Emerald Lies

Marillion, the Scottish band, had a song called "Emerald Lies". The title came to mind when I leaned I had (yet again) been included in Emerald Who's Who.

Correction, "the prestigious Emerald Who's Who" where the adjective is necessary in case you didn't know they were prestigious, which is begging the question. (Not to mention disregarding the definition of "prestigious".)

The wording of this inclusion is quite strange. I was "a potential candidate", whatever that is. That's like a pre-approved credit offer you have to apply for using the enclosed form, I guess. How one goes from being a potential candidate to a real candidate is never explained. I must have sailed through that process, because the next thing I'm told is "your candidacy was formally approved" - perhaps potential candidates are informally approved, and then they move on to the next round of real candidacy and formal approval? This process seems unnecessarily convoluted.

I very well should have sailed through the informal process, at least according to their criteria. I was selected as a potential candidate based on "current standing, but focusing as well on criteria from executive and professional directories, associations, and trade journals." Naturally this would make me a real candidate, if any of it was true. I don't know what my "current standing" actually is (these people seem to take a peculiar delight in vagueness, almost to the point of artistry), but I certainly have never been in any executive or professional directories, belong to no associations, and have never been published in a trade journal. Curiously, whoever was evaluating my potential candidacy never looked at more obvious things like my own professional web site. I would almost think they didn't know who I was.

The mind-numbing syntactical vagueness continues, since all this potential candidacy came only from the fact that "we are working off of secondary sources" - actually, they aren't, because they could (and should) cite these phantom secondary sources. And why wouldn't they use the obvious primary sources? Even more curious is the fact that I have to verify these secondary sources myself, and then I'm subject to yet another round of evaluation: " validate your registry listing within seven business days" - goodness! I have been a potential candidate, a real candidate, and formally approved, but then I have to go through a fourth round of approval? This is a remarkably convoluted process.

Apparently, Anthony Miller, Vice President, Research Division, is an extremely confused individual, and well he might be given this remarkable four-tier convoluted evaluation process. He just told me "your candidacy was formally approved" but then at the end asks me "to verify your profile and accept the candidacy" - wow, that's a lot of back and forth. I can well imagine that they have an early and fixed deadline for "this year's candidates" considering how convoluted this process is, and how slowly the whole thing seems to move.

Sadly, Mr. Miller is also the VP of the "Research Division" but doesn't seem to have done any research on me at all, such as visiting my own web site, which would cut through this ridiculous candidacy process and its secondary sources faster than the Gordian knot.

What happens if I somehow make it through this maze of candidacy which would confuse the most experienced and dilligent Minotaur? Well, I'll join a list of "thousands of fellow accomplished individuals" which doesn't seem like much payoff for going through a process that seems slightly more convoluted than a combination of joining the French Foreign Legion and having an IRS audit. I am assured that my listing "will share prominent registry space" with all the others, but that seems like a letdown after going through this candidacy process.