BBEdit 9 is out. It doesn't suck.

One new cool feature is the Scratchpad, which is just a handy document that's always around and you don't have to worry about having to save and such.

Here's a quick python / applescript tool to pipe text from the shell to this window:

%-

#!/usr/bin/python
import sys, os
open('/tmp/scratchpad.bbedit', 'w').write(sys.stdin.read())
script = '''tell application "BBEdit"
    set the contents of the scratchpad window to read (POSIX file "/tmp/scratchpad.bbedit" as alias)
    open the scratchpad window
    tell scratchpad window to select insertion point before line 1
    activate
end tell'''

this seems to be a little bit faster than using NSAppleScript
os.popen("/usr/bin/osascript -e '%s'" % (script))

Put that script in your path somewhere, make it executable (chmod 755 scratchpad.py), and use it like so: ls -al | scratchpad.py