Several wonderful things transpired during Friday’s episode that were notable. Amongst them is Seth MacFarlane’s near-perfect Shatner-esque delivery of a speech regarding war, nearly ripped word-for-word from the original Star Trek episode, “A Taste of Armageddon.”

(Thanks to TrekMovie.com for posting an article with the YouTube embed!)

A second item was Seth MacFarlane’s response to Sarah Palin’s fake outrage where she pretends to be a defender for those affected by Down Syndrome. The YouTube embed is disabled, but I shall offer this link. Clicky, clicky. (MacFarlane’s comments are segued by Real Time‘s skit on what various celebrities have written on the palm of their hand, Palin-style.)

Now, I did see the Family Guy episode in question, and I found nothing in it that made fun of anyone with Down Syndrome—including Pailn’s son, Trig. Now, I’m not a heartless bastard, although at times I may come off as one, as I feel sorry for Trig. I feel sorry that Trig received the short straw and ended up not only with Down Syndrome, but with an idiot like Sarah Palin as a mother.

Trig’s just fucked—and it has nothing to do with MacFarlane or his cartoon.

If anything, this whole thing reminds me how fortunate I am to be surrounded by people who actually like me for who I am—in that regard, I am far better off than I was more than a year ago—and that I have my health.

Regardless, this fake outrage is just another attempt by the Alaskan Drama Queen to gain attention to herself and her laughable political ambitions. Sad, really. What’s even sad is that people still talk about Sarah Palin, as if she’s the new face of the Republican party.

So, to my fellow Americans who believe themselves Republicans, I state the following: When the late Republican president Abraham Lincoln spoke of being able to “fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time,” Lincoln did not refer to parading around the imbecile who effectively euthanized McCain’s campaign. (Not that this is the first time that Republicans tried to kill a McCain presidential ticket… during their previous attempt, they trotted out a metal deficient who masqueraded as a Texan and Governor Bush assumed the White House.) However, being the RINOs that the present Republican Party now are, I’ll give them credit for borrowing from former Republicans. It would be embarrassing if they borrowed inspiration from Stalin and the SOP from Gulags.

Then there’s also this, which gave me a laugh, because it will never come to pass.

Obama is a weak-willed, inexperienced pissant who, I believe, will be remembered as the Jimmy Carter of the new millennium. I want to feel sorry for Obama, since he did walk into a pile of shit not of his own making, but he’s simply either impotent or incompetent. He took the job knowing the risks, and ergo I can’t feel any empathy for him, for empathy isn’t going to fix a fucking thing. Decisive action is, even if it is unpopular.

A majority of Obama’s initiatives—like a public option for health care—are now pretty much dead (leading me to question if they ever really had life at all) and, sadly, the economy is only getting weaker… so Obama’s battles have already been lost before they were waged. This being the case, Obama should throw out any of his attempts to be bi-partisan and become a dick. Since Cheney is all but bragging about torturing human beings—lest we forget that, for better or for worse, these people are human—Obama should really piss off the Repugnantcans and string Cheney by his pubes for war crimes. Hey, they did call their actions integral parts of the “war on terror,” after all.  Ergo, it is a war crime!

What is the worst that can happen? Impeachment proceedings? And even impeachment, in and of itself, isn’t going to get Obama jettisoned from the presidency. So… he’s already lost everything, and he should just go down fighting, like any honorable bloke would do.

It’ll never happen of course, but one can always dream. Aside from hope, dreams are the only thing that a majority of Americans really have left at this point.

And on a slightly lighter ancillary subject, the only downfall from Friday’s Real Time program was this: the discussion of the Kevin Smith’s issue with Southwest Airlines by discussing the erroneous story as if it were fact. I’ve never liked Southwest Airlines anyway, as their customer service blows chunks… and Kevin Smith’s issue wasn’t with his weight, but with how he was treated and how Southwest continues to cover up their employees’s errors with piles of steamin’ lies.

So, if Bill wants to apologize for not going with all the facts, he’ll probably do it live next week.

At least, I dream that this is the case.

I’ve had a few events in my life that can classify as “near misses.” Fortunately, there are very few, but I’d like to focus on one that happened to me on Wednesday afternoon.

Let me take you to the town of Sebastian and to a property my father listed. The property was priced to move, particularly as the original owner had passed away of natural causes, and it was placed into a trust bequeathed to the surviving relatives. Within a few days of listing, the sellers received a very solid offer and the property is expected to close next month.

Anyway, the surviving son and his wife cleaned up the place before they had to head back to their own home, apparently in another state or somewhere within considerable driving distance. My dad was the first to check it out in the early afternoon, and while there fate had just happened to sneak up on him: one of the wire shelves in the garage was overloaded, so the simple act of opening the door leading from the house to the garage apparently broke the clips. This resulted in cans of paint unceremoniously hitting the garage floor. Some of this splatter went on my father’s slacks and dress shoes. He was pressed for time as it is, because he had another engagement he had to attend, so he was unable to clean it up himself.

Here’s where I come in. My dad comes home and tells me the situation, and so I head there. Before I left, he also asks me to take pictures of the interior, as the relatives were cleaning out the place when it was first listed. I was also told that the relatives headed back home yesterday, and as such I’m not expecting to meet with anyone there. Armed with this information, I break out my old work clothes, seeing as I’d have to be cleaning up paint.

I go there, assess the situation, and start cleaning up. It takes about 15 minutes to clean everything up, and another couple of minutes to wash the paint from my hands. (I should have snagged some latex gloves, but that’s a moot point now.) With everything squared away in the garage, I start prepping the interior so that it can be photographed.

It was maybe 5 minutes into this when I hear a man’s voice. “Hello, anyone here?”

I stop what I’m doing to meet the guy at the front door.

He has a gun pulled out. It’s not aimed at me, but it’s out.

(It is times like these where vulgarity is more than appropriate. Fuck.)

What happens next was a bit of a blur, for I went into autopilot. In my head was a voice wanting to scream. I felt my heart begin to race, in conjunction with all the other little things that go into the flight-or-fight response. I remained calm and introduced myself as working for the listing agent, told him that I was his son and that I was there to take photos.

Oh, and in the confines of my tiny brain, I also asked that I’d not be shot. Or, failing that, if I were shot, that it would be quick.

Fortunately, the gun was holstered and I remain physically unscathed. I proceeded to work as normally as I could from the experience; I informed him and his wife about the shelving issue in the garage, and that I would be back sometime later or tomorrow to fix it. Real simple, as I’d just need to get new plastic clips from Home Depot. I went around to open blinds, make sure things were presentable, and began snapping photos. They left again.

My mind was wanting to race out from my skull at that point. I debated on whether or not I should inform my father of what had happened, or whether or not I should even bring it up at all. Nothing came from it, so I just continued doing what I was sent there to do.

It was as I was wrapping up that I received a phone call from my father.

“So you met the sellers, huh?” he said.

I replied in the affirmative, and in the course of the conversation he revealed that the seller called him and told him about what happened. As you could imagine, my father didn’t react too kindly to having a gun pulled out at his son.  My dad also has the ability to joke about things, and so jokingly told me that he would buy me a new pair of pants. We laughed and that phone conversation soon ended.

Yet my mind still reeled, knowing full well that the situation could have turned out badly. I could see all sides of the event that I’ve described, all the whys and wherefores. That doesn’t really disturb me. What disturbs me is all the unknown factors that could have come into play. I don’t know the guy; the guy didn’t know me.

So I don’t know his mental state, what level of training he has with firearms, or his disposition. For all I knew, he could have been a robber, seeing as I had never met the sellers before. (Normally, I meet with most of my father’s sellers as well during the listing process.)

Now he didn’t know me either, as I’ve already noted. However, my car was out in the driveway, and from it he could have surmised two things: one, my last name was Beaudoin (because the name’s on the vanity plate at the back of the car, spelled semi-phonetically in six letters), and two I was related to a Realtor, since I have a plate at the front of my car that says “Consult a Realtor.”

I’m unsure about what thought process went into the seller pulling out his weapon and entering the house. I’ll never know, so I try not to think about it… However, it crosses my mind from time to time.

Honestly, with all the things that could go wrong, it scares the shit out of me some days. This event certainly jarred me from my complacency. I never really think that something is going to go horribly wrong with me, or that I might involve myself in a bad situation. I don’t think most people act that way, otherwise who would want to wake up from their beds?

Yet this event unsettled me, and it still does. It’s not debilitating but it gives me pause, reminding me to be thankful for all the good things in life—even if life can sometimes kick you in the jewels. Or have a gun brandished about your person.

Welcome to my personal, personal blog-o. As you might notice, my “earlier material” is filled with foul language, psychotic rants, and some insight into my loves and hatreds. My earlier material is from when I really needed to let off steam (i.e. when I was figuring out what the fuck was up with my life), so I rarely used this blog to actually reflect on the “good things in life”. Whatever that still is.

What you will not see on my website from hereon out (or in, as the case may be), courtesy of the late, great George Carlin (from his CD, Parental Advsiory: Explicit Lyrics):

Now I’d like to begin tonight with an opening announcement: Because of the FCC, I’m never sure what it is I’m allowed to say. So..so, I now have my own official policy: This is the language you will not be hearing tonight.

You will not hear me say “bottom line”, “game plan”, “role model”, “scenario”, or “hopefully”. I will not “kick back”, “mellow out”, or “be on a roll”. I will not “go for it” and I will not “check it out”; I don’t even know what “it” is. And when I leave here I definitely will not “boogie”. I promise not to refer to anyone as a “class act”, “a beautiful person” or a “happy camper”. I will also not be saying “what a guy.” And you will not hear me refer to anyone’s lifestyle. If you want to know what a moronic word “lifestyle” is, all you have to do is realize that in a technical sense, Atilla the Hun had an active outdoor lifestyle. I will also not be saying any cute things like “moi.” And I will not use the French adverb “tre” to modify any English adjectives, such as “tre awesome,” “tre gnarly,” “tre fabou,” “tre intense,” or “tre out-of-sight.” I will not say “concept” when I mean “idea”. I will not say “impacted” when I mean “affected”. There will be no “hands-on state-of-the-art networking”. We will not “maximize”, “prioritize”, or “finalize”…and we definitely will not “interface”. There will also…there will also be no new-age lingo spoken here tonight. No support-group jargon from the human potential movement. For instance, I will not “share” anything with you. I will not “relate” to you and you will not “identify” with me. I will give you no “input”, and I will expect no “feedback”. This will not be a “learning experience”, nor will it be a “growth period”. There’ll be no sharing, no caring, no birthing, no bonding, no parenting, no nurturing. We will not “establish a relationship”, we will not have any “meaningful dialogue” and we definitely will not spend any “quality time”. We will not be supportive of one another, so that we can get in touch with our feelings in order to feel good about ourselves. And if you’re one of those people who needs a little space…please…go the fuck outside.

Seriously, I read this article at Bloomberg that mentions that Best Worst Buy lowered their earnings forecast for the year. Of course, while I could care less about their earnings (I hope the company and its outlets of pure evil burns to the ground in a night of blood and of fire) I read the comments that came from the top people at that company…

They were excuses. They cited the increasing cost of gas, the slumping housing market, and the economy. They also noted that people don’t need anything Best Buy has to offer, since all of it is electronic junk anyway.

Of course, their comments were ones that supervisors at my Best Buy made over a year ago, when the economy began turning to shit.

The response from upper management: No excuses, just results.

That became the standard answer for everything. Staffing. Missing budgets by several grand. Basically, anything worthy of honest complaint or observation that went against the bullshit from on high.

Now I find it funny that the same people who condoned that bullshit line are regurgitating this feedback from supervisors (and intelligent managers) for the press.

Of course, I’m not curious as to the messages management and those minions under them will receive from on high… because the message to them will be quite different than what the big-wigs defecate to the press.

What will happen in the next six months? Simple. Restructures. People losing jobs.

Thank god I got out.

Hmm…

Still, I would rather have BSG end this season, rather than having two seasons with mediocre “filler” episodes. Makes for tighter story telling — just look at Babylon 5‘s fourth season. Half the season ends the Shadow War, the other half deals (and ends) the Earth Civil War, and it still had character development to boot.

Moore… Eick… Give JMS a ring, will ya? Seriously.

In addition, I have a Technoranti listing, which is here.

Also, I’ll be updating both the Battlestar Wiki Blog and my own personal blog with the new WordPress. Boring, eh?

Woulda had a great day if I didn’t walk into that shithole today to give money for the walkathon. (It’s a walkathon on muscular distrophy and altzheimers. It’s supposed to happen on November 4th or something.) No good deed goes unpunished.

Oh, BTW, if you see me on GTalk and you don’t receive a reply from me, don’t get offended. I often leave my gmail/gtalk window open, simply because I’ve been really run down lately and I’m running around trying to juggle my online life (read: Battlestar Wiki), work life, and my own godsdamned life.

I’m also feeling like I’m getting sick: I’m hoping its not a damned cold virus; I don’t need it now.

I was too tired to post this yesterday. To give you an idea of how tired I was, I went to bed at 6:30 P.M. and woke up at 4 A.M. Yay.

Anyhoo, I went bowling with my friend Jesus and his wife, Lolita.

After all the shit that Jesus talked about beating my ass at bowling, I found myself victorious game after game. Five in a row.

I’ve included pictures from my 1 megapixel cameraphone. Sorry for the low quality; if I knew Jesus would suck so badly, I would have brought my digital camcorder (which, ironically, I bought off of him) to film him.

I have scores from 4 of the 5 games, since Jesus wiped out the scores from game 4 before I could snap the picture.