"I just wanted to let you guys know that the more replies you people post, the more business and the more hits and sales I get. My goal is NEGATIVE advertisement."

Cheating and enraging customers so they denounce you on the web... as a business model, thanks to Google.

Online chatter about DecorMyEyes, even furious online chatter, pushed the site higher in Google search results, which led to greater sales....

[T]he owner of DecorMyEyes might be more than just a combustible bully with a mean streak and a potty mouth. He might also be a pioneer of a new brand of anti-salesmanship — utterly noxious retail — that is facilitated by the quirks and shortcomings of Internet commerce and that tramples long-cherished traditions of customer service, like deference and charm.

The linked NYT article begins with a story about a businessman who sounds like has crossed the line into making frauds and threats. The scheme fails if you get arrested! So strain out the vivid example that bulks up the article and imagine a business that just has crappy products and nasty customer service. Would that play Google so well? Should Google be saving these eyeglass customers from their own failure to check out the business before they order? They'd easily find the complaints.

Now, one reason the eyeglass business is playing this negative game so well is that people are Googling the brand names of eyeglass frames, and the negative comments against the company talk about how they believe they didn't get the brand they ordered. They say they got fakes. Let's think about what's going on here. Who buys expensive brand-name eyeglasses without trying them on? I bet most of these customers have tried them on — in local eyeglass stores. Then, instead of paying the price the shopkeeper wants, they go to the web to find a better deal. At that point, they are doing a search for a particular brand name. They see the price and jump at the notion that the local shopkeeper is cheating them. Aha! They think they're being smart when they are being very dumb.

If you read far enough into the (long) article, you get to the part where the reporter — David Segal — interviews the businessman — a guy named Vitaly Borker:

“Look,” he says, grabbing an iPad off a small table. He types “Christian Audigier,” the name of a French designer, and “glasses” into Google. DecorMyEyes pops up high on the first page.

“Why am I there?” he asks, sounding both peeved and amazed. “I don’t belong there. I actually outrank the designer’s own Web site.”...

Despite the fear he has inspired, Mr. Borker doesn’t regard himself as a terror. He prefers to think of himself as the Howard Stern of online commerce — an outsize character prone to shocking utterances....

“People overreact,” he pshaws, often because they’re unaccustomed to plain speaking, New York-style. Anyway, he adds, if somebody messes with you, and you mess back, “how is that a threat?”...

“The customer is always right — not here, you understand?” he says, raising his voice. “I hate that phrase — the customer is always right. Why is the merchant always wrong? Can the customer ever be wrong? Is that not possible?”

Robert Downey Jr. is Mr. Peanut.

Great! I've always loved Robert Downey Jr. and Mr. Peanut:



But why is the nutcracker named "Richard"?

Background on Mr. Peanut:"Mr. Peanut was created in 1916 after Planters Peanuts held a contest to create a logo and a 14-year-old boy drew a nut with human features." I'd really like to see the original drawing. According to Wikipedia, the boy (Antonio Gentile) just drew a some sort of man-peanut — and "an artist later added spats, a top hat, a monocle, and a cane." So... did the boy's drawing have the gloves? The unfailingly optimistic smile?

"A man was arrested after stealing author Jonathan Franzen's glasses from the writer and demanding a ransom of £100,000 ($158,808) at a book launch."

"Police said a helicopter was called to chase the culprit, who jumped into the Serpentine lake in London. The 27-year-old has since been released with no further action being taken and the glasses have been recovered."

A helicopter? I mean, I know Franzen's book — "Freedom" — is considered tremendously important, but... it was a pair of glasses. Why chase the guy with a helicopter?

Is it because those glasses are part of his signature look? Quick! Which one is Franzen?



Without the glasses... he could be... just anybody.

Some book journal editor who was at the scene of the crime, said: "It was frankly quite bizarre. Considering the seriousness of Franzen's work, this is the last thing anyone expected at his book launch."

Considering the seriousness of Franzen's work! I don't understand literary-journalist logic. It's exactly seriousness that inspires absurd prankish tweaking. (If you don't understand my logic, you need to watch a few Marx Brothers movies.)

Ted Olson...

... "softened"? By his new wife? I find it hard to believe. But if he gets a new haircut and new glasses, then I might believe.

"Goes to show you that a pretty girl can wear just about anything and look cute."

Is that the explanation? A mystery!

You've got one more night to wear those "00" glasses.

I thought that 2009 was the last New Year's when you could wear those glasses with "00" over the eyes, but I was corrected. You've got to put up with a little asymmetry, but it can be done:

We're here at the laundromat...

There's an old Reader's Digest large-print edition.



"Now, I can enjoy my bath again safely."

See that unicorn on the table? I got hit by it later. Accidentally. Don't think the unicorn-loving girl became enraged at me. Just a little careless unicorn-flinging at the laundromat. [ADDED: Vicious. You hit me with a unicorn.]

Jane Russell needs telescopic glasses:



I wonder how the world sees us.



(Enlarge.)

Matt Welch vs. Tom Daschle's glasses.

"He meets a deaf woman who loves music. Her hearing aid has broken. But she has good eyes and can read to him, but she slurs the words."

"It turns out that he plays the guitar, and she can hear it, a bit. Then in a final shocking twist, we learn that his middle name is 'Adam,' and her name is 'Eve.' Sadly, however, she is a robot."

That's Original George's entry in the "Time Enough At Last" challenge. The idea was to write a sequel to the famous "Twilight Zone" episode in which a man, Henry Bemis, who only wants to be left alone to read, is the sole survivor of a nuclear attack and then, with time enough at last to do all his reading, he breaks his glasses, without which he cannot read. So, what next?

Christy's entry is more "The Remake" than "The Sequel":

He is on the steps to the paperless Library circa 2020, picks up a Kindle and discovers the electromagnetic pulse has wiped all digital media clean.

Actually, the comments thread veered away from the challenge and into the philosophical inquiry: If there were no longer any possibility of interaction with human beings in real life, what books would be worth reading?

Anyway, I wrote the original post saying I'd reveal my sequel idea later, so here goes:

We see Henry agonizing over his broken glasses and suffering. He has to grope about in his near blindness, etc. etc. Eventually, he gropes his way into an eyeglass store. But all the glasses are melted from the nuclear blast. And the frames in an eyeglass store don't have prescription lenses anyway, Henry, you idiot. But there, under the counter there's a safe, blasted half open. Inside, there is a pair of glasses — thick glasses, like his old ones. We see through his eyes as he tries them on: The vision is clear. Henry is jubilant. He runs through the town back to his old stack of books on the library steps. He sits down, and, no sooner does he open up a book to read than the glasses fall off, hit the step, and break.

"Time Enough at Last" — the sequel.

Remember that great episode of "Twilight Zone" with Burgess Meredith as Henry Bemis, the guy who only wanted to be left alone to read and gets his wish? Embedded below are the last 8 minutes to refresh your recollection (and you can watch the beginning and middle here and here if you want.)(And here's the Wikipedia entry to get up to speed more quickly.)



What I've been contemplating is "Time Enough at Last: The Sequel." I have my idea, but you go first.

ADDED: Here's better video, all in one piece, with a commercial.

Deskscape.