RANDOM SHOTS

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 29, 4 February 1939, Page 17 (Supplement)

RANDOM SHOTS

By Zamiel

"I've had a terrible time," writes a correspondent. "First I had tonsillitis, tben diphtheria, typhoid and appendicitis. I'd hardly recovered from these when I had -asthma, phthisis and anaemia." It was the hardest spelling bee he had ever been in. -f + 4" •+■ Statistics shoto that icomen drivers are more likely to hit other cars and ■ stationary objects than men. Can it be because the men dodge about so much when they see women driving? - +■ + + + . _ . "Being..a, professional thought-reader," savs one'of them, "isn't all -fun." . For him, life is just one, darned think, after another. + + + + A motoi-ist complained in court Mat sometimes the,traffic lights changed-,from, green to red to amber almost instantaneously. A blinking nuisance. +' + + +- v. A sports writer says he lias never been able to fathom why certain racehorses achieve success after success and then fade right out of the picture. Well, we'll let him in on the secret. When racehorses achieve success after success, we think of having a modest half-crown each way. ... . , : : -f- r '+ The moon has no air and no water, says a science magazine. We have known a filling station to be like that.

It's true to say that a lot*of women have, their own beauty secrets. And it's equally true. to say that a lot of men' have their own secret beauties I + -f ' + An American ivritcr says that in a . London'restaurant the coffee he ordered tasted lilce tea. Wc have ourselves ordered tea and it tasted, as much like coffeclt probably teas cocoa. An Egyptian on- a visit to this country won. a meat-eating contest in Cairo* He recently . entered a grillroom and in his quaint English demanded a pyramid of Cheops. A hotiseitife complains that the modern maid eats, twice as, much as the pre-icar one did. Still, she does her best to make up for it by staying only half as long. + + + + No. longer ,do you hear of people leaving footprints on'the sands of time. What they leave nowadays is motor grease on the concrete. + + + + "My office boy makes himself a thorough nuisance by whistling popular songs while he is working," complains a reader. Ours just whistles popular songs.

Flying is getting cheaper, it only cost Corrigan 2d a mile to fly the Atlantic. Evidently the cost of going up is coming down. - .1, - .+ + + +• Recent calculations made at the Mount Wilson observatory show that the world is moving at the rata of 66,631 and a fraction miles a minute. Trouble,.nevertheless, manages to •keep up with her. + + + . j .4: A. visitor from France is amazed at the time our theatre queues stand in all weathers. But that's nothing compared with what they. sometimes have to stand when they get inside. + + + + A fire that broke out in a public house icas extinguished by means of beer. We understand that one or tico obstinate customers had to be put out as well. +++ • + "A man can't attain a ripe old age by living in a glass case," says a scientist. It takes a bun in one of our cafeterias to do that. - + + "t" + According to a naturalist, certain shellfish sleep for years. Rip Van Winkles, we presume. + + + + "Isn't it amazing how much the Gov-1 ernment does for one nowadays," comments a reader. And even, more amaz-1 ing how much it does one for.