Once in a while I get to thinking that I’ll take up the u. pipes. I’ve been having one of those weeks, and I went over to see what was going on in their forum.
Um, the uillean pipers are insane. Stark, raving, mad!
I think I’ll stick with my fifes and whistles.
… and you think you’re normal??
Come to the dark side… we’ve been waiting for you.
Jim, I believe the worst posts have been deleted. :roll:
Are you insinuating that whistle players are sane?
BTW, Lorenzo set up a thread to parallel this one in the UP Forum just for the sake of balance. 
Are you insinuating that Uilleann pipers can be balanced?
Well I know at least one who has a chip on both shoulders. 
No, no, not a bit of it! I think it’s more of a perpetual state of unbalance=freefall when it comes to pipering. Poor ol’ Lorenzo just can’t help himself, though…
And as for the chips on both my shoulders, let me just say that you’d need a truckload of salsa.
Waitaminnit. A chip on both shoulders? Do I have to nitpick, here? Or am I a cat? Or am I lodged in some other dimension? Oh, yeah, right…my name…carry on.
That’s proof that he is balanced.
He has to be balanced or one of them would fall off.
Ah. There you go! I knew the best way to wake this place up after the Great Commercial Postings Snooze was to invite the pipers over. Good thinking, Jim.
See what I mean, whistlers?
I posted “over there” one time.
That was enough.
‘Never was Piping so gay’ !
Y’all don’t know the meaning of the word “obsession” or “addictive” until you’ve had a full set of pipes purring away in your lap, especially a flat set. Only then can you truly grasp the power of the Dark Side.
spooky music
Come to the Dark Side. beckons
I think they are more than just “Stark, raving, mad.” I think they could be potentially dangerous! Why right now, if you visit that forum, you can see discussion about scraping reeds, latex boogers, making vile concoctions of beeswax and lard, mixtures of tallow, bear grease (fat) and beeswax or even (the horror!) dipping your reed in oil !! Yuck!
Well I for one, think it’s time to clean up this Board. While I must confess that my past is not entirely spotless and that I have experimented with bluetack (though I didn’t inhale), never in my entire life have I ever even considered dipping my reed in oil overnight. These people must be stopped before they corrupt the morals of all the young folks that visit this board.
Michael Grinter recommends that you dip your head in almond oil for five minutes and let it drain down through the tube overnight. But only once a month, mind … we whistlers are sensible folk afer all.
If you follow Michael’s advice, you won’t really care much what happens to your reed.
Wombat
I don’t know who this Grintner guy is but, you need to be careful. First you start by dipping your head in Almond Oil and say to yourself, “well this ain’t so bad, I’ll just do this once in a while and I can always stop anytime I want”. Then after while, dipping your head no longer has the thrills it once had and you begin to have fantisies about scraping your reed and the next thing you know your mixing bear fat and beeswax and dipping your reed in oil! If your not careful, you’ll end up in the gutter playing one of those infernal contraptions and smelling of rancid bear grease.
Me, I draw the line at playing with some bluetack around my orifaces … well maybe also just a little twisting and pulling my head to get the tone right.
I just tried this, and I could only hold my breath for a minute, minute-and-a-half, tops. And though my hair has never felt silkier, it took a very long shower to get all the oil out. Even once a month seems a bit too much for me.
Peteinmn has now gone off talking about dipping my reed in oil, and playing with bluetack around one’s orifices. This is a family board, you know, and such talk has no place here. Pipers! Always droning on and on . . .
Michael Grinter recommends that you dip your head in almond oil for five minutes
How many years do you have to have been playing low whistle before your breath control is good enough to do that? 
rimshot, rimshot. ba-doom-doom. 
Hiiii-yoooooooooo
You are correct, sir!
Now if this was the UP Forum we could get a four-pager from the Royce-inator about said almond oil treatment.