Quiz: Ben & Jerry's Flavor or Porn Flick?

Revered Vermont institution Ben & Jerry's found itself in the news today, and not for its yummy, creamy treats: The company filed a lawsuit against the producer of the "Ben & Cherry's" series of pornographic films. Each title in the X-rated series is, you guessed it, a parody of a B&J's ice cream flavor. The New York Daily News has the scoop, along with some potentially not-safe-for-work photos (although the scandalous bits are blacked out) (not talking about the photo of Ben and Jerry themselves though).

The socially conscious Vermont company is suing a California smut peddler that blatantly ripped off its logo for X-rated DVDs.

...

An unprintable title drawn from the flavor Banana Split features two bare-chested women on the cover.

A lawsuit filed Wednesday in Manhattan Federal Court demands the porn be taken off the market and seeks unspecified damages.

Unprintable? What prudes you are, New York Daily News.

Anyway, one wonders if Ben & Jerry's has a leg to stand on, given that some of their real-life flavor names are, well, kinda scandalous. (Yes, that includes Clusterfluff, which could probably be the title to a very fascinating porno but was later changed to What a Cluster.) Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, after all, and those Häagen-Dazs people can only wish that there was anything sexy about their treats.

And now, a game: We've listed ten names below. It's up to you to decide if each one is a Ben & Jerry's flavor or a porno flick. The answers are listed after the jump. Ready? Go!

1. Americone Cream
2. Schweddy Balls
3. Chubby Hubby
4. New York Super Fat and Chunky
5. Late Night Snack
6. Berried Treasure
7. Hairy Garcia
8. Peanut Butter D-Cups
9. Karamel Sutra
10. Boston Cream Thigh

Vermont's Fake Twitter Accounts: A Field Guide

You may have heard about @THISISVT, the new Twitter account which will be operated by a different Vermont citizen each week. It was created by the state Department of Tourism in the vein of @Sweden and @NewZealand, but hopefully without the awkward moments. Picking a citizen to temporarily act as the voice of a polity is officially trending.

@THISISVT's goal of representing Vermont through the real voices of Vermonters is a noble one. But you know what's more fun? Fake voices. More specifically, the jokey Twitter accounts that come about through anthropomorphizing the creatures and machines that populate our state. They're a critical part of the Twitter ecosystem, making sure that it can't be taken too seriously in the midst of all the self-promotion and buzzwords. Sure, they're probably a waste of time — but at least they're fun! (Usually.)

Here's a brief guide to the parody accounts that populate our local Twittersphere. Give 'em a follow if you don't already.

(Note: This list does not include Twitter accounts purporting to belong to pets or newborns. Parents, please don’t pretend to be your child on social media.)

Cruiser-Crushin' Vermont Farmer Becomes an Internet Hero

By now you're probably familiar with Roger Pion, the Newport farmer who went all HULK SMASH on seven Orleans County Sheriff's Department vehicles last week. Pion, who was reportedly angry over a previous marijuana arrest, is now facing more than a dozen charges in connection with his tractor rampage.

But it's not all bad news for Pion — he's got the Internet on his side. Shortly after Pion's story hit the news, someone created a Facebook page called "Roger Pion, the magnificent," which has accumulated 1512 likes as of this writing. On that page you'll find some excellent works of Photoshop — Pion in his finest Ethan Allen get-up, his now-infamous tractor in progressively wilder situations, plus other takeoffs on popular online memes. That's right: Roger Pion is now an Internet folk hero.

A Moose on the Loose in Winoos'

If you spotted a long-legged ungulate on the loose in downtown Winooski this weekend, don't worry — it wasn't the ghost of Pete the Moose come back to haunt you. It was just your average confused adolescent moose, out for a ramble through the Onion City. 

I made a few phone calls after Seven Days associate publisher Cathy Resmer came to work this morning with stories of a moose sighting on Green Up Day. Cathy was picking up trash on Weaver Street and says she was almost run over by a "frantic" moose that bolted out of the police station parking lot.

The moose turned onto West Allen and headed for the river. When Cathy called home to tell her wife Ann-Elise about the sighting, she learned that Ann-Elise had spotted the same moose just a short while earlier, hanging out just beyond the fence in their neighbor's yard. Soon after, the couple's young son, Graham, saw the moose running down the street and exclaimed, "Mom, I just saw the biggest dog I've ever seen in my life running down the street!"

The sightings didn't end there. After Cathy posted on Facebook, other reports trickled in: of a moose running alongside 189, of one dashing across Williston Road and into the Staples parking lot (and dodging traffic as he went).

Performance Artist Unsettles Burlington Commuters

Have you seen this person?

A Seven Days reader nearly drove off the road the first time she did. The white-clad figure was walking down the sidewalk on Shelburne Road near Liberty Inn & Suites around 7:45 a.m. Wednesday morning.

"It's the strangest thing, they wear this ankle length white puffy coat with large red balls hanging off of it," writes the reader. "The coat is a little odd, but typically, I wouldn't take much notice. It's the fact that they are also wearing a very bizarre white plastic mask (kind of like Phantom of the Opera, but covering their entire face)."

Vermont Company to Supply Cat Toys to the Stars

Last week, Milia Bell of Burlington packed up 300 Tickle Pickles and shipped them to California. The squishy green tubes, redolent of catnip, will go in swag bags offered to attendees of the 84th Academy Awards on February 26.

If any A-listers actually own cats rather than handbag-sized dogs, those Pickles will eventually end up where they belong — being clawed and embraced by frenzied felines. That could be a stroke of a luck for a two-person Vermont business.

Bell is the owner of Tipsy Nip Organic Catnip Products, which used to be PupCat Bakery. She's been baking treats for cats and dogs and selling them at local farmers markets since 2004. Since 2009, when Suzanne Podhaizer interviewed her for Seven Days, Bell and her partner have shifted focus — from dogs to cats. They changed their name and now sell only their cat toys and catnip wholesale, with 15 to 20 accounts around the country. (Their canine baked goods are still available at farmers markets.)

Shit Vermonters Say

You may have heard about the "Shit People Say" meme that's taken the internet by storm in the past month. It began with the "Shit Girls Say" video, in which a guy dressed in drag recites stereotypically girly phrases. This went viral after a few million people said "OMG this is soooo true!" and shared it on Facebook. Next came the copycat videos, which became increasingly specific/offensive — "Shit Guys Say," "Shit Black Girls Say," "Shit Drunk Girls Say," "Shit Girls Say to Gay Guys," "Shit Middle-Aged Guys Say While Waiting In Line at the Bank," and so on.

A recent sub-genre of the "Shit People Say" meme has been the rise of the geographically focused videos, ranging from the obvious ("Shit New Yorkers Say") to the less-obvious ("Shit Austinites Say"). Fashionably late as always, there still hasn't been a Shit Vermonters Say video, but Vermont's Twitter community filled the void admirably today, beginning with @whitneyinvt. Here are a few of our favorites. Thanks for giving us an excuse to stare at Twitter instead of doing real work today, Whitney.

Huntington, Vt.'s Roy Haynes featured on TLC's "Extreme Cheapskates"

 

Clicking past the cable TV channel TLC is like trying to walk by a train wreck: It's a gruesome disaster unfolding before your eyes but your morbid curiosity just won't let you look away. Such was the case last night when some friends and I chanced upon TLC — which, I suspect, now stands for Total Lunatics Channel — only to see a recent episode of "Extreme Cheapsakes." The show regularly features "average" Americans who try to stretch every penny well beyond its normal tensile strength. 

As the episode started, it previewed all that was to come, including a Kansas City woman, Angela Coffman, who refuses to buy toilet paper for her family and instead uses reusable cloth wipes, which she washes wih the rest of her laundry. There was a collective groan of revulsion in the room at the sight of her kids holding up the skidmarked rags — "Don't worry, they're clean!" mom insists. But before the channel could be changed to something less nauseating, we all began to recognize some familiar local landmarks.

Lo and behold, this week's episode (original air date: December 28, 2011) prominently featured Vermonter Roy Haynes, aka the self-anointed "cheapest man in America." Haynes, 58, lives with his wife, LIsa, in a surprisingly attractive house in Huntington. There, the couple runs a dog-rescue shelter called Save Our Strays, which was featured in Seven Days' March 2009 Animal Issue. Previously, Haynes was also featured for his Dumpster-diving proficiency in this September 2003 7D story, "Cheap Tricks." 

State Health Department Bans "Bath Salts" and Five Synthetic Cannabinoids

"Tranquility", "Cloud 9", "Vanilla Sky" and similarly named products sold online as "bath salts" may sound as calm and relaxing as a hot bubble bath, but these ain't your grandma's epsom salts. Bath salts are the street name for the designer drug, Methylenedioxypyrovalerone (MDPK), a powerful new stimulant to hit the underground drug scene in the last few years. MDPK, along with the much older hallucinogen, Salvia divinorum, or "Seer's Sage" (right), have just joined the ranks of illegal substances in Vermont, with possession of a single dose of these drugs constituting a felony.

The Vermont Department of Health announced this morning that it has banned the use, sale, possession or manufacture of bath salts and other designer drugs, which are sold in head shops and over the Internet to skirt state drug laws. As of December 16, bath salts and five synthetic cannabinoids — the active ingredients in marijuana — are now illegal in the Green Mountain State.

From the Village That Brought Us the Men of Maple Corner Nude Calendar: A Happiness Store

Everyone knows you can't buy happiness. Even Ginny Sassaman, the Calais artist and mediator who is opening a happiness store in Maple Corner this weekend.

She acknowledges the irony. Sassaman laughed just like everyone else did when a presenter at last year's Gross National Happiness conference in Burlington showed a cartoon featuring a happiness store — because, duh, it's just not something you can buy.

But it got her to thinking: Why couldn't she open a storefront location where people could gather to learn about Gross National Happiness, the Bhutanese concept that a nation's wellbeing shouldn't be measured by the gross national product but by its citizens' happiness?

And so Sassaman's Happiness Paradigm Store and Experience was born. "A happiness store — bright, fun, open and welcoming — could bring a lot more people into this important debate in a joyful way," says Sassaman.

From an A-frame in tiny Maple Corner — the unincorporated village within Calais that made a name for itself in 2002 when local guys got naked for a calendar, which raised $500,000 to renovate the community center — Sassaman will sell art and crafts made from recycled or repurposed materials, as well as books and other items.