Miscellany from all over (guaranteed almost Trump-free — at least until close to the end)

The cause of la grande explosion in France. Yicch! (Photo swiped from Wikipedia.)

There’s just so much Donald Trump I can stand before I stick my fingers in my ears, close my eyes, and run screaming from the room.

So today, a few random departures from the subject. Consider these the equivalent of sitting at the computer watching cute cat videos while a forest fire rages outside your window. (If you’re in California or Oregon there probably is one, come to think of it.) You want to get in a couple of smiles before the Internet goes down and the house burns to the ground. So there’s the following.

There once was an old man who zapped a fly

I wouldn’t know why he zapped that fly… 

In France, an 82-year-old pensioner blew up his house while trying to kill a fly. The old guy was sitting down to dinner. The fly was buzzing his….I dunno what he was eating, and it really doesn’t matter. But since this happened in the Dordogne, let’s just suppose it was a plate with some of the local cheeses, like a nice, soft Margotin, and a semi-soft mild Trappe d'Echourgnac. Mmm! No wonder the fly wouldn’t leave!

At any rate, La Technologie’s ubiquitous fingers have reached all the way to the Dordogne village of Parcoul-Chaud, where the irritated old guy reached for his fly swatter — an electronic fly swatter. 

“Unfortunately,” reports ConnexionFrance.com “there was a gas canister leaking in his home and this reacted with the device, causing an explosion that destroyed the kitchen and a part of the roof. 

“The man sustained only minor injuries.” 

I could not find any reports on the condition of the fly.

To pimp out a course, pump up the pomp

More than fifty years ago, the great advertising genius David Ogilvy advised his then-young copywriters, me among them, that if they wanted to write ads that sell, they should avoid using pompous language and onerous jargon.

Tell that to the folks who run “Brand United University,” which, as you might have guessed even as you read its name, is not a university at all. It’s an activity of a marketing and advertising trade magazine called Brand United. You’d think that after the debacle that was “Trump University,” people would stop adding the descriptor University to the names of things that aren’t universities. (In this case it’s a two-hour “webinar.”) But no.

Not satisfied with the grandiosity of equating a two hour course on the Internet about print ad marketing techniques with an institution of higher learning, the people behind all this added the following descriptor, which I think is supposed to impress you:

Print marketing offers a blend of many offline marketing touchpoints in the customer journey that multiplies marketing performance when incorporated into a comprehensive optichannel strategy.

Got that? Me neither. But I think it means something like, “There are lots of things you can do with different kinds of print advertising at different times to sell stuff.”

That I get. But it doesn’t sound nearly as important. Or perhaps as self-important. 

Somebody please drop these clowns in the dumpster with full military honors while the band plays Pomp and Circumstance.

It all depends on what you squat

Back to France, where there was a retiree in a “care home.” (Is that something like a nursing home? I dunno.) Anyway, the retiree discovered that squatters had invaded and taken over a property he owned. 

A report, again in ConnexionFrance.com, my go-to source for all things that are both French and frivolous, tells me:

[The squatters] claimed, wrongly, that because it was an empty second home they had the right to take it on to house homeless people. 

In cases of squatters moving into a main home, the owners can have them evicted by police at any time if they can prove the occupiers broke in to the property and are thus using it as a residence illegally. 

But owners must go through the legal channels and not try to evict the squatters themselves – they risk a €30,000 fine and up to three years in jail if they do so. 

In the case of second homes, the law is stricter.Police can arrest squatters within 48 hours of them occupying the property if they have caused serious damage during or after the break-in. 

After this initial 48-hour period, the legal owners must obtain an eviction order from a court before bailiffs can move in. The process can take weeks. 

And if the application is ruled on during France’s winter truce – the period between November 1 and March 31 when evictions are banned – a judge may rule that the squatters cannot be evicted until the spring.”

And that was where a gear tooth snapped, a cog slipped, and my blogging machinery started spitting out Donald Trump again.

I mean, speaking of squatters, what are we to do if he loses the election but refuses to leave the White House?

Who can issue a legal eviction notice? Must the process move through the Federal courts, with Bill Barr again acting as Trump’s personal attorney at taxpayer expense (because of course if Trump refuses to move out of the White House, why should Barr move out of the Department of Justice?) 

Will a Court of Appeals rule that Trump cannot be evicted until Spring? Will the White House eventually be referred to as “The Executive Squat?” If Trump finally does leave, will he begin referring to himself as "homeless?"

Stay tuned.