General news thread

[Donward]

The craziest hotel/seagull/pepperoni related story that I've read in some time.

 

http://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/lifetime-ban-from-victorias-fairmont-empress-for-pepperoni-seagull-fiasco-lifted-after-17-years

 

 

A Nova Scotia man has received a “pardon” from the Fairmont Empress for his lifetime ban from the iconic Victoria hotel after he inadvertently trashed one of their rooms with a pack of pepperoni and a flock of seagulls.

 

It all happened 17 years ago when Nick Burchill booked a room at the Empress for a work conference. Burchill was also in the Canadian Naval Reserve and his Navy buddies asked that he bring some Brother’s pepperoni, a Halifax delicacy.

 

“Because this was the Navy we were talking about, I brought enough for a ship,” Burchill wrote in a March 28 Facebook post about the ordeal, which has gone viral.

 

His pepperoni-packed suitcase was misplaced by the airline, so it arrived in Victoria a day late.

 

Burchill knew the pepperoni was likely still edible but he thought the most food-safe thing to do would be to keep it cool until he turned over the goods.

His fourth-floor room facing the Inner Harbour was large but lacking a refrigerator.

 

“It was April, the air was chilly. An easy way to keep all of this food cool would be just to keep it next to an open window,” Burchill wrote.

 

He spread the packages of pepperoni out on a table and along the window sill, then went for a leisurely four- or five-hour walk.

 

“I remember walking down the long hall and opening the door to my room to find an entire flock of seagulls in my room,” Burchill wrote. “I didn’t have time to count, but there must have been 40 of them and they had been in my room, eating pepperoni for a long time.”

 

Burchill discovered that spicy pepperoni does not agree with a seagull’s digestive system. The room was covered in guano. Burchill’s unexpected entry startled the birds.

 

“They immediately started flying around and crashing into things as they desperately tried to leave the room through the small opening by which they had entered,” he wrote. “Less composed seagulls are attempting to leave through the other closed windows. The result was a tornado of seagull excrement, feathers, pepperoni chunks and fairly large birds whipping around the room.”

 

Lamps tumbled to the floor, the curtains were trashed, the coffee tray was disgusting, he described. Burchill waded through the flock and opened the remaining windows to let the gulls escape.

 

“One tried to re-enter the room to grab another piece of pepperoni and in my agitated state, I took off one of my shoes and threw it at him,” he said.

Burchill then chased the last gull standing through the room as it held a “big hunk of pepperoni in its gob.”

 

He grabbed a towel, captured the bird and in his haste, threw the package out the window, too. Unbeknownst to Burchill, the shoe and the towel-trapped seagull had plummeted to the Empress’s front lawn, striking a group of tourists who were walking toward the tea room. Back in the room, Burchill was surveying the damage and also trying to make it on time to an important work dinner. Then he realized one half of his only pair of shoes was on the hotel’s front lawn. He recovered the shoe which was a bit wet from landing in a patch of soil.

 

Burchill tried to dry the shoe with a hairdryer, and when his phone rang, distraction caused the hairdryer to plunge into a sink filled with water.

“I don’t know how much of the hotel’s power I knocked-out, but at that point I decided I needed help,” Burchill wrote.

 

Finally, he called the front desk to fess up to what happened.

 

“I can still remember the look on the lady’s face when she opened the door,” he said.

 

He left the dismayed cleaning lady and went to his work dinner. When Burchill returned, his items were moved to a smaller room and eventually his company received a letter banning him from the Empress.

 

In his mea culpa letter to the hotel, Burchill writes “I have matured and I admit responsibility for my actions. I come to you, hat-in-hand to apologize for the damage I had indirectly come to cause and to ask you reconsider my lifetime ban from the property. I hope that you will see fit to either grant me a pardon, or consider my 18 year away from the empress as ‘time served,’ “

 

Tracey Drake, the hotel’s director of public relations said as wild as it sounds, the story is true. Drake initially thought it was an April Fool’s joke but long-term staff confirmed the tale, she said.

 

“It’s one of those things where you can’t make this stuff up,” Drake said. “In the hotel industry, you see a lot of things.”

 

Burchill visited Victoria and the Empress Hotel over the Easter weekend. Ryan Reardon, the hotel’s director of rooms, told him he is once again welcome as a guest.

 

“I bet it was the pound of Brothers Pepperoni that I gave them as a peace offering that did the trick,” Burchill quipped.

[LoooSeR]

Sultan and Dark Lord in Ankara

   The official welcoming ceremony of Vladimir Putin in Ankara

 

[Donward]

Quite the ceremonial military parade for a diplomatic visit. 

[Donward]

TTYOL 1925: 30,000 members of the KKK march down Pennsylvania Avenue in our nation's capital in full regalia in the culmination of a decade of growth which saw support from an American President and numerous US politicians as well as Hollywood.

 

TTYOL 2018: White supremacists are reduced to surreptitiously slipping homemade laminated cards into diaper boxes at - presumably a Target or Pampers distribution warehouse where they had a minimum wage temp job - stating "It's OK To Be White".

 

https://nypost.com/2018/04/10/white-supremacist-propaganda-found-in-diapers-from-target/

 

...

 

Yeah, the white supremacist movement is officially dead and powerless people. 

[Ulric]

Ok, so the phrase may have been in use with white supremacist organizations for a while, but I still don't get how the phrase "It's OK to be white." is inherently racist or discriminatory. Everyone reacts to that phrase as if it were on the same level as "gas the jews", though.

 

I guess I must be a racist.

[Sturgeon]

6 minutes ago, Ulric said:

"It's OK to be white."

 

AFAIK this was never a "dogwhistle" of racist sectors, it was literally created by 4chan as a way to troll snowflakes on campuses.

[roguetechie]

14 hours ago, Ulric said:

Ok, so the phrase may have been in use with white supremacist organizations for a while, but I still don't get how the phrase "It's OK to be white." is inherently racist or discriminatory. Everyone reacts to that phrase as if it were on the same level as "gas the jews", though.

 

I guess I must be a racist.

 

It's just as horribly racist and offensive as saying ALL lives matter instead of black lives matter... Aka not at all.

 

Hopefully the chans will continue coming up with stuff like this which people will start using and which the fuckwits will scream is racist etc.

 

Because every single time they make a big deal out of one of these things several people who used to support their insanity suddenly realize that it's militantly stupid and come back to reality.

[Ramlaen]

14 hours ago, Sturgeon said:

 

AFAIK this was never a "dogwhistle" of racist sectors, it was literally created by 4chan as a way to troll snowflakes on campuses.

 

It does a great job at outing people who have been conditioned to treat anything that is not openly hostile to whites as white supremacy.

 

Even the people who wrote the wiki article can’t help themselves.

[Ramlaen]

24 minutes ago, roguetechie said:

 

It's just as horribly racist and offensive as saying ALL lives matter instead of black lives matter... Aka not at all.

 

Hopefully the chans will continue coming up with stuff like this which people will start using and which the fuckwits will scream is racist etc.

 

Because every single time they make a big deal out of one of these things several people who used to support their insanity suddenly realize that it's militantly stupid and come back to reality.

 

Tricking “journalists” into thinking the okay hand sign meant WP is my favorite.

 

[roguetechie]

3 minutes ago, Ramlaen said:

 

Tricking “journalists” into thinking the okay hand sign meant WP is my favorite.

 

LOL, and a good time was had by all!

 

The one thing that pisses me off a little bit though is that I used to be the crazy guy among my social circle. The shit I'd say sometimes was all shocking or whatever. Now... I'm so boring middle of the road moderate on pretty much everything that I even make myself bored!.

 

The things I say and think haven't changed a whole bunch between then and now, but I'm suddenly the sane and moderate guy?

 

That's bad... And these asshats are taking my act damnit.

[Sturgeon]

14 minutes ago, Ramlaen said:

 

It does a great job at outing people who have been conditioned to treat anything that is not openly hostile to whites as white supremacy.

 

Even the people who wrote the wiki article can’t help themselves.

 

Yeah they cite the ADL as "discovering" the term was a dogwhistle for white supremacists going back to 2001. This is the same ADL that declared Pepe a hatememe.

[ShamefurDispray]

So are scuba divers all white supremacists? 

[Sturgeon]

4 hours ago, ShamefurDispray said:

So are scuba divers all white supremacists? 

 

Yes.

[Oedipus Wreckx-n-Effect]

4 hours ago, ShamefurDispray said:

So are scuba divers all white supremacists? 

I've never seen a black person scuba diving.

[Collimatrix]

Greek fighter crashes after a tangle with the Turkish Air Force.

[Xoon]

20 hours ago, Sturgeon said:

 

Yes.

And everyone from Nordic countries. 

 

ADL really hates vikings. 

 

 

I remember Sweden also being tricked into thinking ok sign is for white power, that milk is racist and so on.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Trump just squished the latest round of sanctions on Russia:

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/16/us/politics/trump-rejects-sanctions-russia-syria.html

 

I'm starting to formulate an idea of what may have gone down over the last couple of weeks.....It's beginning to look like theatrics on a grand scale (& the UK's in the thick of it).

[Ramlaen]

South and North Korea are discussing plans to announce an official end to the military conflict between the two countries that are still technically at war, the Munhwa Ilbo newspaper reported, citing an unidentified South Korean official.

[Sturgeon]

5 hours ago, Ramlaen said:

South and North Korea are discussing plans to announce an official end to the military conflict between the two countries that are still technically at war, the Munhwa Ilbo newspaper reported, citing an unidentified South Korean official.

 

but muh wwiii

[Donward]

5 hours ago, Ramlaen said:

South and North Korea are discussing plans to announce an official end to the military conflict between the two countries that are still technically at war, the Munhwa Ilbo newspaper reported, citing an unidentified South Korean official.

 

26 minutes ago, Sturgeon said:

 

but muh wwiii

INB4 Kim Jong Un gets the Nobel Peace Prize

[Ramlaen]

6 minutes ago, Donward said:

 

INB4 Kim Jong Un gets the Nobel Peace Prize

 

If Kim goes the peace route and opens up Best Korea to the outside world I would have a hard time denying him one.

 

After Trump’s of course.

[Mighty_Zuk]

1 hour ago, Ramlaen said:

 

If Kim goes the peace route and opens up Best Korea to the outside world I would have a hard time denying him one.

 

After Trump’s of course.

Yeah I figure so many people are going to be disappointed with the GEOTUS not starting a 3rd world war.

 

The warmonger has brought peace to the irreconcilable.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

If Trump manages to settle this peacefully, I'll be seriously impressed.....I'm starting to think there might be more to the man than we've been led to believe (hence comment at the end of my last post), but I can't find enough information to clarify my conjecture.

[Scolopax]

Mike Pompeo apparently had a meeting a few weeks back with Kim Jong Un to discuss a possible summit with Trump.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

Counterpunch has a good article on Cambridge Analytica:  https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/03/23/the-mind-benders-how-to-harvest-facebook-data-brainwash-voters-and-swing-elections/