This year the British decided to add a little bit of class to their big fat tennis tournament – no bagpipes. NO BAGPIPES!! Of course, they’ve never been allowed before, but before we never had so many Scots in the proceedings. Now so many Scots are playing the All England Club found it necessary to issue some edicts, Scottish related edicts.

        “No male tennis players shall wear kilts!” No one wants to see a Scottish bum at center court.            “Remove that Scottish bum, immediately!”
        “But sir, he claims to be James Bond.”
        “Any proof of this?”
        “Yes sir. When I kicked him, he shook his hand at me, but he didn’t stir.”
        “He didn’t have a bagpipe with him, did he?”
        “No but he was asking for money… a penny, I think.”

       “No plaid shall be worn on the courts!”
        But what if it’s very tasteful with just a hint of thicket?
        “Absolutely no plaid! If we allow plaid, what next? The Americans and their dreadful tiedye?”

       “No long beards will be allowed! If you must wear a beard, conform to the Wimbledon standard beard code.”  
        That’s a law long overdue, because we know how Scottish tennis players love their long beards in summer.
        “If we don’t forbid long beards, ZZ Top may try to enter.”
        “Yes… and?”
        “As a doubles team they could tie them together and return shots with only their beards.”
   
        This is getting stupid.
        We can see All England banning bagpipes, or feeling the need to announce no bagpipes… because bagpipes are like evil onions. Except no one cries when you cut open a bagpipe. And the only way you can get two pipers to play in unison is to shoot one. Every time you see a bagpiper playing, he’s always walking… to get away from the sound. Don’t ask us about the range of a bagpipe… 50 feet if you’ve got a good arm.  People hate the bagpipe. To a civilized person, a gentleman is someone who knows how to play the bagpipe… and doesn’t.

        People hate the bagpipe. At Wimbledon, they’d rather replace the strawberries and cream with haggis than hear a bagpipe. Weird statistic: have you ever noticed buses falling in a ravine always seem to have a bagpiper in them?  Another weird fact: cows hooked up to a bagpipe give cottage cheese. We didn’t know that. Here’s another weird fact. Apparently there’s a group trying to get mimes to take up the bagpipe. Here’s their reasoning: They think if enough mimes play the bagpipes, regular bagpipers will see the mimes playing and then put down their bags forever, where has a double edged effect. It rids our society of bagpipers to be replaced by the mime bagpipers which, according to the evil guys who cooked this scheme up, won’t last long because the bacteria that lives in the bagpipe lethally interacts, over time, with the face paint mimes use and, voila, two despised segments of society gone forever.