Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Guatemala's anti-crime tax, NFLers taunting police dogs and "LEGO Movie" gender-bending

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- Ray-Ray needs to dial-dial down his stupidity. Ray-Ray would be Oakland Raiders linebacker Ray-Ray Armstrong, who is being investigated by the Allegheny County Sheriff's Office for allegedly taunting a K-9 service dog before Oakland's game Sunday against the Pittsburgh Steelers. The idea of an NFLer talking junk or otherwise deliberately antagonizing a police dog when that player should be worried about getting ready for a game is equal parts idiocy and ridiculousness, but the best part of this entire mess is that the alleged crime would be considered a third-degree felony in Pennsylvania. Armstrong could face charges by the end of the week for allegedly barking at the dog, lifting up his shirt and pounding his chest between exiting the locker room and entering the field area for warm-ups, according to police. Bro, what the hell are you doing? Are you 12 years old or an NFL veteran? The dog was reportedly extremely agitated and the deputy handling it was doing her best to keep the canine from going off completely and making Armstrong feel the toothy consequences of his moronic actions. The sheriff's office notified the Steelers, the NFL and the Raiders of the investigation and has already interviewed witnesses and obtained video surveillance, which captured a portion of the incident. Armstrong was not interviewed before he left town and has refused to comment on the story, but he could still face league discipline if arrested. Believe it or not, the reason he’s even in Oakland is because the St. Louis Rams cut him last season for committing an excessive number of penalties. It’s hard to imagine such a disciplined guy doing something silly like racking up too many penalties………




- The fact that about 95 percent of crimes go unpunished in Guatemala is sad. That the government is weighing a temporary anti-crime tax to strengthen domestic prosecutors' offices seems a little desperate, but given the state of affairs in the Central American nation, perhaps worthwhile. The proposal to institute such a tax was put forth by a U.N. anti-impunity commission that’s involved because the United Nations feels so bad for poor, downtrodden Guatemala that it’s lending a hand trying to fix what’s broken with the country’s judicial system. Ivan Velasquez is the head of the U.N. commission and noted that  a similar tax was imposed to finance the 1996 peace accords that ended 36 years of civil war. The proposal has drawn mixed results, including by a man who just happens to head up the country's leading industry association.  Javier Zepeda leads that organization and you might be stunned to know that he opposes any new taxes right now. But hell, maybe Guatemala feels like it doesn’t need any stinking help these days because its anti-crime and anti-corruption forces are riding high after forcing the resignation of former president Otto Perez Molina for his links to a corruption scandal. Still, when ONLY 5 PERCENT OF CRIMES IN YOUR COUNTRY ARE ACTUALLY PROSECUTED, maybe it’s time to consider doing something new, lest your country devolve into even more of an unregulated cesspool of evil and violence where no one wants to visit and those who live there stay mostly because they’re too poor to get the hell out and find a country to live where at least half of the criminals are punished………




- Gender-bending in “The LEGO Batman Movie?” What the hell is going on here? It’s fine that the children’s building block toys originally wants to lampoon one of the most iconic superhero franchises of all-time and turn it into an animated children’s movie….but you cannot freak with the gender identities of key players in the story. Even though Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale have both said they’re done with the Batman franchise and it’s therefore available to be picked up and run with by someone else, it’s just not cool that Commissioner Gordon, a character who has traditionally been portrayed as male in all Batman projects and yet now has aging pop star Mariah Carey attached to it for the upcoming “Lego Batman Movie.” Carey is reportedly in talks to provide the voice of Gotham's police chief, which could make life confusing for fans of Fox’s current Batman prequel-style drama “Gotham,” which features Benjamin McKenzie in the James Gordon role. Gary Oldman took on the role in Nolan's “Dark Knight” trilogy and yet, here we have an overly sexualized female pop singer potentially poised to join a growing cast led by Will Arnett, who is reprising his role as Batman from “The Lego Movie,” as well as Michael Cera, who is voicing Robin, and Rosario Dawson, who is voicing Batgirl. Add in Ralph Fiennes as Batman's butler Albert Pennyworth and Zach Galifianakis portraying the Joker and you have yourself quite a star-voiced group. “The LEGO Batman Movie” will be the first of three Lego-based films in the works and is tentatively slated for release in February 2017………




- The stress of the holiday seasons can be too much for some to bear. The constant hustle and bustle, the added demands on time, the push to get so much done before a given holiday arrives, the financial constraints gift-giving puts on a person’s wallet….it can be an awful lot. It’s a good thing, then, that an unidentified United States Postal Service employee didn’t even make it to the heart of the holiday season before she got her ass fired. This slacker, whose name will eventually come out because the Internet, was out making deliveries recently when she had a package containing expensive electronic equipment that was supposed to be delivered to the door of one Hassan Hamze. It should have been a simple, fast delivery in part because it was one freaking package and secondly because Hamze was not home at the time. Taking that box to the door, knocking and then leaving it tucked behind a potted plant next to the door should have taken less than a minute, but a minute was something the delivery woman did not have. Rather than do her freaking job, she did as little as possible, pulling up outside Hamze's house in Greensboro, North Carolina and giving the package containing a high-tech lock worth $199 for Hamze’s front door a nice, two-handed toss out the side of her ride. She might have gotten away with her slacker-tastic display of incompetence if not for a motion-activated camera on Hamze's doorstep that captured the haphazard treatment of his package and amazingly, he wasn’t down with what went down. He contacted the post office, showed them the video and next thing you know, a person who most certainly would have blown a gasket if asked to deliver a truck full of Christmas packages now has plenty of free time on her hands to get some anger management counseling………

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