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The March of the Policy Makers

31 Comments

I am attending a conference in my role as a member of a regulatory board.  The focus of the conference is professional competency, mobility in employment, and international standards in ethics and professional conduct. These are quite important topics when you have to consider how to evaluate foreign trained professionals for licensure in your jurisdiction,  but my is it boring to listen to for 4 days.  When it gets too tedious I surreptitiously check my email or the Trail,  imagine everyone in weird hats, or else marching around to this Elgar Pomp and Circumstance March I Heard on MPR before I Ieft home.  I see others seated around me doing similar things, so I don’t think I am the only one who needs some stimulation.

Tell about how you handle boredom.  What is the most boring, tedious thing you ever had to do? What is your favorite march?

31 thoughts on “The March of the Policy Makers”

  1. I work in Corporate America so I am bored more than I like – several required meetings every month that are a complete waste of my time and I suspect most everybody’s. Just send me an email with the information please.

    Over the years I have become a big time doodler and have graduated to actually coloring in my department meetings, complete with coloring books, colored pencils and the blessing of my boss. This keeps part of my brain busy so it doesn’t explode when a colleague is asking a question that already been answered. In meetings that are outside my department, I just doodle. I fill whole pages with little circles or loops within loops or patterns of design – whatever mood strikes me.

    Thanks for the image of regimental hats – maybe it will help to imagine my colleagues in hats and uniforms!

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  2. OT. Blevins page is updated for December 9, Jacque’s, Boomsday by Christopher Buckley and Packing for Mars by Mary Roach.

    And I’ll catch you all later. My sister and niece are here from out of town and we’re hitting the new zoo today!

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  3. If you’re going to imagine everyone marching around, use Sousa’s Liberty Bell March, the one Monty Python ruined forever for anything other than silly walks. I quite like marches. I still have the baritone horn part to National Emblem in my head from high school.

    I don’t usually get very bored. I have places in my head I can go. I think what for me was the most tedious, boring thing I can remember is having to sit in church when I was young.

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    1. The minister in our church was a humorless dour Scot who was as boring as he was bigoted. His sermons were famous for length, not content.

      My parents were not religious enough to waste their precious Sundays in church but were religious enough to think I should go. I had a series of tricks to keep from going. One was faking a fever, easily accomplished if you spin a thermometer on fabric fast enough to boost the rating.

      My best trick–and I must have told this before–was the wrinkled pants ploy. I had an outfit I wore only to church, which meant if that outfit was unsightly I couldn’t be forced to go. My grandmother gave me one of those massive dictionaries used in libraries. I wrinkled up my pants, stuck them on the top of a steam radiator then placed the dictionary on top of the pants. When my parents tried to send me to church I could delay things, then bring out the pants, wailing, “I can’t POSSIBLY go to church looking like this!” And since my mom hated ironing, she’d agree.

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  4. I like several marches. The March from the Symphonic Metamorphosis by Hindemith, March Past of the Kitchen Utensils by Vaghn Williams, and Nobles of the Mystic Shrine by Sousa are quite fun.

    I also imagined yesterday the policy makers marching with their cats. I do hope today is more lively.

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    1. My favorite has to be the Colonel Bogey March because of all the scatalogical verses people have created for that tune. My dad learned one in the army that he’d sing whenever my mom made a certain dish. The words were not appropriate for this blog 😉

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  5. When I worked in a factory between bouts of college — oh man, that was tedious, brain-numbing work. I would make up stories, do a little dance if I had room, tell myself jokes — and then I would laugh at them. That’s pretty low.

    I sort of flirted with the men as I was the first full-time woman they ever hired (I was 19) as it was heavy, hard work. But I showed them!

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  6. My uncle Leo gave me a 45 record of Bob Crosby and the Bobcats playing Sousa marches when I was sixteen years old. I believe it was in the batch of vinyl I gave to tim a few years ago. It’s called Sousa goes Dixieland, and features The Stars and Stripes Forever, El Capitan, High School Cadets, and Washington Post March. Would you believe it, it’s on youtube? Here it is:

    I must have played that record hundreds of time, it’s a wonder there’s any groove left.

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  7. I can’t remember the last time I was bored. Even on one of our long road trips across places like Nebraska or the Saskatchewan prairie, we usually listen to an audiobook to keep our minds occupied.

    I suppose the last thing I can remember doing that was mind-numbingly boring was sitting through one of Dr. Robert Louden’s music theory classes at the U of M. Yessirree Bob, nothing quite as stimulating as learning about Baroque Period ornamentation in excruciating detail! (Not)

    Favorite march? Since I used to be a jr-sr high band director, I have more than a few favorites even though I wasn’t a marching band guy and preferred many other types of music. I usually included at least one march in a concert mainly because marches are a very American style and the history of our marches is important for music students to know.

    Stars & Stripes Forever is up there. Col, Bogey is about as catchy as they come. Whenever I go hiking, I tend to start humming “The Happy Wanderer,” which I believe qualifies as a march. Certainly helps me keep my pace up on a trail. The Washington Post is a great march, as is Semper Fidelis. And then, of course, we can get into the circus marches. like Barnum & Bailey’s Favorite, Rolling Thunder, Entrance of the Gladiators, etc. Don’t get me started! 🙂

    Chris in Owatonna

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  10. I sometimes play whatever was last on Darling Daughter’s playlist in my head (she likes to connect her phone to my car audio). This sometimes means I have to be careful not to hum out loud or sing under my breath…especially with one particularly catchy tune in current rotation by Lily Allen that drops the F bomb frequently and with aplomb (it’s a fun song – therapeutic to sing when the Orange One or his minions have done something especially horrid).

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    1. For reference, this is the clean version of the Lily Allen song…the video is, um, odd. But it’s been in my head since mentioning it eariler today, so I am sharing the joy. 😀

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    2. Anyone else remember Garrison’s lyrics to the Homage March from Sigurd Jorsalfar? The lyrics started thus:

      Sons of Knute we are marching for freedom
      Looking for our friends, hopin’ to meet ’em
      Saturday morning, we’re in our glory
      We’re up at 5:00 for Northerns…

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    1. Search “half fast marching” I can’t post Youtube from my iPad, but ther are plenty of Pete Fountain options when you search in the way I’ve described.

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