Blow Me Laddies

I just heard that Sean Connery is going to be leading a parade of ten thousand bagpipers up the streets of New York. Ten thousand bagpipers? There are ten thousand people in the United States, let alone the world, who play the bagpipes? The bagpipes can be a moving and powerful instrument… or it could sound like a pack of cows dying from poisoned food. The thought of ten thousand is just frightening. And where do these players come from. You thought the kid with the according got his ass kicked a lot in school.

In defense of the bagpipes, nothing is more beautiful than hearing Amazing Grace played by a bagpipe master. But nothing is worse than hearing a bagpipe go astray. If they really get ten thousand people together with bagpipes, how many of them are skilled at their choice of instrument? Even if 1% of the bagpipers are bad (and that is a really low guess), that would mean 100 bad bagpipers and we all know that a bad bagpipe stands out far more then 100 good ones. This just seems like an equation for a bad parade.

You can take away my dignity, but you can’t take away my bagpipes.