Hotel Stops At NOTHING To Stop Bad Reviews; Imposes $500 Fines If Your Friends Hate The Place

An angry chill has descended on
the Union Street Guest House
in Hudson, NY and it has nothing
to do with winter weather.  

UPDATE: To the surprise of absolutely nobody, the Union Street Guest House has rescinded its policy of fining people for negative reviews on Yelp and other online rating sites.

The owners said the whole thing was put on the web site years ago as a joke and never taken down.

Uh, right, whatever.  Now I wonder if they will ever recover from the shitstorm they created for themselves:

PREVIOUS DISCUSSION: The owners of New York State inn have discovered the obvious: If you have a draconian policy against negative reviews, you're going to get LOTS of negative reviews.

A place called the Union Street Guest House in Hudson, NY tells people that if you have a wedding in the area, and your guests stay at Union Street Guest House in Hudson,  then write a negative review about the place, you're subject to a $500 fine for each negative review, says the inn's owners

Here, let's have the inn itself explain the situation to you themselves, in all their pretentious, horrible glory:

"Please know that despite the fact that wedding couples love Hudson and our Inn, your friends and families may not. This is due to the fact that your guests may not understand what we offer --therefore we expect you to explain that to them."

Yes, the EXPECT you to explain that to them. Like little children. To stay at this inn, apparently you have to be as pretentious as the owners.

Anyway, the inn's verbiage goes on:

"USGH and Hudson are historic. The builders here are old (but restored). Our bathrooms and kitchens are designed to look old in an artistic "vintage" way. Our furniture is mostly hip, period furniture that you would see in many design magazines. (although comfortable and functional-obvious all beds are brand new.) 

If your guests are looking for a Marriott type hotel, they may not like it here."

I already don't like it there and I haven't seen the place. The hip period furniture, as they put it, might be cool, or maybe they got them at a third rate garage sale in Schenectady, for all I know.

Do the bathrooms look old in a charming way, or are the toilets tilted, leaking and so full of rust you can establish an iron mine in the bathroom?

So here's the bottom line:

"If you stay here to attend a wedding anywhere in the area and leave us a negative review on any Internet site, you agree to a $500 fine for each negative review."

And who decides if the review is actually negative?  If someone wrote, "The place was awesome, but my only complaint was one chair was slightly uncomfortable," does that earn a $500 fine?

The bigger question is, why would anyone want to stay at this inn with the policy in place? I'd be terrified one of my wedding guests would write something negative just for fun, and I'd be out $500.

Who wants to take that risk?

The inn generously (HA!) says it will rescind the fine if the review is taken off line.

As I noted, the best way to generate negative reviews is to whine that you don't want negative reviews and try to make people pay ridiculous amounts of money if they do.

I've got an idea! Why doesn't the Union Street Guest House ensure the place is comfortable and the staff is nice? I bet that would put the kabosh on negative reviews a lot faster than a fine of any dollar amount.

With news of their ridiculous fine rattling so fast around the Internet, Yelp is now rife with people saying terrible things about the Union Street Guest House. Some are kinda funny, too.

Here's one:

"Feel the power of the Internet
While you are getting wrecked
Hope it drills some sense into you
Coz this is going to be a long day for you."

Here's another good one:

"This place is actually kind of decent. Derek, who was working the front desk, had pee stains on his trousers, but I'm only deducting one star because it wasn't immediately clear whether the pee was his or someone else's.

Plus the vintage bed clothes gave me herbes, but I'm looking at that as a positive because it's one more way of getting out of having sex with my husband while his dorky cousin  Ben Reiter looks on.

There was also a super sweet chaise lounge in our room, though it smelled a touch musty. Every negative had a corresponding positive, and vice versa, hence three stars. Would I stay here again? Yes, if Derek paid me to, like last time."

Most of the hue and cry on Yelp is more along the lines of the inn taking people's free speech away, but  that only applies to the government. However, there might be a grey area on speech involving public accommodations, so we have to see if there's any lawsuits, or threats of any.

Hudson, NY has revived in recent years and now it seems like it's a great place to visit. I just might do so. But I'm sure I'll find great accommodations other than the Union Street Guest House.

Bad Monday: Putin Is Pooped And A Plane Potty Mouth

For those of you who Don't Like Mondays, here's a post with three videos that will make you feel like you have company. Or more likely, that you're having a better day than some other folks.

The first video brings us to Russia, where the country's president, Vladimir Putin, was giving a speech commemorating World War I.  As he spoke, a bird apparently decided to give its opinion of our dear old friend Vladimir.

I guess with the whole Ukraine thing, targeted sanctions against Putin are coming from all directions:



Next, we have a video shot by Mike Irving aboard a plane set for takeoff, although he documents a bit of a delay.

It seems a woman is having a very, very, very bad day, to the point where her trip is not going to go as far as the one for everybody else on the plane.

When watching this video, careful it's NSFW. Or kids. The woman puts new meaning into the term "potty mouth"

Extra props to Irving to catching the priceless looks on the faces of a mother and her young daughter toward the end of the video:



Finally, if you just don't like Mondays, and need more, here's the Boomtown Rats doing their thing from 1979:

Neighbor Offers Sugar; Might Get Her Evicted For It

This woman might get evicted for giving
her neighbor some sugar for his tea.  

No good deed goes unpunished, apparently.  

In Houston, a woman left a bag of sugar at the door of a neighbor who needed the sweetener.

This is in a public housing project, where drug transactions can understandably get you evicted.

Somebody saw the woman's sugar gesture, decided she was delivering drugs, reported it and now the lady is in trouble.

The housing authority send her, and the recipient of the sugar that they are accused of dealing drugs, said KHOU. (Warning, the link has that stupid auto play feature, so turn the sound off)

The problem was, she put the sugar in a Ziploc bag, and left it by the neighbor's door. That, to some people --a white substance in a baggie -- like a drug deal.

They were told that if they don't sign a paper, which amounts to a confession of drug dealing, they will be evicted. But both the woman who gave the sugar and the guy who got it said they won't sign it, because they don't want to lie.

On the bright side, they can find another place to live, since they won't lose their vouchers for housing, say authorities. (Losing vouchers requires a higher standard of proof of drug dealing)

But should these two people get evicted because one person said they think they were dealing drugs? You can get anybody you don't like evicted that way, since the housing authority apparently takes anybody's word for anything.

Seems like they could come up with a more fair system.

A Happy Sign Language Sing A Long For Your Road Trip

The happy couple groove via sign language
on a road trip  

It's the weekend and you might be traveling somewhere for a summer getaway.

From Huffington Post, here's a couple, Tina Cleveland and her fiance, Paul Sirimarco in their car singing along to that song from "Grease" -- "You're The One That I Love," using American Sign Language.

I like the happy look on their faces as they're doing their little routine.  On Cleveland's Facebook page, Sirimarco said he's just learning sign language from her, but he's doing OK.

I'm a little worried that Sirimarco had to take his hands off the wheel occassionally to do this, but the video is still a sweet way to improve your weekend mood.

Watch:

Fascinating, Empowering Colbie Caillat Video: "Try"

Colbie Caillat  

Hat tip to the JoeMyGod blog on this.

The latest music video by Colbie Caillat called "Try" has gone viral, because I bet it resonates with a lot of women.

As of early afternoon Friday, the video, which was posted July 8, had gotten nearly 18.3 million hits.

The only drawbacks I see are the troll comments on the bottom (don't read them!) and the annoying pop up messages that come up as Vevo invites you to watch some of their other videos.

The video is still very much worth watching.

In it, Caillat, and several other women lip-syncing the song, remove their makeup as the tune talks about how women really don't have to do themselves up so much to make people like them, or more importantly, like themselves.

Yes, the idea is a bit cliched, but Caillat and the producers of the video make this really effective.

Watch and tell me and everybody else what you think:

English Language School Teacher Fired Over Blog About Homophones Because His Boss Thinks Homophones Are Totally Gay

This guy's language school blog
post about homophones got him fired. 

The English language can be tricky for those trying to learn it.  

There was a guy named Tim Torkildson at the Nomen Global Language Center who wrote a helpful blog post about homophones, which are words that sound the same but have completely different meanings.

Think "peal" and "peel" or "flour" and "flower."

Here's the "problem": The word "homophone" has "homo" in it. Torkildson's boss, Clarke Woodger, fired him, because the subject of homophones is just so gay.

Paul Rolly, writing in the Salt Lake Tribune, reported that Woodger complained that because of the blog, "now our school is going to be associated with homosexuality."

Actually, it wouldn't have, had Woodger not been so homophobic that any word with the word "homo" in it is totally gay.  

Um, can you have words that have a same-sex attraction toward each other?  

As Rolly reports:  "(Torkildson) knew the 'homo' part of the word could be politically charged, but he thought the explanation of that quirky part of the English language would be educational."

Boy, was it ever! I had no idea I should avoid words with the word "homo" in it, like "homosapien" or "homogenize" because they're so gay.

Torkildson said he wanted to teach the concept of homophones because such words are confusing to someone whose native language doesn't have that feature, Rolly reports.

However, Woodger said that most of his language school's students are at a basic level of English proficiency and are not ready to learn complex concepts like homophones.

This whole thing could get worse, though, if you consider another word for homophone is homonym.

Yep, as I said, the English language is just so queer.

Turkish Women Are Laughing Uproariously At Politician Who Said Women Shouldn't Laugh

Why are these Turkish women laughing? Ask
the boneheaded Turkish politician who inspired the chuckles. 

Bulent Arinc, a Turkish Deputy Prime Minister, thinks he knows how women should behave.

Women should be chaste, Arinc said in a recent speech, according to The Guardian.

In part, he said. "She should know the difference between public and private. She should not laugh in public."

I'm not sure how not laughing in public makes a woman chaste, but thankfully, Turkish women are having none of it.

In a move that is cheering an otherwise grim world, thousands of Turkish women took to social media posting selfies of their own laughter.  It's a rebuke to Arinc's weird ideas about a woman's place.

All those selfies pretty much put our Turkish Deputy Prime Minister in his place, huh?

In another positive development, many men in Turkey went on line to express their solidarity with all those chuckling women. "The men of a country in which women are not allowed to laugh are cowards," said one Tweet from a man, according to The Guardian.

Yes, that's stating the obvious, but sometimes you have to.  

More welcomed laughter among Turkish women.  

A main opposition presidential candidate also disagreed with Arinc, saying: "More than anything else, our country needs women to smile and to hear everybody's laughter."

As for Arinc and his reaction to all these publicly guffawing women, he resorted to the old "My speech was taken out of context" defense.

He said his speech lasted an hour and a half (YAWN!!!) and everybody's focusing on that one reference to women laughing, he whined.

Arinc said he understands banning women from laughing in public is idiotic, and he's not pushing for that. He said he's opposed to "fake laughter," whatever that is.

I hope the women of Turkey keep laughing. A lot. And I hope the men continue to join in the fun.