Vote for me! (And other random gloats)

[ed_rex]

Vote for Geoffrey and Raven!

Nahanni National Park, Virginia Falls. Image from Wikipedia.

All right, silly as it sounds, I'm asking for your help. At least the help of all of you who (a) live in Canada and (b) have a Facebook account.

ETA: Actually, it seems all you need is a Facebook account, so all of you, please just in and send us on our way!

My sweetie has never been camping, and neither of us have ever been to the Far North (or white-water rafting, for that matter). With your help, we just might win a trip to the Nahanni National Park.

Click here to vote for my perfect 50-word wish, okay? Many thanks in advance.

Onwards.

(Almost) almost famous

• "I love the ed-rex.com reviews. They are SOOO funny, and don't pull any punches, either." (From TelevisionWithoutPity.com.)


• "Reading that frankly hilarous [sic] review was more entertaining then 7 whole episodes of this rubbish Miracle day." — Miruleyall at IMDb.com


• "Oh, this is brilliant! And it’s true, all these blatant Christ allusions were annoying as hell. It’s like it had to be repeated again and again, in case people watching the episode were so stupid, they haven’t noticed it the first time. Good God, really, Life of Brian was more subtle." — Dolblathanna on Tumblr.com.

As some of you might have noticed, I haven't been blogging about much other than god damned (lousy) television shows lately. First Torchwood: Miracle Day in all of its awesome awfulness, and now Doctor Who, which is badly flawed, but a paragon of brilliance in comparison.

Not personal, and probably not of much interest to many of you — indeed a pretty small niche to inhabit, when you come down to it, but I've discovered for myself that there is significant virtue in consistency.

It hasn't actually been all that easy. Like an ageing relative suffering progressive dementia, Russell T Davies has his good days and his bad days, but lately they've almost all been bad.

Although I've had some fun being snarky, I had gone into the project, of blogging about every episode hoping to be able to say good things. Hoping, to enjoy the program, even if I didn't expect it to hit the heights that Children of Earth managed a couple of years ago.

But it's been good practice, this project, forcing myself to turn out work on a schedule. And it's had the added benefit of getting my noticed and of getting me what appears to be a permanent spike in my site's traffic, all of which pleases me quite a lot.

Other attention is more vexing, intriguing rather than (necessarily) pleasing, although as some wag once said, I don't care what they say about me so long as they spell the URL right.

As a for instance, the folks at the Livejournal community SaveCoffeeBoy, have been linking to my stuff, but the entries there are locked, so I have no idea what they're saying about me, good, bad or otherwise.

Still, I like being talked about, just as I like the fact that people have been subscribing to the Edifice Rex mailing list.

I jog the body recuperative!

Went for my first run since I suffered my soccer season-ending knee injury back near the end of July. Happy to report, the knee felt mostly okay — some twinges that seemed to ease as I got further into it.

But holy moly, the rest of my body is nearly back where I was at the start of the summer. To say I 'ran' is a misnomer, because I ran, then walked, then ran, then walked, etc, in about equal quantities.

An hour after getting in, I'm cautiously optimistic that the knee is going to hold up and that this run was only the first of many. I really do want to get into some kind of decent shape.

Somebody call security!

Finally, back in July or August of 2010, I applied for a security clearance from the Federal government through an employment agency here in Ottawa. A couple of weeks after that, I had to get myself a criminal record check and also have myself finger-printed.

It was early July of this year that the agency contact me. Some folks from PWGSC wanted to ask me some questions, and mid-July when the interview took place.

A little bit to my surprise, they weren't interested in my political blogging or the more notorious members of my family. Rather the questions were about my education, my financial history and living situation.

And come mid-august, whaddya know? I've added a "Reliability Status" check to my resume.

Good things come to those who wait, I suppose, but 11 months seems a hell of a long time for that to have come through ...

Comments

[angiepanic]

"I've added a "Reliability Status" check to my resume."

What does this mean?! As an Amerikun, I'm intrigued...

Fancy name for plain phenomenon

[ed_rex]

It's just the basic security clearance, used to vet potential federal government employees. In other words, the first rung on the ladder ending at "Top Secret" or whatever they call it.

Re: Fancy name for plain phenomenon

[angiepanic]

Oh, gotcha!

So from now on, based in reality or not, I'm totally thinking of you as a spy in training :D

[evilawyer]

I hear ya on the "body regression". With my walking, I've got calves of steel and my knees feel much better. My hips, though ---- that's another story.

Mick Jagger was so right about what a drag it is getting old.

Also wanted to personally thank you for your Torchwood reviews. You've saved me immeasurable time in that I didn't track down and watch the damn things.

Most welcome

[ed_rex]

I am glad you're enjoying them. The show itself has actually gotten to the point where I'm enjoying it again, in the "how bad can this thing really get?" sort of way.

That said, I'm glad tonight's is the penultimate episode; it's hard work doing all that mocking!