With Apologies To Ricky Bobby

Dear sweet baby Jesus,

Please please please please please make the bad people at Google change the GMail interface back to what it used to be. I hate the new interface. The mail items are spaced too widely apart. The non-text based icons are not in intuitive locations. The check/uncheck box and the action bars are practically invisible, so I can’t hardly manage my mail any more. When I do, it is time-consuming, frustrating, and I make mistakes, deleting mail I wanted to archive or archiving something I hadn’t read yet.

Seriously, I hate it with a burning white fury like You had for the moneychangers at the Temple, baby Jesus. But You could give the moneychangers the smackdown right there.

What’s particularly upsetting about this, baby Jesus, is that they didn’t give me any choice in the matter. They just did it. They didn’t ask anyone. They staked out all kinds of a user base, offering all sorts of goodies for free to millions and millions of people. I was one of them, baby Jesus, I believed them when they said their slogan was “Don’t be evil.” But they are evil, baby Jesus, they’ve become evil. Forgive me, O baby Jesus, for believing Google’s filthy lies and putting my trust in them.

I wrote them a feedback letter. I asked them why they would do something like this. They haven’t said anything back. Everywhere I look, it seems like they’re actually proud of what they’ve done. Can You even believe that, baby Jesus? How can a big company like Google be proud of something so awful? It’s like a big oil company losing control of an offshore drilling rig and saying “Yeah, we just dumped about a billion gallons of crude into the Gulf of Mexico but what are you going to do about it, bitches? We’ll clean it up in our own good time.”

Why would You let them do this, baby Jesus? Why? Why couldn’t they just leave well enough alone? Weren’t You already providing for them with all the money they could eat? Please, sweet baby Jesus, I can’t understand how You could let something like this happen, being that You’re all powerful and all loving and all knowing and all that. I’m sure You have a plan and I know You work in mysterious ways. But this feels like too much to bear. Give me strength, baby Jesus, give me strength to cope.

Thanks for listening, sweet little baby Jesus. And thank You for inventing the Internet and thank You for blessing me with my hot wife and thank You for looking all cute out there in that manger out there in front of City Hall with the plastic wise men and by the way the one kneeling with the frankenincense (I think, I get that mixed up with the myrrh sometimes) needs one of his light bulbs replaced. Please make those bad people up in Mountain View just go back to the way things were. Amen.

Burt Likko

Pseudonymous Portlander. Homebrewer. Atheist. Recovering litigator. Recovering Republican. Recovering Catholic. Recovering divorcé. Recovering Former Editor-in-Chief of Ordinary Times. House Likko's Words: Scite Verum. Colite Iusticia. Vivere Con Gaudium.

18 Comments

  1. Yeah, XBox live did this crap too.

    (I, at least, have the benefit of disappearing into a game and leaving the interface behind.)

  2. I’m not sure about you, but they did ask me.
    I deeply regret ‘Clicking here to start using the new Gmail interface!’
    I guess all I did was jump in before they pushed me.

  3. Plinko,

    I tried it to, but backed out. Getting back to the old style wasn’t easy but it is possible.

    I’ve registered my dissatisfaction in Google’s comments option in explicitly vulgar terms on two occasions, and am thinking about going back for thirds. I’m hoping if there’s enough folks like us they’ll give up on the idea of forcing us to accept it.

    Call this Occupy Google!

    • Aha! I found it and switched back ‘temporarily’.

      There’s a Google office around the corner here, maybe I could start a tent city in the lobby.

  4. Yes, they keep trying to entice me with messages to “Switch to the New Look,” but I yet remain chaste and undefiled.

  5. Another thing: the search function seems simply not to run. There’s a field as you’ve all seen, but if you type in the name of someone who sent you mail, a list of mail bearing that name in your boxes simply doesn’t appear like it used to. Maybe I’m doing something wrong (now) that wasn’t wrong before. Well, I guess I obviously am, unless they actually have a nonfunctional search field. But just making a simple command that worked before not work now in itself would be a flaw.

  6. frankenincense (I think, I get that mixed up with the myrrh sometimes)

    A major source of confusion indeed. But for a kid born surrounded by tick-infested barn animals, a bottle of DEET might be a more appropriate present than a bottle of myrrh.

    As for the new Gmail interface… engineers simply like to justify their jobs by reinventing what does not need to be reinvented.

  7. Of course they’re going to modify their behavior. Why don’t they find a perfecty normal Muslim family in Gaza or Saudi Arabia or a Muslim country we liberated say, Kuwait. And take a little tour of the schools their children attend–you know, the ones that teach them to hate Jews and Infidels and to grow up be martyrs and be suicide bombers. Check out those madrasses. Check out the genital mutilation of women. Ask those firemen why they let an all-girls school burn to the ground because they didn’t have the proper headwear on. Ask why women who get raped are the ones who get stoned to death and not the rapists. You want reality TV, then here you go. We’re not talking the Ozzie and Harriet Show or Leave it to Beaver. It’s called Hate–from birth to death.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=tzlFPm7bymY

    • Thanks for the apology, now please take your racism elsewhere. Yes those problems exist, but not all “perfectly normal Muslim families” are like that.

      • Well, I never said “all”. Normal is not all. I could easily produce reams of evidence to prove that every word of the above comments was true and correct. Are you denying the brainwashing of Palestinian children to foster hate and violence again Jews and Infidels? Or their abominable treatment of women under Sharia Law? Or their non-stop raining of missiles and rockets on entirely civilian targets both from Lebanon and Gaza?

        Perhaps, Profesor Hanley you need to be reminded of the initial reaction of Palestinians after the news of the 9/11 attacks had reached the populace. If it’s true is it “racism”? I would have thought your critique wouldn’t need to use such a stale, meaningless word.

        To update you as to where we stand–There have been 18,110 deadly terrorist attacks carried out since 9/11.

        “Mohammed is God’s apostle. Those who follow him are ruthless and deadly to the unbelievers but merciful to one another” Quran 48:29

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrM0dAFsZ8k

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMOZvbYJMvU

        • Of all words for a typo—make that, “Professor” Hanley.

          Regarding the racism charge, I had stated that since 9/11, there have been 18,110 deadly terrorists attacks carried out by Islamic fanatics. Is that what you were referring to when you made your scurrilous charge about me being a racist?

          In all I fairness, I should have included Finland, Scotland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Germany, England, Wales Antarctica, the North Pole, Newfoundland, Greenland, and scores more. My apologies. It wouldn’t surprise me if the scorecard looked something like this: Islamic Nutzoes, 18,110 murdered in the name of Allah since 9/11; Christian deadly terrorists attacks committed since 9/11, 0.

          Burt, how long do you think you’d live with your condescending, sneering, profoundly unfunny, mocking little baby Jesus parody but instead of Jesus you used, Baby Allah?

          Uh-huh, not long. Not long at all. Why don’t you give The0 van Gogh a call? And whatever you do, don’t ever hold a beauty pageant in a Muslim country. They tried that in Nigeria and the result was bloody riots in the street killing hundreds. Now if you want to stone a woman to death for whatever reason rather than admire her beauty, well, come on down, grab some stones and join the party!

          • Mr. Christopher Carr says:

            “Just putting it on the table, but: do you think there’s a common personality trait that compels people to go live in Israel?”

            Yes, CC. It’s called HOMESICKNESS.

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