RANDOM SHOTS

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 78, 2 April 1932, Page 2 (Supplement)

RANDOM SHOTS

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In a Hollywood menagerie there are two snakes which can eject venom 15ft. Those rival stars!

In England the sale of umbrellas has decreased in three years by 70 per cent. Don't buy, but borrow, a gamp. It seems that in the Dartmoor gaol riot convicts attacked warders with safety razors. It was a close shave for both warders and prisoners. Troubles never come singly. First the nation is threatened with further cuts, and then McConachy, of New Zealand, gets beaten at billiards. I understand that although Easter Monday morning was extremely unpleasant tho game of bowls proceeded. I refrain, of course, from mentioning what kind of bowls. I noted a polite gentleman stroll on to a local wharf with a fishing line the other morning. He asked a persistent occupant: "Is it an offence to catch fish here?" "No," replied the man, "it's a bloomin' miracle." I read in an authoritative sporting journal that in England most of the dog races are "cooked." This is evidently where the Americans got the term, "hot dogs." There has been a marked decline in betting. I am wondering if this excellent indication of purer morals has been achieved by our friends the pietists or by that old curmudgeon General Depression. High French opinion is that the League of Nations is weak. What is really wanted is the introduction of the New Zealand plan by which a board could be appointed to tell the League what to do. The attitude of tljp bureaucrats towards the New Zealand taxpayer calls to mind the following old verse: The toad beneath the harrow feels Each revolution of the wheels; TJie butterfly upon the road Preaches contentment to the toad. Questioned as to her supposed investments on racing, a lady witness recently mentioned that the only horse she knew anything of was the clothes horse. It was appropriate for the magistrate to remark that this was the one to put, one's shirt on. An English contemporary says that imprisonment for debt has now become so common that there are waiting lists for entry into the most popular gaols. Many are being bitterly disappointed, and wait about in queues for hours and hours.

A blue-water friend tells me of the Norwegian skipper who is at present in Australia, master of a ship owned by his own brother. Agents desired him to undertake an enterprise of some risk, and asked him if he had authority to take the risk. "Oh, yes," he replied. "The vessel is my brother's, and I have his power of eternity." When our political forefathers were hard put to it to find revenue, they put a tax on windows; even the light was filtered through the office of the Commissioner of Taxes. It occurs to me that the Board of Inventions which possibly supplies our own Tax Department with bright ideas has not up to the moment thought of either a window or a tombstone tax. Eaters of cheese will he interested to hear that Gorgonzola recently went to war. Gorgonzola is an Italian town, and its football team was cleaned up by the Cernusco lot. The Gorgonzolians were so infuriated that they planned a reprisal with stilettos, bottles and so forth. The carbinieri, however, waylaid them, and Gorgonzola retired into its cheese again. THE PANIC. "There is no reason for panic," declared F. J. Perry, the Davis Cup player, in discussing the tennis defeat of a London team by a Paris combination in which two schoolboys shone. "The Frenchmen had greatly improved, and were fine players. They were in tip-top form, and we in our worst. The match must not be regarded as a pointer to the Davis Cup." „ My heart Is nigh to breaking, and a tear bedims my eye, I cannot face the future now, however I may try ; For Britain's lost the final of the marbles Marathon, Which the -wily Slovaks' knuckling down has absolutely won. The ping-pong championship, I hear, has been annexed by Spain, And we've been licked at basketball by Switzerland again. The British brow is dank with pain and many a nervous wreck Lies in the sanatorium, because the bally Czech Has dared to play the Rugger game and challenged us to play. Our proud prestige is threatened and we're dwindling fast away; A hideous fate's in store for us when we, with trembling cue. Are beaten at the billiard game and meet our Waterloo.

Base foreigners invade our games, they box and ride and jump, Play tennis, cricket, hockey, bowla— no wonder I've the hump! The biceps of the bulldog breed are atrophied I fear. The race is wilting on its stalk, Its end is jolly near. Are we downhearted? Yes! Too true! The reason you will guess, For yesterday Monsieur Crapaud beat Billy Brown at chess.

Are we the race whose bowmen bold won fame at Agincourt? Yet lost the great Atlantic Cup by several lengths or more? We who at Hastings, heavens above, had won the bristling ridge? Alas, alas! Our feeble race have lost at Contract Bridge. Dread panic seizes British hearts and penetrates our bones. Oh heavens! That British golfers should be downed by Bobby Jones.

Shall stalwart sons of sturdy sires to aliens bow the knee. Shall athletes from the dear old Shires be downed by Italy? They've beaten us at shuffleboard, shoveap'ny, skittles too, Oh British brethren in your might stand forth, it's up to you! Eschew this fatal nervousness and keep your peckers up, Oh stalwarts, try your level best to win the poker cup. Oh brothers of the bulldog breed, pull up your fancy socks, Oh sportsmen, take fair warning, or we'll all be on the rocks. Go in and win! Oh play the game, be leaders once again, And wrest the fly-100 championship from out the hands of Spain. Restore tlie prestige lost by us, now held by alieji crew. Oh heavens, that foreigners should dare to play as well as you! I ' —C.J. .