For those of you living in faraway lands, the current Vancouver media scene is dominated by an inquiry into the death of a Polish immigrant at the Vancouver International Airport a while back. The man did not speak English, was in RCMP secure quarters and became agitated. According to multiple RCMP officer testimonies, he picked up a stapler. So fearing for their safety, the highly trained, very seriously armed and armor-wearing officers tasered him. Four times. To death.

Now I’m not sure whether I should be crying or laughing, because even though the outcome was tragic, the whole affair is hilarious in its absurdity. Some very funny things have been written about all this, including an article in some free magazine that mentioned the appearance of staplers in police manuals and recruits being stapled at least once for training purposes.

Any way, for those of you who are geeky enough to have seen and remembered Office Space, this suddenly ran through my head: "… and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and it’s not okay
because if they take my stapler then I’ll set the building on fire…"

They didn’t take his stapler, they took his life.