So, the completely legitimate email I received today begins with this salutation:
IL TREGILLIS of U.S.A., Congratulations on Your Nomination to Who’s Who in Medicine and Healthcare
Finally! Some validation. It’s like the folks at Marquis Who’s Who have known me my entire life.
The only thing—and it’s a very tiny thing—that makes me wonder if maybe, just maybe, this isn’t what it seems is the minor fact that I’m not a medical doctor. Or have any connection to the healthcare industry. Or have any knowledge of medicine or healthcare.
But the “world’s foremost biographical reference publisher,” with its “unmatched dedication to reliable and accurate biographical reporting,” apparently isn’t bothered by that. And why should it be? I can open a box of bandaids like nobody’s business. Why, I don’t just open that box. I open the hell out of it. Open the living hell out of it. If you could cure cancer by opening a box of bandaids, I would be on the cover of Time magazine. I’d be on ALL the magazines. That’s how good I am.
I’m very excited to think that soon my profile will be included amongst today’s leaders from the wide-ranging medical and healthcare fields. My profile! Me!
They do seem to be casting their net rather widely. I will admit that. After all, the only place where my name appears as “IL Tregillis” is in my academic publications. In astrophysics.
This is great! I used to get all these puffs for Who’s Who in American Law. All they really want is for you to buy their horribly overpriced book.
But I am relieved to know that now you can certainly do my brain surgery when and if it becomes necessary. 🙂 I mean, you are a doctor.
Not only am I qualified to perform brain surgery, I even have my own drill!
All I get are the offers for the generic version, the all-inclusive tome because there doesn’t seem to be one specific for journalists. Maybe someone will start one for “Who’s Who in American Scum” for members of the “news media.” As for your talents for opening bandage boxes, watching your blood pump from an open vain does add a little impetus, does it not?
Ah, their perception is immense. The nomination is no doubt for your complete mastery of the Willenskräfte via Transcranial Direct Current Stimulation. I mean, that pretty much wraps it up. In fact you could probably have them print that.
🙂
Terry, how about “Who’s Who in American Media Jackals” to borrow a (slightly) less pejorative phrase from a former pro wrestler/governor of Minnesota?
Steve– that explains it! I think you’ve figured it out. I’m going to demand that my bio mentions Willenskrafte and tDCS.
It could be that I’m hopped up on too much Foucault from reading for class tomorrow, but aren’t all disciplines, by the very fact (if there is such a thing) of their disciplinarity, the same? I mean isn’t there more difference between a discipline and say, a discourse, than there is between any two disciplines? In the same way that humans are only 96-98% different from chimpanzees. Medicine, astrophysics, aren’t these just different ‘names’ for systems of constructing similar ‘truths’? Why quibble? Now I must get back to pondering the more important questions, who IS ‘who’? Whose who is the ‘who’ who counts? Who is asking? This is why there’s not a Who’s Who in Philosophy, they can’t get past the title page.
ps. I’m surprised the Internet hasn’t put the Who’s Who out of business. Who needs a vanity tome when you can write your own vanity entry into Wikipedia?
pps. I’m going to go brush the living hell out of my teeth so I can get into Who’s Who in Dentistry.
I mean isn’t there more difference between a discipline and say, a discourse, than there is between any two disciplines?
This is why my forays into Foucault never made it very far.
This is why there’s not a Who’s Who in Philosophy, they can’t get past the title page.
And this is why I nearly got in trouble at work today, laughing at my desk while there is so much serious work to be done.
I am nominating you for WW in Dentistry. Since I apparently have some pull with the Marquis folks, after all. Don’t thank me. It’s the least I can do.