It was contemporary, not quaint old fashioned period!

One of my favorite things to look out for in movies, TV shows and stories is when something which, at the time it was made, was cutting edge and the best they had but now seen as old fashioned and period.  

What am I talking about... crazy old man... 

Okay, like:

In 1933, these were our F-18s!

In the original 1933 King Kong movie, those biplanes attacking King Kong aren't some sort of antique kitch.  Those were the best we had!  Those planes are the U.S. air superiority fighters of the day!  The movie makers were attacking Kong with the best weapons we had (just like we do in modern monster movies).  

Sherlock Holmes is another good example.  One of the creators of Sherlock (Mark Gatiss) was talking about how the original Sherlock Holmes was contemporary when it was made.  And he is totally right!  We now see Holmes as a Victorian character, living in the foggy 1880s murk of industrial era London.  But when Conan Doyle wrote the stories, they were occurring at the time they were written!  The serializing of Holmes in journals and magazines by Watson was as cutting-edge as Tumblr or Facebook is now.  There's a story (think it was "Adventure of the Dancing Men") where Holmes telegraphs a police captain in Chicago with a pertinent question.  That was really cutting edge!  For the 1880s-1890s, telegraphing a foreign city half a world away was probably more technological wizardly and mind boggling than texting is to us today.

What would you call this sort of thing?  Its not really a trope, or maybe it is.  Anyway, I'd love to compile or collect a list of these things someday.  Maybe if I get famous, I'll have all my readers chime in with examples. 

To kill or not to kill

I was just reading about a case where a pharmacist shot and killed a robber at work.  This is understandable in a twisted sort of way if you have worked in pharmacy.  

See, right now, he could be facing manslaughter charges (although most everyone is saying it will probably be fully justifiable under self-defense).  He might even get a civil suit from the criminal scum's grieving family (because he was such a nice angel boy and never did nothing to nobody!)

But the alternative is even worse for the pharmacist. Like trying to explain to the DEA where all his Class-IIs (narcotics) went. 

"Oh, a robber stole all your morphine, oxycodone, codene, and oxycontin?  Awww, that's too bad... Your license is revoked.  Permanently."

And yes, that could and probably would happen.  The DEA is anal to the point that losing a single morphine tablet can get a technician fired.   Narcotics have to be accounted for at the end of each day and a report filed with the DEA on it.  Any discrepancy is treated as a full criminal offense and people will assume you are guilty if you are in any way involved.  There are no "honest" mistakes with narcotics.  Believe me, been there, have a t-shirt.

However, on the other hand, even a charge of manslaughter will not necessarily revoke this pharmacist's license.  Even if he's taken to court, sued by the family, he'll still probably get to use his licence.  Pharmacies will probably still hire him. Maybe not top of the line places or famous places but someone won't mind that he killed someone protecting those Class-IIs.   

Manslaugter is a state level crime.  Pissing off the DEA, even over something not your fault, is federal level (and they will act on it).  Even if his license wasn't revoked, he'd have to explain for the rest of his life to pharmacy managers during interviews and performance reviews why he let a robber walk off with everything in the C-II safe. 


The choice to kill or not kill was easy here.  I'm sure it was still agonizing but from a professional point of view, the pharmacist really had no choice.  The criminal wasn't just there to steal all his narcs.  The poor little scumbucket was there to end his career.  And the pharmacist obviously didn't feel like bagging groceries for the rest of his life. 

OMG, wrote the President, got a response!

Anyone who's read some of my posts on this blog will have read about me whining about a situation where I was denied unemployment in 2013 by a local health provider company.  This was the situation where the area I was working in had no Latinos in it and I got a pretty rough ride there.  

I was brought in with three other people in a work-to-hire situation and told that if we kept our noses clean, that we would be hired.  I might add that the other three people were white and some people at that location wanted to keep their workplace that color and made that known.  We all did our work and all four of us should have been hired.

After six months, the three white people were hired and I was let go right before Christmas.   I also got the more than slight feeling that racialism played a major role in the decision.

I've been so angry about this injustice since and, while not officially diagnosed, have been feeling extremely depressed since.

A while ago, just on a fussy whim, I went over to whitehouse.gov and wrote a long message to President Obama, outlining the situation and saying what had happened to me.  It must have been about four months ago, I didn't figure anyone had even read the message.

Then just today, in fact, a few minutes ago, I got a call from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission!  They had been referred my message and wanted to talk about it!  And so I did...

Oh, and thank you Mr. President.  I know you probably never saw my message personally, but because of the action of some nameless but hard working functionaries, you get the credit.  :-D