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.

Democrats, keep up the good work, you worthless suits. It’s times like these where I really want there to be a viable third party in this country, because both parties are abominations of the political system that need to be put down like rabid dogs.

Anyway, Democrats and Obama need to watch this. Please. Get the fucking message and get moving. This country is in such deep shit right now that I really do see America following the footsteps of the Roman Empire.

What’s that saying? “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”?

Most viewers wanted to do this after watching all six hours... Nom nom grenade nom nom—boom!

I’ve wanted to react to the perversion that was AMC’s “remake” of The Prisoner, however I didn’t want to come across as a whinging fuckard who didn’t like it.

But I said to hell with it.

Without a shred of doubt, it has placed itself on my personal list as one of the worst remakes I have ever seen since Lost in Space. Lost in Space had Gary Oldman. The Prisoner had Sir Ian McKellen. Proving yet again that good actors can be cast in shit.

Indeed, the whole six hour miniseries was a waste of time; time that I shall never be able to reclaim. For that feat alone, and for this piece of “art” to so brazenly defecate on its “source material” (and I use these terms very loosely, ergo the quotation marks), it should earn a Razzie, a faux Academy Award purchased from Spencer’s Gifts, and a burning pile of fecal matter in a brown paper lunch baggie.

I’m not going to make detailed comparisons between this abomination and Patrick McGoohan’s libertarian, counterculture masterpiece. I’ve thought about that approach and summarily dismissed it, as I haven’t the will to do it. The commitment to actually go and do a figurative venn diagram for either myself or all two of you is nonexistent.

The reason for this, you see, stems from the abhorrent fact that this new Prisoner is an exercise in blatant stupidity. It is from someone who apparently likes the series (or the general idea), but never grokked it. It’s an exercise from writers who apparently have written horrendous fiction, are interested in twists and turns with no true substance (see Lost), and haven’t plotted out the story. Hence the fairly languid pace, the actors desperately trying to polish the turd script-cum-toilet-paper, and the mishmash of topics and subjects that are supposed to push our “social” buttons (a homophobic father, drugged members of society, the pervasiveness of electronic surveillance, terrorism, et al). Sadly, in pushing those buttons, they failed to realize that buttons need to be pressed in a certain sequence to form compositions. Whether you are manipulating the keys of a keyboard to compose sentences, or the keys to a piano to play music, there is a discipline and order that needs to be understood. Otherwise, you are performing an act that has this technical term.

Today’s kids call it “keysmash.”

This abomination would have gone either unnoticed… or unfilmed… if it weren’t for its use of “nods” and themes to and from The Prisoner. Number Two. Number Six. The Village. Rover. Escape. The question of why Six resigned.

I believe this abomination is the result of the same thought process that went into the creation of New Coke. We all know how that went.

Beyond the use of names, general plot premises, and various bits of dialogue—”Local destinations only,” “Be seeing you,” etc.—this show needn’t have used The Prisoner. It’s not even the same thing. It’s basically trying to sell a car that looks like a Ferrari, but doesn’t have the mechanical aspects of it. The soul of the car isn’t there. It’s just branding a jalopy in the hopes of getting some sucker to buy it.

This interpretation—and I loathe to refer to it as thus—fails on its own merits and will be forgotten in the sands of time, since it ultimately doesn’t make you think. And, failing that, it’s not even entertaining. Mel Gibson’s Jesus Christ couldn’t carry the show as he bumbles around trying to find his character (as a glorified amnesiac, you’d think it’d be easy), and Sir Ian McKellen seems to have just said “fuck this” and go with the flow of the wacky nature of the story. Indeed, the only good parts to this “television event” were McKellen’s appearances as Number Two.

So here’s where I do the whole comparison thing. Out of necessity. I can’t avoid it, seeing as this abomination now shares the name of a perfectly good story!

McGoohan was able to act. He was able to create a character, the Prisoner, that was so strong and intelligent that he was a force to be reckoned with. He fenced with great adversarial Number Twos throughout the course of his imprisonment, played by various strong actors and actresses. Brilliant story telling. Brilliant dialogue. McGoohan tapped into the counterculture of the time, into the cultural zeitgeist like Trek was fabled to do in the sixties.

The point of The Prisoner is that it is a parable telling of an individual’s struggle against society, a society that attempts to force total conversion of a person so that they are socially acceptable. It does what any good science fiction has done since its inception: hold a mirror up to society and, in that crucible, force us to address some aspect of humanity that has otherwise gone unchallenged or unquestioned.

The other brave thing that the original Prisoner did was “Fall Out,” which resulted in McGoohan going into hiding due to the demands of all those members of society who declared that he must give them an answer to their question. However, I’ll cover that more in depth in the future; I don’t care to muddle the point amidst my utter hatred for this New Coke… ahem, Prisoner.

If anything can be salvaged from this horrendous remake, it is this: it helps introduce The Prisoner to a new generation, in another millennium, that never grew up with it. Even with this 21st century rotting turd masquerading as The Prisoner, it undoubtedly helped the series’ release in blu-ray, which itself is part of the testament to the legacy left behind by McGoohan, who passed in 2009. (Another reason why 2009 was a shitty year.) This brilliant bloke and visionary, who exposes Gene Roddenberry as the reincarnation of Antonio Salieri, is the inspiration for many writers and storytellers out there, including Ron Moore, creator of the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica.

Oh, and for all those future generations: If you’re going to remake The Prisoner, make sure the people at The Simpsons do it. Here’s why.

There are a few basic ground rules to forwarding e-mails that I abide by, which I would like to share with the Internet folk. Depending on where you are aligned on the etiquette spectrum, you may find this to be an affirmation to already existing habits or a wake-up call to develop new ones. (Remember: The brainiacs from various universities say that it takes 28 days of doing something to develop a habit.)

1. No Blind Forwarding

“Blind forwarding” is the term I use to describe the process of forwarding an e-mail to someone without actually explaining why you’ve forwarded it. Most of the problems I’ve encountered stem from this behavior.

Just because an e-mail makes sense to you does not mean that it makes sense to the person you’re forwarding to. Therefore, you should at least do one of the following:

1. As briefly as possible, explain why you are forwarding the e-mail.
2. If you’re looking for something specific to be understood/executed/reviewed, note that you’re: a) looking for something specific, and b) specify what you’re looking for.

The above two help tremendously, particularly when forwarding an e-mail to multiple people!

2. Don’t Betray Confidences

When forwarding an e-mail, ensure that it doesn’t betray any confidences or give out an e-mail of someone who doesn’t want their e-mail given out. This causes problems for all parties involved and, ultimately, rectification of any situations that may arise from such stupidity only wastes time and energy.

3. Don’t forward an e-mail just to give someone’s e-mail address to another person.

I’ve seen people forward an e-mail to others just to give someone the original sender’s e-mail address. People who do this are the same people who poke snarling, salivating dogs with sharp sticks and then wonder why they have that dog’s teeth puncturing their neck.

So… Why does this happen? I believe it to be sheer laziness. Only those who actually do this can answer with any sincerity.

The solution: Merely compose a new e-mail that introduces the people to one another properly. “Hey Joe, this is Jane. Jane, this is Joe. Joe is a fluffer. Jane works in accounting. You two will hit it off splendidly. Au revoir.“

Hope that was educational. Or at least mildly entertaining.

Now I need to e-mail Jane from accounting. Have a splendid day!

Upon returning to Florida in the spring, I visited the Indian River Mall to find that the Starbucks—itself having been, in a previous life, a Barnie’s Coffee and Tea—near the food court was closed down. The signs on the outside had been removed, and you could tell it had been a Starbuck’s by the configuration of the holes and subtle lines that the signs left behind. Even through the dark windows, you could see the empty room and the naked counter. That was a bit sad, although there was a Starbuck’s right on the road in front of the Indian River Plaza, which was a good 10 minute or so walk from the mall. Not a total loss. Not as much as the next store I noticed.

In December (and into January), I saw these depressing signs that were inside the Vero Beach Waldenbooks:

Sunuvabitch...

This does hurt me a bit on a personal level because of my love of the printed word. I grew up on having a Waldenbooks in the mall I could go to.

While it wasn’t this specific one, I grew up with the one in my hometown of Manchester, Connecticut. I went there a few times a month as a tyke, brought there by my mother and grandmother. I would always walk into that store with some of my chore money (my father paid me a “wage” of $1/hr), pick up a science fiction book I wanted to add to my collection (either Star Trek, Star Wars or a comic) and walk out with a small, plastic white bag with “Waldenbooks” on each side.

I also met a few authors at my Manchester Waldenbooks—yes, I used that possessive adjective, deal with it. I remember getting my copy of Robert Greenberger‘s book, The Romulan Strategem, signed by Mr. Greenberger all those years ago.

It’s not that I’m not able to get my books elsewhere. I can. There’s a Books-A-Million in the small plaza to the east of the Indian River Plaza, next to the Publix. It has a bigger selection of books. It has its own little Joe’s Coffee shop. (Yes, it’s named Joe’s Coffee. Clearly, no relation.)

I could also go to the library, which I have thus far neglected doing since my return to Florida, but there’s something about owning a good book and having it on your bookshelf that is immensely satisfying. More than some trophy or worthless paper award to be placed on some wall.

And if I wanted to go the online route, I can go to Amazon and buy it there without paying sales taxes. But there’s something to be said about seeing a book on the shelf with portals to all those worlds. Worlds that groups of people took the time and energy under the exacting toll of immeasurable frustration to create and get published. There’s a process there that most people don’t realize. I’m all too familiar with getting something published, as I’ve been responsible for the creation of two books. All that pain and suffering that went into it, all the long hours of writing and revising… Most people give up.

However, I’m flying off on another tangent there, so let me regain some semblance of control.

You can buy your stuff online, and I’ve done that with DVD and CDs, as well as the occasional book. With books, I find that I enjoy the tactile sensation, to feel the weight of the book, to feel the edges of the pages as I flip through them. Then there’s the rich aroma of the paper that wafts from the pages and fills your nostrils, if you let it. It’s a wonderful smell and while the new books have that “book aroma,” I find that older books that are well kept have a richer smell… like aged wine tastes versus newer vintages.

There’s also the fact that you get to physically meet people in a bookstore and, perhaps, strike up a conversation with them. We can say that we have message boards, blogs, and other “social media” outlets, but there’s nothing that can replace our need for physical contact, even if it is a chat. You can’t mirror truthful facial expressions in emoticons, or hear someone’s laugh, or hear someone sigh over troubling content in a book… You just can’t.

And so I find myself melancholy at the prospect of a bookstore closing down, even if it is part of a chain. It saddens me because it reflects the economic woes of our times, as well as the inevitable change where more and more people flock to the internet for whatever tickles their fancy. It is yet another reminder that our technology and our lust for better/faster/stronger change has outpaced our hearts and the potential worthwhile abilities of the human race.

Watch these clips, then ask yourself… Well, ask yourself the question that Dana Gould asked at the end of the second segment. Because I need an answer to that question.

For those reading this as a Facebook note, the Youtube links are:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBGusPcNzxw
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht_W5_Ogh0U

For those reading this as a blog on my website, JoeBeaudoinDOTnet, I’ve embedded these clips below:

Bill Maher made an excellent point on last Friday’s Real Time with Bill Maher, namely that Obama isn’t the socialist that the right has endeavored to make him out to be, and that the Democratic Party has turned to the center-right. This would leave the Republican party somewhere in the sanitarium, which is where most of them belong. For a party that advocates the reduction of government in our lives, the Republicfraks have done their very best to enlarge the scope of government over their eight years in power. The consequences of this enlargement and entrenchment into our lives have yet to fully manifest themselves, but the day of reckoning when we realize what this has done to our civil liberties and constitutional rights is not so far off in the future, sadly.

And while I tend not to get political about such things, both parties are responsible for sowing what we are now reaping in terms of economic and social failures that are occurring in this country. And this has not happened since 9/11, but has been happening for the past three decades. If not more.

Oh, and I know that Obama is neither Jesus Christ or, better yet, FDR. I knew this when I “voted” for him. Regardless, Obama is, sadly, better than John McCain and the inept airline stewardess who has a great view of Russia, whose only reason for being thrown on the McCain ticket was to recruit “scorned” Hillary Clinton supporters. (And had she never opened her mouth, the Republicans may have succeeded in winning the White House.) Honestly, had McCain chosen Mitt Romney as his VP, then I would have voted for that ticket.

Why? The USA needs to be run more like a business, particularly with runaway spending and the fact that we are borrowing money from a Communist country. Romney was able to govern one of the most “liberal” states of this union and bring that spending under control. I may not care for some of the social policies or views of that (sadly) non-existent ticket, but… you cannot have everything, and you have to prioritize.

And, going back to the video above, I don’t agree with everything Maher says… but his program honestly allows for some of the most honest dialogue out there, better than anything CNN, MSNBC or Faux News can spew out via their own “programs” whether they be the idiotic Hannity, O’Reilly, Olberman, et al.

Ok, I’m now sick. Frak politics. Sorry that you had to read this.

They don’t syndicate things with vulgarisms in the title (which isn’t a bad thing, in and of itself) or, in fact, technical terms for genitalia. Like the “penis lantern“, which happens to be the 3,000th article on the English-language edition of Battlestar Wiki. I noticed this because the two blogs I’ve posted on BW and FM weren’t syndicated, which kinda pissed me off, seeing as “penis lantern” is a benign term and should have been syndicated, regardless.

I should also note that they didn’t syndicate my blog on Best Buy fucking over their employees by forcing them to off-the-clock searches or working through mandatory lunch breaks. This is because of the word “fuck” in the title.

Of course, it’ll be hilarious if this blog post gets syndicated, despite the use of the word “penis” in the body of this blog. This would only prove that people can manipulate BlogRush as so long as their blog’s titles are innocent and uncontentious, but the content is anything but thus.

Of course, having just tried it, I am wholly unimpressed. Then again, this is the same group of people who are involved in MediaWiki development who can’t give us an internal search engine worth a damn… I have to use Google to look up terms on Wikipedia! Bah!

I know that it is a beta, but there are several concerns which ring the alert klaxons immediately.

The more immediate one for me is this: I don’t trust Jimbo’s Jabronis to tell me what I need to know. Just look at the watchdog group Wikipedia-Watch.org and what they’ve dredged up over the years about so-called power-tripping Wikipedians in high powered positions. Frankly, I find the most ardent Wikipedians to be blood-shot eyed liberal extremists who believe in raping and pillaging information to suit their worldview. It really is like the concepts laid out by The Party in 1984 are coming true! “Neutral Point of View” my ass. It is more a case of “Might makes Right Point of View”.

Now, I must note that the ardent, outspoken bloodshot eyed liberal extremists who comprise Wikipedia and some of Wikia are a small minority of their contributor base. However, they are in positions of power, and thus explains my “might makes right” comment. (Axiom of the day, courtesy of Shakespeare: “There is little choice in a barrel of rotten apples.”)

Secondly, there is a reason why search engine algorithms are hidden from the public. If they were released under GNU or other open software license, spammers and the like would easily be able to manipulate search engine results to produce more garbage. Wikia, which says that its search engine code will be revealed to all, will be exploited ruthlessly by spammers and scammers wanting to make a buck because they know how it works. It’s like telling a thief who wants to steal from Fort Knox everything about the security setup!

To summarize, it’s really simple why Wikia’s Search will fail, and it all boils down to these tried and true axioms:

1. Money talks, bullshit walks.
2. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
3. History is written by the victors.

I’ll leave you with this tidbit from 1984:

Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct; nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record. All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary.

This is the future. Fight it ’til we can’t.

Most of my problems originate from the shit employer I work for (as you might have already guessed) which doesn’t surprise me anyway.

Fortunately, I have a vacation coming up in March and will be out of the damned state of Florida for one week. So I hope that the vacation revitalizes me.
And then, barring any additional curve balls life throws towards my groin, I’ll probably leave Worst Buy by March. Woop-tee-fuckin-doo.