Jeffrey Eisenberg and I were looking though a pair of antique doors at Austin Auction Gallery when I saw a remarkable oil painting on the wall behind them and whispered in wonder, “Ozymandias.”

The auction catalog described the painting as, “Arabian horse and handler with Egyptian sphinx, signed lower right Maksymilian Novak-Zemplinski (Polish, b.1974), dated 2000.”

But I knew that painting for what it was. I’ve loved “Ozymandias” since the 9th grade.

You remember it, don’t you? Bryan Cranston read that famous poem in the final episode of “Breaking Bad.” The title of the episode was “Ozymandias,” and TV Guide picked it as “the best television episode of the 21st century.” It was also the only episode of a TV show ever to achieve a perfect 10-out-of-10 rating on IMDb with over 200,000 votes, putting it at the number one spot for the most highly rated television episode ever:

I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

When I returned home from the auction, I spent a delightful 90 minutes tracking down all the bits and pieces of how that poem came to exist.

It was in 1817 that Percy Bysshe Shelley and his poet friend, Horace Smith read the news that the carved head of Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses II had been removed from its tomb at Thebes by an Italian adventurer and that it would soon be traveling to Britain.

Shelly suggested to Smith that each of them should write a poem about it and title each of their poems “Ozymandias,” the Greek name for Egyptian pharaoh Ramesses II.

Look at the poem as it appeared in newspaper on that day in 1818, and you will see that Percy Bysshe Shelley signed it, “Glirastes.” He did it as an inside joke intended only for his wife, Mary Shelley, who, incidentally, published her famous novel “Frankenstein” that same year.

Mary often signed her letters to Percy as “your affectionate dormouse.” So Percy combined “Gliridae” (Latin for dormouse) with “Erastes” (Greek for lover) to create “Glirastes,” (meaning “lover of dormice.”)

So now you know how Google’s second-most-often-searched poem came to be published without anyone in London suspecting that it had been written on a bet with a friend by one of the most famous poets on earth who chose to sign it with a pseudonym as an inside joke to his wife.

Did you know that I became an ad writer only because it was impossible to support myself as a poet?

Now that you know that, you will not be surprised that Indy Beagle has collected Google’s Top 20 Poems for you to read in the rabbit hole. Indy also found the Horace Smith version of Ozymandias, and added it at the end of the Google’s Top 20 list.

To enter the rabbit hole, all you have to do is click the image that appears at the top of today’s Monday Morning Memo. You’ll find this memo archived as “Looking Though Antique Doors,” the Monday Morning Memo for October 20th, 2025.

This is the Google Top 20 List:

• “The Road Not...

Dwight D. Eisenhower was born in Denison, Texas, in 1890. He was the President of the United States when I was born in Dallas, Texas, 68 years later.

People called me “Little Roy.” People called him “Ike.”

I worry that we have forgotten him.

Ike Eisenhower graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1915 when he was 24 years old. His superiors noticed his organizational abilities, and appointed him commander of a tank training center during World War I.

In 1933, he became aide to Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur, and in 1935 Ike went with him to the Philippines when MacArthur accepted the post of chief military adviser to that nation’s government.

On June 25, 1942, Ike Eisenhower was chosen over 366 senior officers to lead the Armed Forces of the United States in World War II.

After proving himself on the battlefields of North Africa and Italy in 1942 and 1943, Ike Eisenhower was appointed supreme commander of Operation Overlord – the Allied invasion of northwestern Europe.

Ike was now commanding the Armed Forces of all 49 Allied nations – including Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China – in the war against Hitler and his minions. He personally planned and supervised two of the most consequential military campaigns of World War II: Operation Torch in the North Africa campaign in 1942–1943 and the invasion of Normandy in 1944.

Ike Eisenhower never talked like a tough guy, but only a fool would call him “weak” or “woke.”

This past July, Robert Reich – an eloquent and intelligent spokesperson on the left – quoted a passage from an anti-war speech that Ike Eisenhower made at the beginning of his presidency in 1953. Reich ended his quote just prior to Ike’s unsettling reference to the crucifixion of Christ.

Eloquent and intelligent people on the right refused to believe that a celebrated warrior had ever made a speech that could be classified as “anti-war.”

Curious, I decided to get to the bottom of it.

Here is a link to the complete transcript and original recording of the speech that President Dwight D. Eisenhower made before the American Society of Newspaper Editors on April 16, 1953, from the Statler Hotel in Washington, D.C.

This is the passage from that speech that got everyone worked up:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

This world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals, it is some 50 miles of concrete pavement.

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

The title of that speech was originally “Chance for Peace,” but due to the vivid mental image contained in the middle of the speech, it quickly became known as the “Cross of Iron” speech.

Words have impact when they contain vivid mental images.

I own guns, but I am not a hunter. Neither my family nor my friends have ever seen my guns. But in the unlikely event of a home invasion, I am adequately prepared to protect

Packaging is the art of presentation.

Exciting packaging improves conversion.

There are two important parts of packaging:

WHAT IS IN THE PACKAGE?

When package “A” and package “B” are the same price and contain the same basics, they are equal. But when package “B” contains something extra that people would love to have, the sale will always go to package “B”.

Be the competitor that offers package “B”.

The “something extra” that you include in your package has to be something that people actually care about. It doesn’t have to cost you a lot; people just have to want it. This is where most businesses screw up. They create a package by adding something extra that no one really cares about. Those packages always fail, so the business owner foolishly concludes that packaging doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t take a lot of money to build an attractive package. But it does take a lot of time, energy, and creativity.

And then it takes even more time and energy to source the “something extra” that will go into the package.

SUMMARY: When your competitors sell the same things that you sell at similar prices, include a highly desirable “something extra” in your package.

HOW IS THE PACKAGE PRESENTED?

Two major movie theaters in Austin are showing the movie, “Gabby’s Dollhouse.” Both theaters have extensive menus and good food. Pivot your dining table out of the way. Sit down in your cozy recliner. Swing the table back across your lap. Order delicious things. Your smiling server will deliver whatever you want and keep doing so throughout the movie.

When young children go to the movies, adults go with them. This is why both theaters offer an extensive selection of beer, wine, and cocktails.

But only one of the theaters is offering a package that includes a map, some stickers, a plastic cup, and some plastic ears like the ones worn by Gabby, the main character in the movie. Every child will receive the movie memorabilia. Adults will not.

Pennie and I waited too long to buy tickets for our two youngest grandkids.

Are you ready for this? Every seat was sold on every screen for every seating time for “Gabby’s Dollhouse” at the theater offering the memorabilia made of paper and plastic. They even sold all the seats on the front row that are way too close to the screen.

We had to take our grandchildren to the newer theater in the better shopping center. That huge theater was completely empty except for the four of us along with two other families. Eleven people in all.

SUMMARY: Pennie and I were thankful that our grandkids didn’t know about the movie memorabilia at the other movie theater.

I believe that 2026 will be a year when consumer confidence* is in decline.

As a result, most businesses will reduce their payroll and their advertising in an attempt to “cut their way to profitability.”

They will do this because it makes sense if you don’t think about it.

But smart-and-hungry challengers who do think about it will hit the accelerator instead of the brakes. They will do this because they understand that market share is easier to steal from the big boys when consumer confidence is in decline.

The painful problem for these smart-and-hungry challengers is that they will be competing for a larger slice of a shrinking pie. So big gains in market share will show up as only small gains in top line revenue.

But when consumer confidence returns, “All hail the new market leader.”

Hitting the accelerator instead of the brakes is how smart-and-hungry challengers will overtake market leaders in 2026.

Are you beginning to understand why I taught you about the...