snaking around a row of buses, reassuring the anxious dogs and cats peering out from inside their plastic carriers. The humans wills return at the end of the day to retrieve their pets from PETA's veterinarians, who regularly take their buses to rural and low income areas across southeastern Virginia. The mobile clinics are one aspect of the Community Animal Project (CAP), a local outreach program that PETA has overseen since 1998 to prevent animal abuse in their own backyard.

Despite being an organization known for attention grabbing stunts like suing for a monkey's right to own its selfies or trying to remove what little clothes supermodels have left, PETA gets gets over 50 calls a week from people in a roughly 200 mile radius around Norfolk who need help with their animals, whether it be free food, houses, or medical care. One of the shittier aspects of their job is the identification and taking in of sick, injured, or abused animals that need to be euthanized—another low-cost service PETA offers the region at its headquarters. However, some critics claim that PETA's high euthanasia rates far exceed those of other shelters because of lax euthanasia protocols, while PETA attests theirs is a shelter of last resort that provides animals a dignified freedom from an otherwise miserable existence.

I rode along with Daphna Nachminovitch, Senior Vice President of Cruelty Investigations for PETA, and Kat Ferguson and Jes Cochran, two longtime CAP agents, on one of their daily excursions into the region late last year. Our destination was Northampton County, North Carolina, a community of about 20,000 people, a quarter of whom live under the poverty line.

One of the dogs PETA hoped to spay/neuter

Our first stop was at the house of some people who had requested a couple of dog houses. In exchange, PETA was hoping they could convince the owner to let them spay and neuter some of his dogs. According to the agents, this—offering much-needed supplies in exchange for allowing them to perform services that will serve the greater good—is a pretty common and successful tactic.

The owner, who the agents explained had previously resisted getting his dogs neutered because "it might make them gay," had four pit bulls chained up in his backyard. Each one was chained to plastic water jugs that had been repurposed as dog houses, arranged around the yard so none of the dogs could interact with each other. Frantic with excitement, they stood on their hind legs and strained against their chains, shining noses perked at our approach. While Daphna, Kat, and the owner discussed what they intended for the dogs, I made my way past piles of dog shit until I got to the skinniest pup. I let him sniff my hand, his breath gasping against the thick collar as I shooed him away from eating the partially burnt trash littering the lawn and slipped him a handful of the treats the agents had just given me.

After some deliberation, the owner agreed to let PETA take two of the dogs to be spayed and neutered, so we shoved aside the house-cubes and dragged new plywood houses from the van, each one spray painted with the number for PETA's hotline. As we began to leave, the owner mentioned hearing some dogs nearby barking for a couple of weeks, and he thought they might be near the recently abandoned trailer across the road.

Two chained dogs

Sure enough, we were greeted by a pair of dogs chained up behind the trailer, complete with empty bowls and buckets of water filled with leaves and bright green algae. One glowered at us from the shadow of its house, the other whimpered desperately to be petted. Both were surrounded by worn, asymmetrical halos of dirt in the grass that outlined their chain's circumference. After filling the food bowls and replacing the dogs' water, Daphna and the agents ran the trailer's address through their system and found they already had a case file for the dogs (each stop the agents make is written up and filed away for future use). They got in touch with the owner, who quickly informed them the dogs were fine, his daughter came out once or twice a week to feed them, and he had no interest in surrendering them. This total refusal of help, the agents told me, is how these interactions often end.

The next clients on the list were a mother and daughter who owned several chihuahuas and were battling a flea infestation. Cotton fields lined the road leading to their house, and shreds of loose fiber lay in the grass like dirty snow. When we arrived, an older lady emerged from the front door, gave the agents one look, and burst into tears. "I prayed the Lord would send y'all today!" she cried, hugging all of us. The agents caught up with the woman, who had been in and out of the hospital recently, when suddenly the front door slammed open and her daughter burst out. In a deep Southern accent, her daughter asked us to come out back and figure out why their dog couldn't put on weight.

A half-starved Black Lab named Jazz waited for us on a patch of hard dirt and thick roots, dragging its heavy chain back and forth. As I petted him and felt the ribs jutting from his thin body, the woman insisted she fed the dog every day, except when it was raining, because she couldn't go out in the rain on account of her bronchitis. I thought about how, at that point, it'd been raining heavily in North Carolina for a couple of weeks.

Jazz, suffering from heartworms

As Jazz ate treat after treat, the woman continued to go on about how she couldn't understand why the dog was so hungry. Jazz wheezed and coughed a little underneath my hands, which I learned later is a sign of heart worms. Daphna told her that Jazz was probably infected with parasites that were preventing him from absorbing the nutrients in his food. The woman listened while standing just beyond the reach of Jazz's paws, refusing to touch or acknowledge the dog in any way. "Don't you like to play with him?" Daphna asked the woman. She said she didn't because she didn't like to get hair on herself.

Daphna explained that if they treated the worms and he came back after treatment, he might end up getting parasites again from his environment, and that if he did have heart worms, he could need long, expensive treatment. The young woman agreed to let PETA take the dog for testing and, if it did end up being heart worms, then they could keep Jazz (spoiler alert: Jazz's story has a happy ending). We packed him up and rejoined Kat and Jes, who'd dealt with the flea infestation as best they could, and were ready for our next stop, a trailer park.

On our way there, I brought up one of the more unfortunate incidents in CAP's long history. Last fall, CAP's services were requested by the owner of Dreamland 2 Mobile Home Park, a trailer park in Accomack County, Virginia, due to the large number of stray and feral dogs that roamed the park and the surrounding area, scaring homeowners and attacking pets and livestock. Two CAP agents were sent to the trailer park to go door to door to find out which dogs were pets and which dogs were strays. During a subsequent visit, they rounded up the stray animals and accidentally mistook a family's uncollared pet Chihuahua, Maya, for a stray Chihuahua they'd been authorized to capture.

That same day, against normal protocols, those animals were euthanized, Maya included. When the organization realized they'd made a mistake, Daphna was the one who drove out to Maya's owner's home and delivered the tragic news in person. "There is no excuse for what happened, it just shouldn't have occurred," she said. "No one was more upset about the fact that this happened than us. It does not represent who we are and what we do, and our opponents are frankly thrilled that it happened, to them it's a gift from heaven."

The Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF), a non profit organization run by former lobbyist Richard Berman, did appear to be thrilled. They capitalized on the incident through their website, PETA Kills Animals, which reads like a Breitbart-ian doublethink hit job, full of dramatic zooms on sad animal faces, harsh red and black fonts, and menacing voiceovers, arguing that PETA's mission is, well, to kill animals (never mind the fact that the CCF operates on behalf of such animal-killing organizations as Tyson Chicken and Outback Steakhouse). Since 2005, the website has been releasing full page ads, videos, and testimonies in media outlets all across the country, including this almost unbelievable one defending Michael Vick. I reached out to the CCF for a statement about PETA, but hadn't gotten a response by publication.

Berman's the kind of guy who enjoys being described as "a real life Dr. Evil." He's bought billboards in Times Square to protest the Humane Society of the United States' efforts to better living conditions for farm animals. He's helped Smithfield Foods, Inc. bust unions in nearby Tar Heel, NC (he once told a group of potential investors, "I get up every morning and I try to figure out how to screw with the labor unions."). Berman runs Berman and Company, a D.C.-based management firm that operates a string of interlocking nonprofits, including the CCF, that act as advocates for Berman's corporate clients under the guise of protecting consumer freedom, an "endless war" that, he told potential investors, "you can either win ugly or lose pretty."

"He's a real scumbag," says Rob Blizzard, executive director of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals' Norfolk branch. "My guess is that to the average person, if you see just those ads or read about some of those claims, they can really mislead you."

The scene at the trailer park

The trailer park was a frequent stop on PETA's trips through the area, and when we got out of the van, I could hear dogs barking everywhere, the sound seemed to go for miles. The PETA agents were checking up on a man, Steve, who had surrendered several dogs over the last couple years. He had four skinny pit bulls chained up behind his trailer, all of them panting and thrilled for some attention, and the agents were here to give Steve some bags of dog food and to find out what he was actually feeding them, since the dogs he'd relinquished had always been malnourished.

As the agents chatted and rubbed ointment onto the dog's raw, flea-bitten ears, Steve, with little prompting, told us he fed the dogs live chickens. He claimed it was the only thing they would eat. The agents laughed in shock, and while Daphna tried to convince him that kibble might be a better idea, Kat and I wandered over to the woodsier side of the park where Steve indicated he had chained up a few more dogs.

A heavy, rotting smell greeted us. The smell of organs and blood and death. I immediately started looking for a dead body, but there was nothing but a young pit bull tied to a tree and an unchained female that might have been its mother. Small white feathers turned in the breeze, forming cloudy piles, and I realized we were sitting in the aftermath of a feeding. Steve later told us that if we'd been here an hour and a half ago, we would have gotten to see the dogs eat.

One of the doghouses PETA offers dog owners in rural areas

After helping Steve as much as they could, the agents walked through the trailers, talking to people in their yards or front porches about their dogs. One concerned man said his dog Max had been hit by a car a few days earlier, and he relinquished the limping pet to PETA for an overnight checkup in Norfolk, with the promise that they'd have him back by the time his son got out of school the next day. A baby waddled across the lawn, clutching a newborn Chihuahua like a rag doll, its bulging eyes squished into the crook of the baby's arm. Uncollared dogs ran to and fro. The agents, already late for their next stop, handed out leashes and food and treats, packed up Max, and got back on the road.

The last stops were funhouse mirror images of the first. Starving dogs chained to decrepit houses surrounded by patches of dirt. A pit bull so ravaged by mange his skin glowed hot pink. A dog whose stomach had so many fleas you could see them flow across its skin like a thin black liquid. A litter of puppies we weren't allowed to pet because the dogs chained near them would attack us. A man who'd built a second doghouse around an old PETA shelter and neglected to add doors, instead nailing down boards to trap his puppy into the cramped, shit-ridden ad hoc enclosure to keep it from wrestling with its brother.

The overwhelmingly socially conservative people in this region might not agree politically with what PETA stands for, but they're rarely in a position to refuse free dog houses, food, and medical procedures that get handed out when PETA comes through, which is exactly what people like Richard Berman and his corporate clients are afraid of. They're scared that PETA might be able to convince people that animals are more than just things to possess, and from there the slippery slope of animal rights would begin to glimmer on the horizon, undoing a generation's worth of work to hide the horrors of industrial food production from consumers.

Our final stop was in Virginia to see a dog whom Daphna had been visiting for years, a sweet little terrier mix named Marley whose owner, Mr Outlaw, was an old man who kept Marley chained in the backyard year round. Daphna had thought there was a chance he'd relinquish Marley to them so he could have a new, freer existence, but as she asked him how he'd been and started to lean on his conscience, the man gently fended her off, insisting his granddaughter liked to play with the dog when she came around, and made a joke about how the agents had taken away "his dog's loving" when they'd neutered Marley on a previous visit. Despite several more attempts to nudge him, he stood his ground.

As dusk fell, we filled Marley's house with fresh straw and Mr. Outlaw mentioned he would be out of food by the end of the week. The agents offered him several cans of food, and their last big bag of dry kibble, which he accepted humbly. After making the man promise to call them if he ever wanted to get rid of Marley, the agents packed up for the final time, and we got back on the road to Norfolk, where the agents would unload the dogs they'd picked up over the course of the day, walk them, set them up for the night in PETA headquarters, and get ready to do it all over again the next morning.

Follow Nolan on Twitter.

Panera Bread's 2016 Winter Menu includes a new addition to their line of broth bowls: the Thai Garden Chicken Wonton Broth Bowl.



The bowl includes ginger-chicken wontons, fresh broccoli, spinach, napa cabbage blend, roasted mushroom and onion blend, and Thai chili vinaigrette with cilantro and sesame seeds in their hen broth.

Nutritional Info - Panera Bread Thai Garden Chicken Wonton Broth Bowl
Calories - 290 (from Fat - 50)
Fat - 6g (Saturated Fat - 1.5g)
Sodium - 1320mg
Carbs - 37g (Sugar - 6g)
Protein - 23g

Here's what else is new at Panera this winter:

- New Roasted Turkey & Caramelized Kale Panini - Roasted turkey raised without antibiotics, caramelized kale blend, and fresh mozzarella, grilled on fresh-baked black pepper focaccia.

Nutritional Info - Panera Bread Roasted Turkey & Caramelized Kale Panini
Calories - 570 (from Fat - 190)
Fat - 21g (Saturated Fat - 6g)
Sodium - 1250mg
Carbs - 56g (Sugar - 2g)
Protein - 27g

- New Steak & Arugula Sandwich - Seared steak, arugula, vine-ripened tomatoes, pickled onions, garlic and herb cream cheese spread, and mustard horseradish sauce on sourdough.

Nutritional Info - Panera Bread Steak & Arugula Sandwich
Calories - 500 (from Fat - 170)
Fat - 19g (Saturated Fat - 8g)
Sodium - 900mg
Carbs - 51g (Sugar - 9g)
Protein - 24g

- New Chicken Soba Noodle Salad with Peanut Sauce - Soba noodles, napa cabbage blend, peanut sauce and Thai chili vinaigrette, served with chicken raised without antibiotics, spinach, sesame seeds, and cilantro tossed in orange miso dressing.

Nutritional Info - Chicken Soda Noodle Salad with Peanut Sauce
Calories - 480 (from Fat - 140)
Fat - 15g (Saturated Fat - 3g)
Sodium - 1040mg
Carbs - 52g (Sugar - 10g)
Protein - 25g

- New Honey Almond Greek Yogurt Parfait - Greek yogurt with toasted almonds and honey.

Nutritional Info - Chicken Soda Noodle Salad with Peanut Sauce
Calories - 180 (from Fat - 20)
Fat - 2.5g (Saturated Fat - 0g)
Sodium - 55mg
Carbs - 25g (Sugar - 22g)
Protein - 14g

They also brought back a few seasonal items:

- Mediterranean Chicken Flatbread - Chicken raised without antibiotics, curried lentil hummus, feta, cucumber, and napa cabbage blend with tzatziki sauce on whole grain flatbread.

- Bistro French Onion Soup - Sweet onions in a savory broth with classic sherry wine vinegar gastrique and sea salts, topped with Gruyere and black pepper focaccia croutons.

- Valentine Cookie - The chain's classic shortbread shaped like a heart and decorated with three different icing designs.

Photos via Panera Bread.

A fun idea, being instituted for what we’re sure are totally non-bullshit reasons: female reporters at Chicago Fox station WFLD are reportedly being told not to wear hats during outdoor live shots this winter. A producer apparently thinks women “look a lot better without hats.”

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This morning brought with it the saddest possible news for music fans around the world, as word of rock star, icon, and innovator David Bowie’s death at only 69 rippled across the airwaves and Internet. “David Bowie died peacefully today surrounded by his family after a courageous 18 month battle with cancer. While many of you will share in this loss, we ask that you respect the family’s privacy during their time of grief,” read the official statement on his social media. In the earliest hours of the day, traditional and new media alike were already overflowing with tears and tributes.

Just last week, Bowie released the album Blackstar, and this week his musical Lazarus plays at the New York Theater Workshop, starring Michael C. Hall. Both are typically visionary meditations on his mortality, and now take on an even greater artistic weight. “Look up here, I’m in heaven,” he sang in the brooding title track, “Lazarus.”

Bowie was a momentous figure in the LGBT consciousness, and long beloved by misfits and cool kids alike. He was a particular favorite here at Flavorwire; we’ll be paying more extensive homage to his life and legacy as the day and week goes on.

Days after North Korea claimed it had tested a hydrogen bomb, the United States responded with a display of military might on the Korean Peninsula.

Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are running neck and neck in Iowa, while Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are also locked in a tight race.

Earlier today, Ben Carson—whose campaign is doing fine, great even!—met with over 500 students and parents at Isaac Newton Christian School in Iowa. This, also, went great.

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The GOP-controlled House of Representatives on Wednesday afternoon passed legislation that would repeal Obamacare, and after more than 60 votes to roll back all or part of the law, the bill dismantle it will finally get to the President's desk.

El Pollo Loco introduces five new items to their Under 500 Calorie menu to start the new year.

Available for a limited time only, the new items include:

- Double Chicken Avocado Salad - A double portion of chopped chicken breast, avocado, mixed greens, cotija cheese, corn, pico de gallo, sour cream, and cilantro.

- Chicken Black Bean Bowl - Chopped chicken breast, avocado, rice, cotija cheese, pico de gallo, black beans, and broccoli.

- Chicken Avocado Tortilla Wrap - Chopped chicken breast, avocado, corn, jack cheese, cotija cheese, cilantro, pico de gallo, and a whole wheat tortilla. It comes served with side salad.

- Chicken & Shrimp Grilled Tostada - Chopped chicken breast, shrimp, mango salsa, black beans, cotija cheese, and lettuce on a grilled whole wheat tortilla.

- Chicken Enchiladas - Shredded chicken, broccoli, enchilada sauce, cotija cheese, cilantro, and rice.

Photo via El Pollo Loco.

While Powerball tickets are sold in 44 states, all but six states require lottery winners to be publicly identified.

Passengers on a flight from New York to Chicago say they restrained a woman after she attacked a flight attendant. CNN affiliate WGN reports.

You might be forgiven for imagining Marco Rubio waiting patiently at the gate for his boarding group to be called. Will his carry-on bag fit in the overhead compartment? Will they let him board even though his one personal item looks pretty bulky? We may never know, because Marco “I Always Fly Coach” Rubio is reportedly all about the private jet these days.

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You know the vodka that comes in the Crystal Skull head?¹ A forensic scientist used facial reconstruction techniques to give the skull a face.

1. Fun fact: immediately before I went onstage at Webstock, I drank at shot of Crystal Skull vodka. Funner fact: I also took some Vicodin (left over from a dental procedure), which typically mellows me out. Neither did a damn thing to calm my nerves. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ↩

Tags: alcohol   science

Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio wore some cute boots yesterday. Once New York Times reporter Michael Barbaro tweeted out a photo of them, both political and fashion journalists had questions. How high are those heels? (Two inches, easily.) Where did he get them? (The campaign has yet to say.) Do they come in my size? (I personally want to know.) And—cutting to the real issue at hand—how tall is Marco Rubio anyway?

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Taco Bell's Spicy Beef Nacho Crunchwrap Slider features seasoned ground beef, nacho cheese sauce, chipotle sauce, and Fritos Corn Chips folded inside of a flour tortilla into a hexagon and grilled.

I paid $1 for one.

If you're a Taco Bell regular, the Spicy Beef Nacho Crunchwrap Slider will seems very familar as it's just a slight variation from the Beefy Fritos Burrito and/or the Beefy Nacho Griller. The key difference is the chipotle sauce (which you may have already have been adding to either item). Still, the sauce makes for a nice addition and gave the classic (and enjoyable) beef and nacho cheese combo a mild spicy kick and creamy smokiness.

My particular Slider suffered in the assembly though as the corn chips were all on one half, while the rest of the ingredients were on the other. So one half was a mix of tasty seasoned beef, mild cheese sauce, and smoky heat, while the other was an edible pouch for corn chips.

Overall, as long as it's put together in a decent fashion, Taco Bell's Spicy Nacho Crunchwrap Slider offers the signature beef and cheese of the Mexican-inspired chain paired with crunchy corn chips and a welcomed dose of chipotle sauce. It's very nice but doesn't offer much in the way of newness if that's what you're looking for.

Nutritional Info - Taco Bell Spicy Beef Nacho Crunchwrap Slider
Calories - 460 (from Fat - 230)
Fat - 25g (Saturated Fat - 6g)
Sodium - 1030mg
Carbs - 46g (Sugar - 3g)
Protein - 12g

It usually takes generations of cooking tradition passed down from chef to chef before a type of cuisine becomes a staple of a nation’s diet. For the humble spice bag, it took less than 18 months.

Amazingly the country that once had to cast their votes to keep the once loved, but recently overlooked spice burger in supply, rallied behind a mystery bag of spicy goodness earning it more critical acclaim than season three of The Wire.

But just what is a spice bag? What secrets are behind the delicious taste and where on Earth did it come from?

What is a Spice Bag?

It hasn’t got its place in the Webster dictionary yet, but when it does, the spice bag will be defined as follows: a combination of fried chicken pieces and chips shaken in spice, served in bag.

The chicken can be battered, or in chicken ball (ed. note: Irish and UK speak for popcorn chicken) form and a spice bag can sometimes contain some red or green peppers in the mix. Regardless, the true spice bag needs to be served in a foil or paper bag.

The side order of curry dipping sauce sometimes served with the spice bag is unnecessary as the spices infused in the bag are enough to ignite a supernova of flavor on the tongue.

The aforementioned ingredients served in a box or a tray is a completely different thing – replicas should not be entertained.

What’s the appeal?

The rise in the spice bag's popularity comes down to three factors: price, portion size, and word of mouth.

Price: Before we even consider the practice of chippers (ed. note - Irish and UK speak for french fry shops) undercutting each other, the spice bag usually sits between the affordable €5 and €6 mark ($5.40 to $6.48).

Portion size: Not quite a full portion of chips nor a full serving of fried chicken, the spice bag offers a mix of two meals without leaving the eater too full. It’s also the perfect size for a side order.

Accessibility:  It’s easy to say, it's a novelty to add to your normal order, and hearing someone endorse something called a "spice bag" with a straight face simply can't be ignored.

Origins

According to the chronicles of Twitter, it all began in Bagenalstown Co. Carlow, in December 2013.

What followed over the next six months was the type of news pattern that typically follows a UFO sighting in a sci-fi film.

Bewildered social posts appeared, scattered at first but coalescing into a pattern before finally emerging as a trend.  It went something like this: "Lads, I’ve just had something called a Spice Bag," then 'People in the queue at the chipper were asking about that Spice Bag thing again," before finally leading to "I'd sell my own sister for a Spice Bag right now."

One version of the backstory has the shaken bag of chicken, spice, and chips originating in Stoneybatter, Dublin. This has become an unpopular theory in recent times, with the East coast mythology now being retold as “Oh no, I said I've heard the best Spice Bag comes from Stoneybatter."

Is the mainstream next? 

No one is above the Spice Bag. Unlike the battered burger before it, the spice bag is not associated with a lower standing in society, nor is its existence unwanted in any way. People are either simply in love with the spice bag or are intrigued by it.

I’m not suggesting you should pin a medal on the spice bag (although it was voted Ireland's favorite dish at the 2015 National Takeaway Awards), or put it in line for a Nobel Peace Prize (yet), but after looking, tasting, and experiencing the spice bag, it's hard not to admire all that has been accomplished by such a simple bag of fast food.

Seeing as the spices tend to be chili and lime based (ed. note - it counts as Chinese food in Ireland apparently), it's quite easy to imagine a fast food giant such as KFC or Popeyes commandeering a version of the spice bag to call their own. KFC in particular seems eager to experiment with new and "exotic" flavors, trying ideas such as spicy Thai chicken and rice combos as well as tacos and wraps, which add a bit of non-American inspiration to their traditional recipe. So, if you don’t fancy a trip to the Emerald Isle, you might not have to wait too long until the spice bag (or if KFC get their way, a "spice box") comes your way.

--

Guest post by Sean Markey. Sean hails from Ireland where he likes nothing more than to relax on the couch with a pizza, some beers and a monster movie DVD. He likes to write abut these experiences for the website Geek Ireland.

Snow boots have an unfortunate reputation: They’re bulky, ugly, and often fall apart. Those who choose not to keep a pair of extra shoes stashed away at work are burdened with the responsibility of wearing one pair of shoes everyday for months. That’s commitment, real commitment. Rather than wade through the copious options alone, we’ve decided to enlist the help of readers to find the most worthy candidates. Below, we’ve assembled the five best snow boots, as dictated by you . Now, we need you to vote on which one reigns supreme. Go forth!

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Hint: it involves a whole lot of foam peanuts.

But it's possible hermit kingdom tested a "boosted" nuclear device.

The world's biggest blue star sapphire -- weighing in at 1,404.49 carats -- has been found in a mine in Sri Lanka.