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

Lum discovers who got Seattle to call that really stupid last play in the Superbowl!

Welcome to the NHK

   

Welcome to the NHK

     I recently finished watching “Welcome to the NHK”, a darkly humorous hard-hitting expose of the phenomenon of the Hikikomori (a kind of Japanese shut-in who alienates themselves from the world totally often through mental and emotional problems).  Personally, I found it hard to watch at times as I’ve had problems similar to Sato and Misaki’s myself in my life.  In fact, there was a period back in the 90s when I shut myself away and didn’t come out for a long time due to personal problems. 

     

     The anime isn’t syrupy heartwarming or uplifting, there’s no “he magically gets better” or big win at the end, although some of the story arcs are a little anvillicious almost to the point of being an “afterschool special” with their message.  The online gaming episodes are probably the worst offenders of this where, at the end, Yamazaki delivers a long lecture and riot-act speech to Sato about the dangers and pitfalls of getting addicted to online gaming.

     The characters are played straight and Sato does improve by the end, getting out of his apartment, getting a job, etc.  His friend Misaki who also has problems starts getting her life in order too but its not “Oh they become successful and take over the world.”  In this way, its a very good show. 

Sato’s delusions and conspiracy theories are shown for what they are, pitiful madness, and you get dragged through the grinder with the characters as they struggle to help themselves and each other through very dark problems, often falling back to square one after a trauma.  Lots of the time there’s a manic dark humor in the show which is done well.  The humor is dark but not nasty or “wrong” (you know, humor where there shouldn’t be any). 

I recommend this anime highly to all my fellow anime fans (of course if you’re a fan, you’ve probably at least heard of it! :-)

I also find it ironic that many shows about hikikomori which followed after (such as Rozen Maiden and Kagerou Project) chose not to play it straight and showed the hikikomori’s delusions and hallucinations as real or showed them becoming some sort of superhero.   If you saw those first and then saw NHK, you might think that this show was a deconstruction or a satire, showing the Hikikomori and his misfit friends as what they are, misfits and down-and-outers who need help with no aliens, no powers, no nothing.   But NKH was created in 2002 and appears to have been one of the first shows to show this phenomenon in all its gritty glory.  Perhaps it was a little too hard hitting for fans and creators after all.