IKEA Monkey

Ladybaby. From left: Rei Kuromiya, Ladybeard, Rie Kaneko. All photos by the author

Rei Kuromiya lookshorrified. It's already 15 minutes past the 14-year-old pop star's 10 PM curfew, and she's being held hostage by a large bearded man in a dress. The ageof the man, who calls himself Ladybeard, is harder to determine. When asked, Ladybeard insists thathe's a five-year-old girl. He'salso Rei's bandmate in the wildly popular J-pop/metal trio Ladybaby.We're shooting the breeze backstage as the bearded "five-year-old," who claimshe was a professional wrestler before starting the band, wraps his massive armsaround Rei's neck like a python, and announces that it's time for a wrestlinglesson.

"Right!" shouts theman with a maniacal grin, "so you want to take your arm out here around her arm.The left hand goes on the right bicep, and the right arm goes round the back ofher head. That's a sleeper hold! You squeeze here to cut the blood flow to thebrain. She'll fall asleep in no time!"

Third bandmate RieKaneko waits calmly nearby for her turn. The 17-year-old is repeatedly pinchingher eye like a tuna roll as she squeals the word, "Sushi!"

Ladybaby has onlybeen a band since May, when a Japanese impresario decided to combine twoteenage J-pop aspirants with the cross-dressing Australian metalhead, who he spotted on the cover of a wrestling magazine. The resulting band combines the dark and furiousintensity of screamo metal with the saccharine sweetness of Japan's kawaii culture. It's a merger that hasrocketed the band to stardom almost overnight. Their latest single "Nippon Manju" has racked up nearly nine million YouTube views in just threemonths and the group is about to go on its first world tour. A top comment byone viewer neatly sums up the general reaction to Ladybaby: "At first I waslike wtf, but I love the combination <3 I'm addicted."

We're backstage ata venue in Tokyo's Akihabara electronics district, where the streets are linedwith girls in frilly maid, ninja, and school girl uniforms. The girls stand handingout flyers to the passing otaku, anime and manga-obsessed single males. It's otaku like these who fill the concert hall to capacity tonight forLadybaby's show. The men, ranging from their teens into middle age, are sofanatical that many of them have memorized the group's intricate choreographyfor each song in order to mirror it back in perfect synchronicity.

This is thegroup's last concert in Japan before making their international debut in NewYork City. There's much talk in the dressing room about world domination andother topics that highlight the seemingly-countless surreal quirks of Ladybaby.I want to know what the people of planet earth can expect from our new pop overlords. Ladybeard acted astranslator for his bandmates.

VICE: What does New Yorkneed to know to prepare for your arrival?
Ladybeard: There's absolutely nothing it can do to prepare.

If they hide, will they be able tostay out of danger?
It will be inescapable. Do you remember New York in the 30s?King Kong shows up swinging on buildings, chucking women and whatnot. Hard tomiss. Same thing. Ladybaby.

Rei has been working on her building climbing, andshe has picked out several buildings that she has in mind to scale in New YorkCity. Rei loves crime. She's the bad one. She says she wants to take a selfie with some shady characters in New Yorkthebad people of New York.

How did you guys come together in thefirst place?
Obviously siblings. You can see the resemblance. At thetime, we all had separate solo careers. I only know the story from my angle.The CEO of Clearstone, the record label and costume company, was getting off aplane and he saw a magazine with me on the cover, and he said, "What the hellis that?" He called me up and said, "I want to work with you." I said OK and hecame back later with photos of the girls and told me he was putting me in an idol group.

What did the girls think of you?
Rei says she thought I was a weirdo.

And now?
She says, "Even more!"

Ladybeard puts Rie Kaneko in a sleeper hold

Well, you have your whole life ahead of you, don't you? What's the long-term plan?
Obviously, world domination, but more specifically we're going on a world tour. This has happened for us much more quickly than it happens for most idol groups. They have to spend 10 years plugging away at it before they even get an opportunity to go to Osaka. We only started this thing in May. So, we're very grateful.

Let's talk about world domination. What is a Ladybaby regime going to be like?Hardcore! It's going to be hardcore, Roc! I'm bringing in beard-care to the group right away.

That's bound to be a highly controversial policy. I mean, you're already getting hate mail, right?
Interestingly, the girls said they received no hate mail whatsoever. Only love mail, which is unavoidable. The only group which consistently hates on me is other metalheads. I get lots of hate mail from them, which I can understand. They're purists.

What's the purpose of your music?
It's spreading a whole lot of happiness all over the place. That's kind of how I feel about it. It makes me feel fantastic! It's a combination of my favorite things. I love the composition of pop music, but I love the execution of metal. I love the power and the sound of metal. So there's two things coming together. Let me ask the girls.

Rei says, "It's very powerful. There's no one else quite like us."

Rie says, "It spreads happiness and joy in abundance."

All right, so you've gotten a lot of attention for cross-dressing. What's your concept of gender?
I've been doing it for such a long time, and it's so subverted now, I don't even think about it anymore. I started doing it when I was younger. There was a lot of more thought going into gender roles back then. A huge part of it was being an outgoing young guy with a big mouth in Australia. When I was a teenager, I'd go to parties and all the jocks would want to fight me. So, I found that cross-dressing was useful in the sense that I could walk into the party in a dress and I would instantly disarm all the jocks within five or ten minutes. Then I could go straight into enjoying the party. What's amazing is I'm a martial artist and when you're wearing a dress and you knock a guy out, that's a lot sweeter than any other situation possible!

It's the dress combined with the beard which really creates an unstoppable tour de force, the nature of which can only truly be understood by the forces at work in the universe in control of everything! Beards and dresses have an unstoppable power which few have realized in the past.

So, why don't the girls have beards?
They've been working on it! I think this is the one area where the girls are not pulling their weighttheir beardlessness. We're hoping that by the end of the world tour, both of them will start to sprout some stubble. We're doing all kinds of things to speed that up! We're rubbing McDonald's hamburgers on their faces! They're definitely old enough to have beards. I had a beard when I was 14. I'm only five now though, so figure that one out.

So, I'm curious, what does thetransgender community here think of you?Really, if they have a reaction at all, it's that it kind of hasnothing to do with them. They think it's cute, and that's as deep as it goes.Me personally, with my solo stuff, I was surprised by how much support I gotfrom them when I came to Japan because I think what I do could easily bemisinterpreted by the community as a parody of what they take seriously.

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Is it?
No. But I was surprised by the amount of support I got fromthem. That's a great question for Naoko Tachibana. Naoko is Japan's foremostphotographer of cross-dressers. That's how we met. Naoko says I don't count aspart of the community because I'm a performer. It's not a lifestyle choice.Hence they don't take offense and don't see me in a negative light. I thinkthat would not be the case in Australia. Probably the same in America.

Being an outsider gives you morefreedom?
I think if I'd started as an Australian in Australia, I wouldhave met a lot of resistance. But, since I started here, I've been embraced bya lot of people who I don't think would've embraced me any other way.

Can you talk a little bit more aboutwhat it's like to go into your persona?
If I don't get myself completely amped and ready to knock ahouse down and kill everyone I see, then the show is flat. Especially because whatI do is still so far out of my comfort zone. You'll notice there's no otherCaucasian pro-wrestlers dancing like little Japanese girls. Before the show, Ijust want to run and find stuff to smashstorm around. I have the girls hit mea bunch of times. Everyone hits me. But I do the same thing before I wrestle.

How is this similar to wrestling?
Interestingly, wrestling is the most emotional thing I've done.You're hitting people and getting hit. That really gets to you emotionally,especially if you're working a long-running storyline like a feud. If I have tocry, wrestling is the easiest time to do it.

How do you bring out your innerfive-year-old girl?
It's there all the time.

You've obviously had to overcome manybarriers to do what you do. Much of what you represent is transgressive tosocial norms. How free are you, and what ways are you still repressed?
It's funny, because this whole career of mine has been builtaround not being good enough for my other careers. I was an actor, and astuntman, and a voice actor, but I was never good enough to be totally toplevel. That's probably why I've come to this thing that no one else does. I'mthe only one doing this, and I seem to be all right at it. So, in that respect,I was constantly told that I couldn't do everything I tried to do. And hence, doingwhat I do now really is freedom from all that.

See Ladybaby's website for more information about upcoming tour dates.

Follow Roc Morin on Twitter.

We all know the old saying: ‘Tis better to have owned a major technological giant’s domain name briefly and lost it, than to have never owned a major technological giant’s domain name at all. A guy who successfully purchased Google.com and held onto it for a few minutes was rewarded for his efforts by way of a “bug bounty” from Google.

A U.S. student bought the domain name on Sept. 29, writing about his experience on LinkedIn last month. He spotted a “for sale” sign next to Google.com while poking around on sites on Google’s website-buying service. Interesting, eh?

Due to some kind of oversight, he was able to purchase Google.com and control it for about a minute — and immediately received mails meant for the company’s web administrators — before Google realized what had happened and canceled the transaction.

His $12 was refunded, with Google saying that the purchase was an error because someone else already registered the domain name (but WHO?!?). He’s now updated his story, writing that he received a cash reward for uncovering the bug that allowed him to become the sole owner of Google.com, brief as his reign was. Instead of pocketing the cash, he’s decided to give that reward to an educational foundation in India, reports the BBC, a donation that Google then matched.

Cops say a woman waiting for an Uber ride in D.C. this weekend was sexually assaulted after she mistakenly got into a stranger’s car instead.

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"We are in the postseason - for the love of G-d put on a helmet." [ more › ]

U.S. military cargo planes gave 50 tons of ammunition to rebel groups overnight in northern Syria, using an air drop of 112 pallets as the first step in the Obama Administration's urgent effort to find new ways to support those groups.

According to the Guardian, there have been at least 1,000 mass shootings in this country Sandy Hook , the bloody milestone having been passed in Inglis, Florida, just a few hours after Chris Harper Mercer killed himself and eight other people in Roseburg, Oregon .

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When The Rock finishes a workout, there’s only one thing he wants to do. Well, maybe two things. First, there’s likely going to be a lot of eating given that crazy diet we’ve heard about. But then, after the feast, there’s going to be some dancing. Some hip shaking, body moving, earth quaking dancing.

The Rock posted the Instagram video above on Friday, showcasing his rendition of the ‘Hit the Quan’ dance. Brandon already covered how there is a little bit of Ric Flair tossed in there around the middle part, but I’m not sure if that’s part of the real dance or not. Doesn’t matter because The Rock makes this dance his own.

It’s not the first time The Rock has shown off his moves after a workout. There’s is, of course, this classic tribute to his dad:

But that’s not all. It would seem that The Rock has a long history of dancing all across media. He’s done his little struts and Ric Flair homages in WWE:

And then he’s done some shaking and jiving on the big screen, as we got to see with his traditional Samoan dance in Be Cool:

Now you might think this is all just part of some practice or shed off from his background, but this clip from Ellen shows that The Rock can certainly dance on demand. She proceeds to hold up a card with a specific dance on it and he does his best to perform it, with good results:

And for another look at his impromptu dancing skills, here’s a classic clip from BET showing The Rock doing a slight football celebration. I assume this is in connection to The Game Plan or Gridiron Gang:

Now, to judge how well he danced on Friday, Johnson took a moment to greet one of his “favorite girls,” Lexi, and asks her who the better dancer is: himself or Justin Bieber. Despite being his friend and sharing an Instagram video with him, Lexi ends up choosing Bieber.

How can this be true? Does Bieber have the moves? Is it because he wants to impress his embarrassing father? Is it because of what we saw in those leaked photos? Or maybe this young girl is biased to Bieber. Let’s examine really quick:

I don’t get it. At all. Luckily, The Rock is gracious loser and takes it all in stride. Doubtful that The Rock would’ve done this 15 years ago, especially when he was running around with D-Lo Brown. I get the feeling he didn’t really need that chest protector.

(Via The Rock)

Daniel Fells suffered an ankle injury in practice a little over a week ago. Initially, it wasn’t thought to be serious. He was given a cortisone shot for the pain and coach Tom Coughlin was optimistic he’d play last week. Instead, he went to the hospital with 104-degree fever and has since undergone five surgeries to combat a nasty Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection centered near his ankle.

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The dining quarters of Vivos Europa One. All images courtesy of Vivos Group

As we roll down US Highway 41 inTerre Haute, Indiana, my guide insists I give him my iPhone.Then he tosses me a satin blindfold. The terms of ourtrip were clearI wasn't to know where we were going or how we got there. That's because we're on our way to theundisclosed location of an underground bunker designed to survive the end of the world, whatever form that apocalypse takes.

When I remove my blindfold, I am standing in a grassyclearing looking at a boxy concrete structure that serves as the entrance to aCold Warera government communications facilitygutted and reborn as Vivos Indiana. This is the Ritz Carlton of doomsday shelters, a hideout where residents can wait out a nuclear winter or a zombie apocalypse in luxury and style while the rest of humanity melts and disintegrates. The living area has 12-and-a-half-foot ceilings, sumptuous black leather couches,wall art featuring cheerful Parisian street scenes, toweringfaux ferns, and plush carpets. Faith Hill croons from a large-screen TV setin front of three rows of comfy beige reclining chairs. The cupboardsare stocked with 60 varieties of freeze-dried andcanned foodstuffs; an evening meal might include spaghetti aglio e olio topped with skilletfried steak chunks, a fresh tomato-and-zucchini salad fresh from the hydroponicgarden, and decadent turtle brownies. An eight-by-nine bedroom is designed for four people (there arelarger units for six) and comes with double-queenbunks clothed in 600-thread-count ivory sheets and duvet covers worthyof a four-star hotel, a comparison highlightedon the Vivos website.

I plop down on a Sealy's Presidential Pillowtop mattress and decide,yes, a person could sleep here quite soundly while the world burns.

Read: Prepping for the Apocalypse at a Doomsday Training Camp

There are pet kennelsfor furry friends large and small, a gun safe (duh) in which to houseweapons, a small gym, medical facilities, and asound-proofed engine room housing two generators that run on diesel fuel storedin a 30,000 gallon tankenough for over a year's supply. Another room containshigh-grade filters that scrub incoming air of nuclear, biological, and chemicalparticles.

According to Robert Vicino, founderand CEO of survival prep company the Vivos Group, when the shit hits the fanthese facilities will house those who have had the foresight to pay the $35,000 entry fee. These clients, he tells me, include atop surgeon, a colonel in the US military, and a movie star. Most ofhis clients, Vicino tells me while we're underground, tend to be "conservative types who don't trustthe government to deal with a disaster."

"As Ayn Randsaid, ignoring reality won't protect you from it," Vicino intones.

Top photo: Robert Vicino outside the entrance of Vivos Europa One. Below: Main kithcen area in Vivos Indiana

Those who make it their business to equip themselves for a civilization-ending mega-disastera.k.a. "preppers"are sometimes stereotyped as wild-eyed tinfoil hat wearers who live outside of society, but Vicino caters to survivalists whose fears are backed up by money. The San Diegobusinessman is gunning to be the vanguard of a multibillion-dollar industry. If we're to follow the entrepreneur's logic, the rich don't live on the same scale as ordinary people in today's societywhy should that change after the end of the world?

Even at 6'8" and 300 pounds, Vicino has a bodythatseems barely equipped to contain his outsized personality. Apsychic once told him that he was sent to Earthfrom a planet of giant superior beings dedicated to saving the human race, and that'swhy he needed such a large frame. Clearly he sees himself as a man with amission: For the last 20 years, the 61-year-old has had a premonition that"something's coming our way."

While we're inside Vivos Indiana, Vicino rapidly shuffles through end-time scenariosfinancial breakdown,flesh-melting pandemics, magnetic pole shifts, cyber warfare, and Biblicaltsunamiswith lengthy digressions on the possibility that alien reptilians are impersonatingthe British Royal Family and that a secret wrecking ball called Planet X ishurtling towards us from space. He wants to make one thing clear to me, however: When the end comes,you will not be ready for it. It's a hell of a pitch, I have to admit.

For more on the end of the world, watch our doc 'Apocalypse, Man':

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The way Vicino speaks about his life, you get the impression it's been guided by auguries and accidents. When he was a bored Connecticut art student in the70s, a falling ice sheet shattered the windshield of Vicino's car, thebad omen convincing him it was time to try his luck in California.There, he set up an inflatables business that culminated in a grand plan toaffix a giganticinflatable King Kong to the top of the Empire State Building for the classic film's50th anniversary. (The massive balloon ripped in high winds anddeflated.) By hislate twenties, Vicino tells me, he was driving a Rolls Royce, but lost thebusiness in the 80s and had to reinvent himself as a real estate entrepreneur.In the 90s, he took up selling shares in villas in swanky spots like Aspenand the South of France. It was the idea of fractional ownership that got himthinking about a long-coveted dream of his to build survival bunkers where people ofmeans could escape Armageddon in comfort. In 2007, just before the financialcrash, he decided to give it a go.

His timing was impeccable.Since 2013, the country has minted 1.6million new millionaires, and there are an estimated 3 million-plus preppers in the US. It stands to reason those groups overlap, especially since in these divided political times, many of the rich are concerned with their money's security: what threatens it, how to hang on to it, and above all,what happens when the have-nots get tired of not having it. (Witness the infamous 2014 Wall Street Journal letter to the editor that compared America to Nazi Germany and the wealthy to the Jews.) Vicino warns that the rich need to be ready for a scenario that will"turn Suzy Homemaker into a gun-wielding predator." As he asked me, without any apparent irony, "Do you really want to fight off all the zombies, the predators, thegangs, the militias, whatever else is roaming the streets to get what yougot?"

It's a good time to be in a fear-based industry. Public comments from some of the planet's richest people reveal a strain of paranoia about insurrection. At the last annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, observers noticed elites growing more alarmed about the possibility of social unrest. Last year, entrepreneur and venture capitalist Nick Hanauer published an open letter to his "Fellow Zillionaires" in Politico Magazine that summed up the growing worry among the wealthy: "What do I see in our future now? I see pitchforks."

This matches what Vicino hears. "They're going to Patagonia, they're going to remote locations of the world," he says. "Their reasoning is more to be insulated from a revolution, rebellion, anarchy, or whatever, following an economic collapse."

The affluent have always spent money on things that they feel will help them hold onto what they have. But the rise of businesses like Vicino's points to a convergence of social and political trends that has become a toxic brew of inequality, paranoia, and extreme individualism.

Vast differences between haves and have-nots tend to unleash pathologies that don't just affect those struggling to get by; they trickle all the way to the top.

Vivos Indiana living area and Vivos Europa 'Inspiration Pub'

Peter J. Behrens, a psychologist who studies doomsday phenomena, sees grand survival plans as a reflection of social and psychological maladjustment, the place where "paranoia meets narcissism." In his reckoning, while having enough food for three days and a working flashlight is reasonable disaster preparedness, imagining that you can survive apart from the rest of humanity in elaborate bunkers and retreats is not.

"Narcissistic personalitiesabundant among the richtend to view their answers as the only ones that are legitimate, and they are attracted to extravagant schemes," he says. But is the gap between these fantasies and reality slowly shrinking?

Behrens sees America's preppers as a new twist on apocalyptic fears of the 1950s brought on by the threat of nuclear war. He believes that American policies and economic trends, along with the proliferation of social mediawhere the like-minded can easily networkare stoking new end-times obsession. What he describes resonates with a term coined in the 90s by journalist Michael Kelly that is coming back into vogue: "fusion paranoia," where conspiratorial worldviews get cobbled together from a mishmash of sources from across the political spectrum. Prepping can also be linked to the rise of libertarian strains of thought in American life that hold that the government is unable to properly address social and ills, or that any attempt on its part to do so would qualify as tyranny. It's a philosophy that at its most stark replaces love thy neighbor with a mystical faith in self-interest. Hiding in a bunker as the rest of humanity falls apart because they failed to prepare as you did is, in some ways, the ultimate libertarian fantasy.

Thomas Ferguson, a political scientist and senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, a left-leaning think tank, says that you probably won't find many old-money types in the affluent prepping community. Sudden wealth, he points out, fuels the vertiginous insecurity and solipsistic detachment that leads to thoughts of ensconcing yourself in a high-tech cocoon when the apocalypse strikes.

Behrens observes that among the Fords, Rockefellers, and Vanderbilts, a strong Judeo-Christian ethic of giving back at least some of your riches to society led to the erection of libraries, museums, and other institutions. He thinks that not only are today's wealthy increasingly insulated from the rest of society via gated communities, exclusive clubs, and personal airplanes, but they also do not feel that they owe anything to the rest of us.

Vivos Europa One living area and Robert Vicino closing the blast-proof door of the facility in Germany.

Vicino'sproperties include the recently launched Vivos Europa One, an invitation-only nuclear blastproof subterranean complextucked into a former Cold War munitions storage facility in Germany. It was purchased by Vicino andhis partner, a German developer, for $2.25 million and unveiled this past summer. The property, now valued at over abillion dollars and boasting 227,904 square feet of "secure, blast proof livingareas" is big enough for 34 "high net-worth families" to inhabit for a full year, says Vicino. They can enjoy swimming pools, a wine cellar, and livingquarters they are encouraged to customize with fittings created by theirfavorite yacht designers. Worried about the collapse of the rule of law? After the end of society, each Vivos properties will be governed by its own bylaws and the various bunkers will have their own tribunals to handle conflicts between wealthy residents, who may well get twitchy during their confinement. An armed security force employed by the company will handle threats from abovepresumably the have-nots who want in.

A berth on this subterranean Noah's Ark will run you $3 to $5 millionabout 100 times or more what an adult spot in VivosIndiana costs.

Additional Vivos facilities,Vicino explains, are private and unpublicized. Understandably, his clients don't want to advertise themselves, but Vicino's PR people provided me with anonymous quotes ostensibly from his satisfied customers.

Writes one: "Like everyone else, I have a sixthsense that something may happen soon. It is time to prepare for a contingencyon many fronts for my family. There are more possibilities of devastatingevents happening now than any other time in my lifetime."

"The times speak for themselves and growing increasingly moredangerous," says another. "Where else can we go when the inevitable SHTF?" (SHTF means "shit hits the fan," prepper slang for a doomsday scenario.)

Vicino is not the only one trying to cash in this new breed ofpreppers. The entrepreneur gives admiring credit to a competitor, developerLarry Hall of SiloHome, who has built a luxury condo complex housed in an abandonedmissile silo in Kansas. (The eight$2 million units have reportedly sold out.) Vicino says he's sold all but around a dozen of the 80 spots in the Indiana bunkerthough a few are reserved for his immediate family. He says he's currently talking tobuyers for the new German facility, including one uber-wealthy prepper who mightjust buy the whole shebang.

Read on Munchies: Post-Apocalyptic Dining in Atlantic City

At the end of my bunker visit, I thought of a newsociety Vicino was trying toenable. Some ofthe wealthy are not only refusing to read the realwriting on the wallsuch as inequality being aglaring problem that requires our wholesociety to confront it head-onbut are living in theirfantasies. To some, an escape to gold-plated survival shelters isthe answer when reality falls apart for everyone else.

But the entrepreneur has high hopes for the future of his company: "Vivos will build, outfit, stock, and sell as many shelters as we can, while time still permitsand there is market demand. We cannot predict when, or if, the time will come where mankind is safe from both natural and manmade extinction level catastrophes. People don't believe something will happen, until it does!"

The Economic Hardship Reporting Project, ajournalism nonprofit, provided support for this article.

Follow Lynn on Twitter.

Hapless Rutgers somehow found themselves with a shot to tie up fourth-ranked Michigan State and force overtime in New Jersey. But that shot was wasted when confusion reigned and quarterback Chris Laviano spiked the ball instead of organizing a hail mary attempt. It’s as if for 59 minutes and 50 seconds, the Scarlet Knights performed like a competent football team; in the final moments, they kept it real.

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An Indiana woman says her training in medieval combat helped her corner a home intruder.

The Indianapolis Star reports 43-year-old Karen Dolley of Indianapolis threw punches until she had the man cornered during the Thursday night break-in. She then kept him subdued with a Japanese sword she keeps...

"I went downstairs, looked at it and I jumped, scared out of my pants," a resident said.

Who needs Disneyland when you can have a theme park for youngsters to declare their loyalty to China's Communist Party?

Rock and roll, spiralizer.  You’ve officially taken the front seat in the must-have kitchen tools of the year. Folks can’t get enough of this fun tool that turns just about any veggie or fruit into a noodle. This time, it’s all about the sweet potato.

These sweet potato noodles hit the spot when you’re craving a warm, hearty, and comforting dinner. But, unlike pasta, you’re getting more veg in every bite.

Sweet Potato Noodles
First, to make the noodles, wash and peel a sweet potato and spiralize into noodles with the medium blade. Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Sauté the noodles for 4-5 minutes, stirring frequently. Pour on your favorite sauce and serve, or make the recipe below.

Sweet Potato Noodles with Bacon and Brussels
Smoky bacon and earthy Brussels sprouts unite to bring a punch of flavor and texture to this naturally sweet veg. Add a couple of cashews for a touch of crunch, and you’ve got a healthy main course meal that feels just as decadent and satisfying as your average pasta dish.

Ingredients
Makes 2 servings
2 sweet potatoes, washed, peeled, and spiralized
2 cups of Brussels sprouts, trimmed and halved
3 slices center-cut bacon, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
1-2 teaspoons of fresh herbs, such as thyme or oregano
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons roasted unsalted cashews, halved

Preparation
Heat a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add bacon, and sauté for 5 minutes or until bacon begins to brown. Remove bacon. Add garlic, and sauté for one minute or until fragrant. Add Brussels sprouts, and sauté for 5 minutes. Remove Brussels sprouts.

Add one tablespoon of olive oil and fresh herbs to the pan. Sauté noodles for 4 minutes, stirring frequently. Stir in bacon, Brussels sprouts, and cashews, and cook for one minute. Remove from heat; stir in salt and pepper.

CALORIES 232; FAT 6.3g (sat 1.6g, mono 2.4g, poly .83g); PROTEIN 10g; CARB 38g; FIBER 8g; CHOL 8mg; IRON 3mg; SODIUM 373mg; CALC 85mg

See More:

• Brussels Sprouts Recipes
• Our Best Sweet Potato Recipes
• 25 Best Pasta Recipes

Photo via Flickr user Ann Larie Valentine

Welcome back to Florida Stories, a column where staff writer Allie Conti tells us some of the lessons she's accumulated in her decades of living in the Sunshine State and making her parents sad. If you have a Florida Story you'd like to share, email her here.

I'm still not sure where the Ouija board came from, but I first remember seeing it out of the corner of my eye as I smoked a Pall Mall with my bare feet dangling off the porch. It was the kind of boring early fall day that makes you wish something supernatural would happen, the kind of slow afternoon that's so peaceful and sun-dappled you can easily imagine serial killers lurking just out of sight behind oak trees and in pickup trucks roaming the streets. Maybe you had to be there.

I was living that post-college summer in a mess of a house my mom called the "locker room." Two of my roommates were a pair of Catholic twins who had grown up on a horse farm in Ocala. Sean was a runner who had just started his graduate degree in urban planning; Dylan was a Sasquatch of a dude who had knocked out a front tooth during a drunken tumble while pissing off the porch and never bothered to get it looked at. He was so fixated on the flatscreen television, which was constantly playing ESPN, day or night, that when it had blown out months before he screamed hysterically and then broke into my room through a window to steal my tiny set, claiming he couldn't sleep without it. He was basically a troll guarding the entrance to our kitchen; there were times I swore he hadn't moved from his throne in the living room for weeks on end. He often slept there and snored.

As different as they were, the two boys had been raised with the fear of God in them, and whatever the status of their Christian faith, they were loaded to the gills with superstitions. While I had assumed the only deities they recognized were the University of Florida Gators, their upbringing had instilled in them an unshakable belief in curses and demonic possession as wellor so I found out when I mentioned the Ouija board on the porch.

Previously: Why You Should Never Try to Hide a Runaway Florida Teen in Your Dorm Room

First they panicked, then they instituted a moratorium on touching it. This was broken a few hours into the night, when the normally sedentary Dylan made a dash for the porch while Sean and I and our third roommate, Michael, looked on.

Dylan fiddled around outside with the board while Sean appeared to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown. "Get back inside, goddammit!" he would periodically wail.

After what seemed like an eternity, he did. Then Dylan sat in his well-worn recliner, took three shots of Evan Williams, and started to weep.

If you have never seen a man the size of a linebacker wail with guilt and drunkenness and dread at being a sinner in the hands of an angry God, let me tell you: It's no fun at all. Meanwhile, Sean was rocking himself in the corner and repeating, "this isn't right, this isn't right" over and over.

"WHAT DID THE OUIJA BOARD TELL YOU?" I finally screamed.

Dylan poured another shot, wiped his eyes with the sleeve of his Gators shirt, and inhaled the whiskey.

"Sixty-nine devils," he replied.

"Oh my God," Sean screamed before collapsing on the floor.

At this point, Michael interjected, possibly figuring that someone had to be the voice of reason and there wasn't anyone else around.

"Come on guys, he has to be making this up," he said to me and Sean. "What does '69 devils' even mean? There are devils? Sixty-nine of them? There are two devils doing a lewd sex act? Like, the clothing company the Gap has devils?"

Unable to assuage us with jokes about jeans, Michael grabbed one of the axes lying around the house (it was that sort of place) and took the board on to our front lawn, where he reduced it to kindling.

"It's going to be OK, I'm banishing you from the spirit world," he announced as we cried. "Fuck ghosts!"

After it was completely smashed to bits, he started peeing on the remnants. We then all took turns ritualistically peeing on the remnants, for reasons I cannot recall but made sense at the time.

Immediately I felt better.

Sean, however, was not satisfied. He got a weird look in his eye and, as a final flourish, doused the surrounding area with almost an entire bottle of lighter fluid, then lit it on fire. This turned out to be a terrible idea. The flames got dangerously close to our house before we fought them off with water and dirt. By this time the four of us were all cryingout of fear of the fire, panic in the face of the supernatural, smoke filling the air, or some combination of the four.

When the fire was out we went back inside the house feeling extremely unsettled. No one spoke; Dylan was practically catatonic. We figured it was best to go to sleep and forget the whole thing.

Years later, wondering about that "69 Devils" business, I asked Dylan what the fuck had happened to him out on that porch, and whether he had been fooling us. His answer: It was a prank.

"I thought the 69 would've been a dead giveaway, but were more focused on the devils aspect," he explained.

I don't know if that's truethat crying of his was pretty convincing. Perhaps he had gotten spooked and was now trying to play it off as if it had been a prank all along. And whatever the spark that set it off, that was an intense evening that drained all of us physically and emotionally. Michael got the worst of it, however, because of a strange coincidence that almost ended in murder.

To back up: When I woke up the next morning there was a person asleep on the porchnot an uncommon occurrence back thenand Michael looked like he'd had the roughest night of his life.

Apparently, after we all went to bed, Michael woke up in a panic. "I was staring at the ceiling, because I had this weird feeling, this intense feeling, that there was something next to my bed," he recently confessed. "I told myself, 'It's fine, you're OK, you're having a bad day because your friends are acting emotionally funny, and there's no inimical spirit next to you.'"

He refused to look so as to even humor the thought that there was something evil afoot. The plan was to stare at the ceiling, count down from ten, and close his eyes at zero. But when, he got to "two," he could sense that whatever was next to him had moved.

"I had no idea what was going on and so I jumped out of bed and on top of whatever it was," he told me.

"I'm sorry officer," the thing apparently said as Michael grabbed for the axe, which he'd brought into his room after getting spooked by the Ouija board incident. "I'm not drunk, I swear."

According to him, a completely fucked up college student had wandered into our house while we were running in and out dealing with the fire and had eventually tried to pass out in Michael's room, where he came about two seconds away from dying from an axe blow.

I don't believe in the power of curses, or so I tell myself, but when I look back on that night and what we did, it seems impossible to explain our actions without resorting to the supernatural. What if that drunk kid had been mauled by Michael's axe and we had to explain ourselves to the cops and the courts and the media? What would we have said when asked why we thought it was OK to light our yard on fire? ("To kill the ghosts real good, officer"?) Why was Michael's first instinct, when confronted by the unknown, to kill it with an axe? Why was our house full of axes in the first place? Even if it was intended as a prank, was there something ominous in the phrase "69 devils" that infected us?

I don't know the answers to those questions. All I know is that no one ever burned their house down playing Clue or Monopoly. Stick to the non-occult board games, kids.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

This bear has figured out a few important truths about his life. The first thing he’s learned is that if he sits on his big cool rock like a person, people will throw food at him. This is because people love nothing more than an bear exhibiting humanoid qualities.

Read more...

A Florida woman got quite a surprise when she heard a mysterious hissing from behind her dryer. CNN affiliate WESH reports.

According to a recent study, vegetarians have confessed to eating meat after a night of drinking. VoucherCodesPro, a UK-based discount code provider, conducted a survey of more than 1,700 British vegetarians who revealed they chow down on meat when they drink too much alcohol. Don’t tell Morrissey about this!

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It's time, once again, to marvel at some idiots who don't know how to handle the world:

Cry-Baby #1: An unnamed woman in Michigan

Screenshot via Fox 2 Detroit

The incident: A woman witnessed a suspected shoplifter fleeing a Home Depot.

The appropriate response: Nothing. Maybe sticking your leg out to trip them if you're a really good citizen and they pass by you.

The actual response: She started shooting at them.

According to local police, store security at a Home Depot in Auburn Hills, Michigan attempted to stop a man who they suspected of shoplifting last Tuesday. Witnesses say he was able to escape into an SUV being driven by another man before fleeing the scene.

Another customer, who has not been named, but is described as being a 48-year-old woman with a concealed pistol license (CPL), witnessed this and attempted to intervene.

"The customer that was a CPL holder then fired shots at the vehicle believing to have hit one of the tires of the vehicle," Jill McDonnell of Auburn Hills Police Department told Fox 2.

Despite the possible flat tire, the two shoplifters were able to escape. They reportedly had over $1000 worth of stolen tools.

A CPL expert speaking with Fox explained that the woman was legally in the wrong for using her gun in this situation, as guns are only to be used when "you are defending yourself or someone else against the threat of great bodily harm, rape, or death."

The woman was not been arrested. Police spoke to her, but she was released pending an investigation.

Cry-Baby #2: Luke Gatti

The incident: A drunk guy was denied jalapeo bacon mac and cheese.

The appropriate response: Getting food elsewhere. Probably at home.

The actual response: He threw a tantrum so severe that he ended up getting arrested.

Last Sunday, 19-year-old University of Connecticut student Luke Gatti attempted to buy some bacon and jalapeo macaroni cheese from the college's cafeteria. He was denied service, apparently because he'd been drinking alcohol on the premises.

In a video of the incident, Luke can be seen repeatedly requesting some "fucking bacon jalapeo mac and cheese." When his requests are ignored, Luke tries a few different tactics, ranging from calling the manager a "fucking fag" to shoving him in the chest.

At one point during the encounter, Luke realizes he's being filmed and turns to the manager and says "This is gonna be posted somewhere, and you're gonna look like a fucking tool."

After Luke shoves the manager a second time, another member of staff tackles him to the ground while screaming "You don't touch my boss!"

The video ends with Luke calling the manager a bitch, and seemingly spitting in his face. This causes the responding officer to rush him out of the building, using his face to open the door. At the moment of impact, Luke makes an incredibly satisfying sound, that I guess I would write as "gwelpth."

Luke was charged with breach of peace in the second degree and criminal trespassing. This is not the first time Luke has been in trouble with the law. Last year, he was reportedly arrested for disorderly conduct (which included calling a cop a "fucking nigger.")

According to Death and Taxes, Luke was also expelled from UConn Tuesday.

A writer from The Hartford Courant tried the bacon jalapeo mac and cheese to see if it was worth going to prison and getting kicked out of school for. They said it was only OK.

Who here is the bigger cry-baby? Let us know in this poll down here:

Previously: A woman who attacked someone for farting vs. a guy who complained to the police because a store published images of him shoplifting.

Winner: The shoplifter!!!

Follow Jamie Lee Curtis Taete on Twitter.

We went for dinner at North Pond, one of Chicago’s top restaurants, with a guest from out of town. He mentioned a martini he’d made, subbing a pickled beet for a lemon twist. Could North Pond make such a martini, he wondered? The seasonally-focused menu had beets in several dishes so he asked....

For years we’ve been highlighting ridiculous coupons with fine print so restrictive that it basically ruins all the fun of saving money. In that spirit, the folks at home furnishings chain Lovesac decided to create a discount that is nothing but fine print.

In an e-mail that went out to customers this week, Lovesac advertised “10% Off Everything*” with that asterisk referring to the disclaimer you see above.

But as the store makes clear, the savings apply to “literally every possible thing we make… if you see it in store or online then it’s 10% off and if anyone tries to tell you otherwise then it means they’re fibbing unless of course it is after the promotion date which ends on October 19th then they would be correct and you’d look silly for trying to sound right.”

The disclaimer even offers a suggestion on how to calculate the discount: “if you see something you like and you take the decimal point and move it over one digit and subtract that number from the total price then you would be left with the discounted price and if you are having trouble we suggest a calculator or probably a phone because most phones have calculators on them and seriously when was the last time you saw a calculator being actually used by someone who wasn’t born in the 1800’s and if you are holding a calculator right now as you read this then we apologize for any offense we may have caused but honestly what are you doing with a calculator it’s 2015.”

It’s just nice to see a retailer using the power of the asterisk for good and not very mundane evil.

PREVIOUS EXAMPLES OF SOUL-DEFLATING FINE PRINT:

• This Petco Coupon Excludes Everything I Would Buy At Petco

• • This Toys ‘R’ Us Coupon Excludes Toys. No, Really

• Printer Ink Sale At Staples Excludes Ink For Most Printers

• What Can This Babies R Us Coupon Actually Be Used For?

• The Sears Coupon That’s So Restrictive, It’s Convinced Me To Shop Elsewhere

• This JCPenney Coupon Doesn’t Understand The Term “No Exclusions”

I noted the other day that since the early 1980s, the world has lost about half of its coral reefs. According to a recent study, there's more to worry about in the sea: the ocean contains half the fish it did 45 years ago.

Professor McIntyre and his contemporaries believed that overfishing was inherently self-correcting. People might catch too much, but then they would stop fishing, letting the stock recover. They did not reckon on improvements in technology such as a monofilament line, factory trawlers, or fish finders that make it possible to catch so many fish so quickly that it can take decades for a stock to recover (if it ever does). Nor did he or his contemporaries understand food webs and ecological connections; reducing stocks of some species has more of an impact than others.

Update: Here's a PDF copy of the actual report by the WWF. (via @RachelAronson)

Tags: fish   science

A Florida county judge rebuked a domestic abuse victim for failing to appear in court and then sentenced the woman to jail.

Barack Obama is often criticized by the American public for seemingly enjoying his personal life outside his normal duties as President. “Nice to see he has all that time to golf while the economy is in the tank,” they often say. The criticism he receives may or may not be warranted depending on your point of view, but one thing is certain: The free time he spends on the golf course receives nowhere near the amount of ridicule and scorn he’d get if he decided to throw himself a hockey-themed birthday party, a la Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Celebrating his 11th, er, 63rd birthday, Putin and some of his best buddies took to a local ice rink in Sochi on Wednesday and shot the puck around for a couple hours. It cannot be confirmed, but it’s presumed they then drank soft drinks and ate pizza and cake and stuff.

The New York Times reports that lil’ Vlad invited all his friends, including several oligarchs currently facing U.S. sanctions for their role in Russia’s military incursion into Ukraine, and Sergei K. Shoigu, the defense minister who announced missile strikes against Syria earlier that day.

Here’s video of Putin skating gingerly up the ice, with not a single defender in sight, setting up one of his SEVEN goals on the day.

His team won, 15-10, of course. He is officially the Russian Kim Jong-un.

[via Vanity Fair]

Photo by Maciej A Czyzewski via

It's the economy, stupid. Or so goes the logic when it comes to running the world. Growth is king and, as UK Prime Minister David Cameron is keen to point out, a robust economy is the bedrock upon which all else is built.

But what if there's bedrock below the bedrock, something even more fundamental than the convoluted barter system we call money? Today, the "Earth Index" is appearing alongside the usual stock indexes in financial pages around the world, in the Times, the Wall Street Journal, and many others.

It's part of a project spearheaded by the BBC and the United Nations, aimed at putting a figure on mother nature's unpaid labor. The logic being if the moral argument about why we should respect the environment rather than destroy it isn't getting through to the suits, maybe one about cold hard cash will.

Neil Nightingale, creative director at BBC Earth, explains: "We see this as an additional way of looking of things, that brings the contribution of nature into sharp focus. If you were running any business or a country, you would not destroy your capital base and impair your ability to operate successfully in the future, so why do it with a part of the economy which these figures show is at least as large and important as the conventional one we usually look at."

It's a good question and the figures are intriguing. The Index estimates that bees save the economy more than 100 billion annually by sustaining fish populations, replenishing the atmosphere with oxygen, and absorbing CO2.

So is the idea to develop a more wide-ranging version of carbon credits, like ecological credits, bee credits, coral credits?

Neil explains: "I don't think we're necessarily qualified to tell people what to do with this data, except first of all sit up and take noticethese are huge figures we're talking about. By any normal economic reckoning, the scale of these figures demonstrates that the health of naturepreserving its capital, if you willis absolutely essential to our future. If the science and practice is developed further then I'm sure that it can help in more detail to shape policy to ensure the services nature provides to us continue."

READ: Black Goo, the Environment, and the End of the World

It's symbolic of a society indebted to Mammon that the only way to convince people not to burn the planet is by telling them their money will burn too. Still, these figures are food for thought.

But will the right people be thinking about them? The people at the Paris climate conference (COP) in November, for example.

Neil explains: "I hope that a holistic view of the world's future, including the enormous contribution that nature and natural services make to the well-being and prosperity of all humanity, will be very much factored into the thinking at COP."

Time will tell.

“Do not get bangs,” Jezebel’s Jasmine Guillory writes in a piece that rocked Slate’s New York and Washington offices to their foundations when someone happened to drop it in one of our Slack channels. “They won’t look good on you, they’ll drive you crazy, they look good on virtually no one, don’t do it.”

In an interesting cross-promotion with a Sanrio (the makers of Hello Kitty) character, KFC Japan offers new breaded and deep-ried salmon.

The Sanrio character in question is Kirimi-chan, who just happens to be a salmon fillet (well, technically, she has a normal body but a giant salmon fillet for a head). They've also come up with their own Sanrio character for the campaign, Agemi-kun, who is basically like Kirimi-chan except his head is a breaded salmon fillet topped with a dollop of tartar sauce.

kFC's Fried Salmon is being sold for a limited time by the piece or as part of a sandwich (on a roll with a basil sauce, tartar sauce, and lettuce). Individual pieces are going for 230 yen (~$1.91 US) each, while the sandwich is 390 yen (~$3.24 US).

While serving up fried fish isn't new to KFC Japan, it's typically one of the more traditional species of whitefish that's being offered rather than the more uncommon and more expensive salmon.

Actress Quvenzhané Wallis has signed on to write a series of children’s books for Simon and Schuster, the publisher announced Wednesday.

Wallis, 12, signed a four-book deal with Simon and Schuster’s Books for Young Readers, an imprint of the publisher’s children’s book division. According to USA Today, the deal specifically calls for a series of three “chapter books,” as well as a picture book based on Wallis’ life.

Wallis was nine years old when she became the youngest person to receive an Oscar nomination in 2013 for her role in Beasts of the Southern Wild. She also earned a Golden Globe nomination for playing the titular role in the 2014 adaptation of Annie. And the picture book will focus specifically on experiences at award shows, following a “spunky young heroine who is very much looking forward to a night out with her mom at an awards show.”

The series, which remains untitled, will center around Shai Williams, a third-grader who has a flair for the dramatic. Simon and Schuster said the books will be written for an audience aged “6 and up.” The first book will be released in January 2017, the second in fall 2017, and the last in Summer 2018.

 

 

Uber fired back at cabbies planning to stage a one day strike this Thursday, saying that taxis have failed to serve Chicago's neighborhoods equitably. [ more › ]

Selena Gomez made a big revelation this week, sharing that her 2014 break was not for rehab—as was widely reported—but because she needed chemotherapy to treat her lupus.

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