- Being accused of attempting to disturb public order isn't
typically noteworthy. It’s a common criminal charge that can happen nearly
anywhere in the world….unless that charge of attempting to disturb public order
is accompanied by allegations of violating a kingdom's labor laws and
communicating with a sorcerer to bewitch your employer. Yes, communicating with
sorcerers to cast spells on your employer does put a different slant on the
situation, as an unidentified Egyptian man sentenced to six years in prison in
Saudi Arabia is discovering. This convicted evildoer was accused of acquiring a
secret military document that listed the movements and names of Saudi troops
and of emailing this document to the Iranian Embassy in Lebanon. That’s a
serious charge, as Saudi Arabia and Iran are regional rivals, but the charges
would theoretically go more along the lines of espionage…or so one would think.
This is the latest in a long line of instances of Saudi Arabia accusing Iran of
meddling in its affairs and trying to destabilize the region, but the details
of the case remain murky. What we know is that the Specialized Criminal Court
in Riyadh sentenced the Egyptian national, but what remains unclear is how and
why sorcery became involved in this mix. Did this man use a magic spell to
transport the document to the embassy? Did he put it into a magic hat, wave his
wand and make it disappear? Dammit, Saudi Arabia, if you’re going to convict
someone of sorcery, don’t leave us hanging when it comes to the details……..
- NFL fans are a tightly wound lot. They overreact to every
bit of news concerning their favorite team - or their fantasy team - as if
they’ve just been told that a family member has contracted a fatal illness.
Tell them the star receiver tore his ACL and they all but curl up in a ball and
start wailing. Inform them that the starting quarterback is undergoing an MRI
on his right shoulder and they’re heading to the nearest church to fervently
pray for healing. Oh, and have their rookie kicker go 3 for 6 on field goal
attempts in practice, continuing his recent run of poor performance in
PRACTICE, and those fans are going to boo said kicker lustily and look to run
him out of town. Such is life Tampa Bay Buccaneers rookie kicker Roberto
Aguayo, who had yet another bad day during a joint practice with the Cleveland
Browns. "He's struggling," coach Dirk Koetter said after practice.
"He's struggling a little bit right now. He's gotta work his way through
it." Aguayo shanked his first attempt of practice at 35 yards out and
after making his next two attempts, he was wide on a pair of 45-yard attempts.
Through two preseason games, he's missed two field goals and an extra point and
that’s not the player the Bucs thought they were getting when they traded up to
draft him. They were eager to have a guy who, while at Florida State, was
198-for-198 on extra points and only missed nine field goals in three years.
Koetter didn’t exactly stand firm in his defense of his kicker, passing all
questions about bringing in another kicker to general manager Jason Licht. "I'd
say a little bit, but in times like this, it builds you up so down the road in
the future, you're a lot stronger, ya know? You've got to have times like this
where you struggle a little bit," Aguayo said of his issues. Umm, sure……….
- If ever was a transparently false, hastily constructed lie
trying to cover up illegal activity, this is the most clear-cut example. It
belongs to Julio Hernandez, a fired delivery driver for a distribution center
in Ruskin, Florida who was recently discovered to have Amazon containers
stacked from floor to ceiling in his garage, containers housing $121,000 worth
of Amazon items he was supposed to drive from that distribution center in
Florida, to Fort Worth, Texas. According to an arrest report from the Lee
County Sheriff's Office, Hernandez is suspected of refusing to make the
delivery after claiming he never received $1,800 he was owed for his work as a
driver for a subcontracted transportation company. That’s the official story,
anyhow. That all sounds like a load of crap cooked up by a man who stole all of
that merch and then figured he needed a good excuse to make it seem like he
wasn’t just a straight-up scumbag. The sheriff's office last month began
investigating the theft of thousands of Amazon orders that were supposed to be
delivered to Fort Worth and it didn’t take them long to steer their case in the
direction of Hernandez, who was locked and loaded with his tall tale of how he
refused to deliver the orders because he said he was never paid. Maybe he
should have done the smart thing and tried to re-sell some of those items
because he could use it for his legal defense now that he’s been arrested on
theft and extortion charges and had to pay $40,000 in bail. Nice try on that
story of being screwed over by your employer though, Julio………
- What’s wrong with being confident - or just a confident
plagiarist? Isn't that right, pop hack Demi Lovato? That question is worth
asking because Lovato is being sued by Sleigh Bells for allegedly sampling
their 2010 track 'Infinity Guitars' without the band's permission. Ah, a nice,
old-fashioned copyright infringement lawsuit was filed in a Los Angeles court,
alleging that Lovato’s 2015 track ‘Stars’, which was released on her
'Confident' album as a bonus track, features elements of bass drum and
hand-clap rhythms ripped directly rom Sleigh Bells’ own track. Sleigh Bells
members Alexis Krausse and Derek Miller are the defendants and they waste no
words in going straight at Lovato in their filing. “A comparison of the two
songs reveals that, at the very least, the combination of the hand claps and
bass drum, structured as 3 quarter beats and a rest, with the bass drum
providing a counter-rhythm to the hand claps, is at least substantially similar
in both works,” the document states. “This infringing material repeats
throughout the defendants’ song.” It’s a pretty damn specific claim, one that
comes less than a year after Sleigh Bells took to Twitter to accuse Lovato of
using snippets from their songs. The band is on the record as saying that they
were "flattered" but that they "were not contacted" about
the supposed samples. "Gotta clear those," they said at the time. In
response, Lovato's representatives
provided a statement that said, "We
did not use any samples in Demi Lovato's song 'Stars.' Demi was also not
involved with the production. She only wrote top line." Wait, a pop singer
who didn’t even write their own song and relied on someone else to do all of
the work before slapping their name on the finished project? Shocker……..
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