RANDOM SHOTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 243, 14 October 1933, Page 2 (Supplement)

RANDOM SHOTS.

(By ZAMTEL.)

Headline, "Shooting Stare.** But you can't shoot them with impunity, even in Hollywood.

In Germany the "Stew Sunday" has been inaugurated. Surely Germany hasn't gone to pot?

Thieves stole a carpet from a suburban church. I wonder will they be put on the mat?

An insurance company medical expert says orators live longer than other people. When Frank Milner is 98—

Four hundred crates of New Zealand eggs have gone forward to London. Still there is no present sign of a British election.

Yes, we are round the corner. A new State Fire Insurance Office is to be built in Christchurch. There's hope iu every bos of matchcs.

The national slogan in the U.S.A. is "Buy Now!" The Americans have a eaying, "There is a sucker born every minute"—sell him.

A British broadcasting company recently asked for poems. It received eleven thousand by next mail. It says that one of them is rather good.

A definite rota of good behaviour is now insisted on in the best London nightclubs. One is expected to appear at breakfast in evening dress.

The United States has offered to aid the cotton growers with a sum of four hundred million dollars. Enough to make any cotton grower reel!

A correspondent of a Southern print, writing of railways signs himself "Bus Traveller of Ten Years' Standing." A strap-hanger of some experience?

Overheard in Wellesley Street: "My boy is taking medicine iu Otago." "Oh, I am sorry to hear that. I thought Jim hadn't been looking too well lately."

By the use of infra-red rays cinematograms may now be taken in tho dark. Young couples up to now havo been grateful enough for merely seeing the pictures in the dark.

I wonder if tho English plan of burning condemned slums as a Mayoral and civic function will spread to the Dominion—and if we shall be ablo to preserve Haining Street for the nation?

I learn from an authoritative source that the story of the backblocks Mayor who decided not to give an honorarium to a council employee, on the ground that the man couldn't play it, is untrue.

Extract from a Home paper, "A chimney 120 feet high and containing 250 tons of bricks was caught by a photographer as it tottered on being demolished." That photographer is possibly a cricketer, too.

A naval expert has declared that a strong navy can never be an instrument of aggression. Indeed, those new navy guns for piercing 20 inches of armour plate are simply being made for sweetpeas to climb on.

Hedges are to be grown near a boiling pool at Rotorua to prevent motorists getting into it. Still, it is not absolutely necessary for motorists to drive in a thermal district to get into hot water.

I note with a fisherman's keen delight that in four hours fishermen caught 34 splendid hapuka, some weighing up to COlb. I am all the more cheered as you can buy quite a toothful of hapuka for a shilling. . I gather from an old London paper that the record attendance of visitors to tho British House of Commons on any single day was 10,000. May Providence suppress any similar morbid tendency in Wellington. Professor Einstein, tho famous relativist, no longer welcome in Germany, will lecture in America. He will bo a success. He is the man who said American women arc the handsomest in tho world.

A constable giving evidence at Napier avoided unprintable language by coughing at each place where a word was magisterially tabooed. Will the force faced in future with the ordeal of a cough series, kindly vary It with sneezes? SILENCE! Colonel John Smith Purely, D.5.0., V.D., M.D., C.M., ctc., metropolitan medical officer of health for Sydney, and formerly of Auckland, in a recent lecture said: Noise, the curse of modern life, with its inevitable toll of nerve energy, neurosis and intractable insomnia is illustrated by the noises of our streets. In addition to the strident horns of motor cars and cycles, the clanging of bells, exhausts without efficient mufflers, trucks without pneumatic tyres, tramcars, and in the early morning the voices of tlic butcher, the milkman, the baker, or the itinerant vendor, and the raucous shouts of newsboys—our prayer might be to be delivered from the loud-speaker.

I often dream of soundless cars All sneaking up the roads, Reaping the pule pedestrian Jn large, lugubrious loa'ds; Of dredges pianissimo. Aud trams with silent gongs, And whispering audiences at lights, And 'wordless wireless songs. And politicians always mute. And orators who do not (lute. Of bells all swathed in rubber bands, Exhausts that whisper low, Of 'phones with silencers attached, Of winds that gently blow; Of clocks each robbed of its alarm, Breakers that break no more, But whispering waves that decently Roll quietly ashore; A day when inopoke oils his bill, And the loud rooster's voice is still. Then shall the silent siren sob To help us In the fog. And every canine fancier Possess a barkless dog; And every Jersey breeder too. Objecting to the row. Shall rear the Meatless heifer calf Into the mooless cow; And every citizen enjoys The new earth robbed of all its noise. Yea, bulls shall bellow then no more, And fans with rubber gloves, Shall talkless sit at silent films, And dream of wordless loves; When voiceless politicians plan To beat the 'cute Canute, Cutting volcanic noises out And rendering thunder mute; Maybe the time will quickly ccine. When giant guns will all bo dumb. A silent, stealthy, noiseless world, An earth bereft of sound. The roar of commerce, filched away, A peacefulness profound; No clang, un jangle—quietude, Such as we've always had, And you and me would jirobably Co absolutely mad ; Out on the medicos who silence like And give us noises for the love of Alike! ■—C.JL