Google is evil and awesome

I absolutely LOVE Google. It's reached a critical point. I mean, these dudes and this company are so impressive that I'm beginning to think of them in a conspiratorial light.

I watch a show on HBO called In Treatment. It's about a shrink, played by Gabriel Byrne (Dean Keaton from Usual Suspects, Tom Reagan from Miller's Crossing) and the whole show takes place, primarily, in his home office. It ran five evenings per week for about 9 weeks. The same patients came back at the same time each week. Monday was a sultry young woman that had a crush on Byrne and wanted to ball him. Tuesday was Blair underwood's character, a military dude that left his wife, killed a bunch of Arab kids in an air strike and had a litany of other emotional problems. Thursday was the fractured married couple, etc. Wednesday was my favorite day. That's when Sophie came thru. Sophie was an Olympic hopeful and suicidal brat that may, or may not have been sexually abused by her absentee father.

Sophie is germane to this post about Google because she dropped one of my favorite television lines of the Spring. there was one episode that began with Paul (Byrne) unexpectedly paying a pizza delivery guy. Minutes later Sophie arrived, the pizza was hers. She goes off on some tangent about she hadn't eaten all day and, while on the bus en route to her session, she searched google for a good pizza spot near Byrne's office and had them order and deliver the pizza. Byrne, your typical old dude, seemed surprised and asked, "Google can do that?"; Sophioe smirked and responded: "Google can do anything."

"Google can do anything." If you don't agree with that, then you need to get hip. It's scary, because if Google channeled its genius and mind-boggling resources for evil efforts, I'm of the mindset that it could probably rule the world.

Anyways, I awoke this morning and did what I do every other morning, I put on the pot of coffee, piss and check my email -- always in that order. Google has a really simple and informative log-in screen for Gmail. Many times, it'll have announcements if there's a new Gmail feature (Gmail, by the way, is leaps and bounds above every other email provider. I seriously can't understand why any of you rubes still deal with AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail...). This morning, I was greeted with this announcement:

NEW! Gmail Custom Time
Ever wish you could go back in time and send that crucial email that could have changed everything -- if only it hadn't slipped your mind? Gmail can now help you with those missed deadlines, missed birthdays and missed opportunities.

• Pre-date your messages: You tell us what time you would have wanted your email sent, and we'll take care of the rest. Need an email to arrive 6 hours ago? No problem.
• Mark as read or unread: Take sending emails to the past one step further. We let you make emails look like they've been read all along.
• Make them count: Use your custom time stamped messages wisely -- each Gmail user gets ten per year.
• Worry less: Forget your finance reports. Forget your anniversary. We'll make it look like you remembered.

You have to recognize how simultaneously great (in an extreme way) and evil (in a debased and devious way) this is. I mean, just in terms of utility, this is, perhaps, the most awesome email development since email was developed. For a irresponsible, forgetful and also conniving schmuck like me, this is a proverbial godsend. I'm ALWAYS forgetting to send emails, or missing a deadline. But that second bullet is sooooo greasy. "We'll let you make emails look like theyve been read all along"!!!!!! That is sooo grimy. So now we can not only lie that we sent an email to a significant other, business partner, scorned friend, offended parent, etc; but we can make it seem like they're the idiots that never received OUR communique.

It could go like this:

You get an email from this friend that invited you to a dinner party that you really didnt want to attend. The friend is mad that you didn't show thru. There was acold plate of lamb chops and stale glass of red wine sitting in front of a seat meant for you, not to mention a bored bimbo they had invited for you to meet. Your friend is furious, mainly because he/she suspects you blew the engagement off to do something trivial, like play with your ballsack watching the Flavor of Love marathon and drink vodka. That's when you send them a custom time email that shows up as read in their inbox, the day before the engagement, telling them you had a project with a changed deadline and you had to go in the office. Then you send them an email, blasting them for being sensitive and imploring them to check their inbox "for real and not like an illiterate idiot"...and you demand an apology, too. This ish is sinister.

"Forget your finance reports. Forget your anniversary. We'll make it look like you remembered"?!?!?!!!!!! Wow.

At least they have the foresight to only allot 10 per year.

But here's what I can't shake: I can't shake the feeling that this is an April Fools joke.