CURRENT COMMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, 10 November 1934, Page 13 (Supplement)

CURRENT COMMENT.

OTHER POINTS OF VIEW

(By

M.O.S.)

Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, -wined and dined—and fined. * * * * Knowing the national weakness for poker-games, individual, communal and international—-one wonders just what cards Teddy Roosevelt: will elect to keep up his sleeve now that he really can go ahead with the New Deal. # * * ♦ An Anglican bishop has been refused permission to land on the island of Saipan because there are Japanese naval manoeuvres going on there. And we’ve always been told that sailors don’t care! * * * * Children are taking to the air like ducks to water, states an aviation correspondent. Tire only difference being, mother says, that young ducks don’t hit the bottom when their engines cut out. # * * * “Thirteen days is a slow time,” said Lieut. Jones, in reference to the Eng-land-Melboume-England flight. But Rome once was not reached in a day, and even aviators must have patience. As the wife said when she got the doctor s bill, "One more payment and the baby’s ours.” * * * ~ The famous singer, Signora Tetrazzini, and her husband, formerly a tie-seller, took their grievances concerning her property to Court. Apparently they have found the marriage tie more a sell than single business. .#* * « A judge’s decision that a person may proceed against a car-owner for damages caused by an unauthorised driver, even a thief, is likely to have repercussions. Mrs. McTavitt is considering asking Mrs. Muggleton to pay the hospital fees for her son who robbed the latter’s gooseberry bushes. A seed lodged in his appendix and it had to be removed. J ** * * The Doctor’s Dilemma! There has been a Court verdict for damages against a doctor who amputated the finger of a man suffering from blood-poisoning—but the wrong finger, of course. The dramatic possibilities of tha case have inspired our Tame Playwright to the following effusion in the curt, pithy style of the Modem Exposuriste. Act One, Scene One. A Theatre.. Enter patient, wheeled by pear-shaped neophyte on tea-waggon. He, or she, is discharged on broken-backed, white enamel table. Rectangular theatre sister drenches anaesthetised carcase in trlne-tual-asadisectumatropupuream (NCH2-SO4-03). Enter ovate surgeon wrapped in sheet, wearing yellow rubber gloves, trying scapel on a slice of lamb’s fry. Surgeon: Uh-huh? Sister: Uh-huh. Surgeon: O.K. Sister: Uh-huh. Patient: Gug. Surgeon: Um. (Makes , osteoplastic, flap in abdominal wall as it were). - Patient: Gug-gug. Surgeon: Oh, .ho! Sister: Attaboy. Surgeon: Um. Sister: Huh? Surgeon: By Epstein! Sister: What? Surgeon: Wrong appendix. Court case (holds up portion of hepatic artery). Sister: Oh, yeah? Surgeon: Why not? ’ Sister: He’ll never know the difference. Patient: Gug. (He didn’t). (Curtain.) Which only goes to show that it isn’t everything that comes out in the Court reports. Moral. Very. * -v * A Fireproof Town. The New Plymouth Fire Brigade is perturbed at a rumour spreading about the town. Fires in Devon Street will in future be run at a loss. Twenty years ago, when the tail of the office cat caught fire, everyone ceased work and ran for a bucket of water. Now a change has come, and a sizzled tail is an event ; of no importance, for wooden buildings are out-of-date. If one should burn the owner need not worry because he knows that the fire is doomed. When it has consumed his shop and the next one it will come to one of these modem concrete walls and it cannot do more than give that a lick and a promise From a dread of combustion Of goods or of person We clearly may trust in A benevolent council To render us service. AU alarming ignitions From incendiarists’ matches Will be foiled by conditions Of organised building. Concrete preserve us! At ideas of cremation We. have many amongst us Who express irritation And call on the heavens Long to conserve us. But indeed our emotions Seem based on hysterics, On unprincipled notions. Not altered since childhood, Or chronic perverseness. For the fierce conflagration Our fathers remember With recurrent elation Is an affair of past ages. Fires need not unnerve us. * s|s * * November Revels. Mourn for Guy Fawkes! After three centuries of scorching he is almost burnt out and only a few rockets whizzed over his grave. M.O.S. was troubled by early requests for pennies to lend pop to the funeral, but he decided to give poor Guy a hotter send-off. So he joined his small cousin, Geordie, and went out to buy ink pots, Catherine wheels, snakes sparklets, double-bangers, throw-downs and rockets. He put a match to the family rubbish. The first attempt was frustrated by a rotting cabbage leaf which Mr. Day’s minions had overlooked the week before, but afterwards a flame or two gathered force. Reverently M.O.S. laid a double-banger on the' pile. Amid delighted, cheers from Geordie he picked himself up. He selected the largest rocket and said lightly, "Now for a sky scraper.” “That won’t go,” objected Geordie. It was old stock.” "Quiet, boy,” answered Moss guiltily, recalling how cheaply he had bought the thing. , He advanced with a light held at arm s length. "Not that end, Moss,” squeaked Geordie. “You’ve tied it upside down.” “Will you stop interfering, lad,” shouted Moss, already unnerved. He continued with the venture. There was an earthquake and the Fire of London. And that is why Moss has no eyebrows and the tennis lawn is ruined by a shell hole on the base line.