# My Neighbours are going to Hate Me... **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [March 14, 2002, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-neighbours-are-going-to-hate-me/98182 "2002-03-14T02:53:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Rhubarb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/59ef9b/32.png) [@Rhubarb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhubarb)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2002, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-neighbours-are-going-to-hate-me/98182/21 "2002-03-16T05:06:46Z")
First off, I rather like bagpipes. What can I say? I’m strange in other ways, too. That said, I must share my favorite definition of bagpipe music - 😃 “Bagpipes look and sound like someone holding a large cat in their arms and biting it’s tail.” -Robert Heinlein. ---
**Author:** ![d12](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/71c47a/32.png) [@d12](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/d12)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2002, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-neighbours-are-going-to-hate-me/98182/22 "2002-03-16T05:17:47Z")
**Way to piss people off with the pipes #1** : Make a tape of yourself, but play as bad as possible. Throw it into the car, play at full blast with the windows down. You might wanna have earplugs though. We once had to do this to teach the idiot across the street that his vulgar rap was rather offensive when played at 10 at night. ---
**Author:** ![OldMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/b2d939/32.png) [@OldMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldMan)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2002, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-neighbours-are-going-to-hate-me/98182/23 "2002-03-16T07:08:12Z")
You play the pipes? Damn, I wish we were neighbours. I love the skirl of the pipes. Must be my Celtic genes, but I can’t hear them without wanting to get up and dance. A jig, a reel, a strathspey, lay it on me. Come see me some time, I’ll pour a wee dram of the pure for you and love every sound you make. The pipes are a noble instrument, and a pipe master is a noble person. I wish you well. ---
**Author:** ![Jenner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ac8455/32.png) [@Jenner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jenner)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2002, 7:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-neighbours-are-going-to-hate-me/98182/24 "2002-03-16T07:50:14Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by FlyingDragonFan \* > \*\*Bagpipes Rock!! > > When I was a student at the University of Arizona, there was a guy who would go out in the early morning and play in this sort of ampitheatre in the middle of the mall. It was great to be on my way to an 8 a.m. calculus course and hear the pipes drifting across the campus. Beautiful. \*\* I have similar bagpipe memories from college. Sometimes in the evening the local piper club would hold a practice session in one of the university parking lots. They only practiced there a few nights out of every month, but it was always around 7:00 PM, the time I was normally out jogging on the mall. The sad, distant sound of the pipes would carry across the entire campus, and it made everything – the empty buildings and sidewalks, the deepening shadows, the purple sky – seem haunting and ethereal, as if it was part of another universe. I still get chills down my spine thinking about it. ---
**Author:** ![Vivamus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Vivamus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vivamus)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2002, 12:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-neighbours-are-going-to-hate-me/98182/25 "2002-03-16T12:26:57Z")
Well, I live with a Scotsman, but he happens to dislike the sound of the pipes and more generally thinks the SNP are a bunch of wankers. Personally, pipes put me in mind of funerals, but I find the opportunity to quote Hugh MacDiarmid irresistible, so: (from “Bagpipe Music”) > [@](#): > > Flowers. A flower-bed like hearing the bagpipes. > … > The bagpipes- they are screaming and they are sorrowful. > There is a wail in their merriment, and cruelty in their triumph. > They rise and they fall like a weight swung in the air at the end of a string. > They are like the red blood of those peonies. > And like the melancholy of those blue flowers. > They are like a human voice- no! for the human voice lies! > They are like human life that flows under the words.l > That flower-bed is like the true life that wants to express itself > And does…while we human beings like cramped and fearful. THAT, my friends, is a poem about bagpipe music. Louis MacNiece can bite me. 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/my-neighbours-are-going-to-hate-me/98182.md?page=1)