Google's new logo

"Are you trying something new? You got a haircut? You aren't wearing any deodorant? I give up."

I remember the morning my father shaved his mustache. He'd been growing it out for a few months and trimmed sparingly. The resulting hairy mass of tangled and prickly hair created an effect I dubbed the "Dead Caterpillar." My father took offense at this designation, but didn't seem quite as peeved when I insisted my high regard for his deceased Lepidoptera. My comment even earned an Archaic smile which, for those of you who slept through ancient lit, means I'm the only one who actually thinks it's a smile. Anyway I woke up one day to a different father than the one I said goodnight to the day before. And I didn't know what had changed.

It's like those little puzzles they put on the kids menus at family restaurants. Spot all the differences between Lindsey and Lindsay so your parents don't have to entertain you and can enjoy a more tranquil dining experience. I was never good at those and I am similarly atrocious at picking out the changes in my dad's appearance.

A few mornings ago, I had a déjà vu moment. I loaded up Kato, my trusty unPC, to check my email or maybe do something more frivolous, I don't recall for certain. For some reason I had to google a term. This was easily accomplished. But when I tabbed back to the frivolous page, I couldn't find my search query. My eyes patiently roamed the tab bar, looking for the familiar white box with a bold, uppercase "G." Odd, I thought, I wouldn't have exited the screen without first reading the search results.

So I scrolled through my open tabs. A court decision someone sent me, a news article about Billary, an unfinished FCN post, an article about Greek Kouros (hence the Archaic smile reference), email, a couple of sports pages and, voila, my search. For the record, F, I was egogoogling your mom. Not the phrase, the actual name. I always google people's names before I go out on a date with them.

But back to my story, instead of the marker I expected, Google's page was accompanied by a cursive "g" that, to my caffeinated brain, looked more like an "8" written by my physician.

My beautiful morning was shattered. The trusty boxy "G" I'd come to rely on, trust and believe in as an accurate source of information was replaced by a hip and altogether lowercase character. It was like seeing Daniel Craig play 007 or Lindsay Lohan duplicating the timeless Hayley Mill's classic. It was counterfeit!

Soon Wikipedia will have a cursive "w" instead of its bold mascot, the New York Times will create something legible and Blogger will try something even more postmodern.

I can't leave Google behind. Not for an infraction so minor, so aesthetic. But for one fraction of one second I thought about it. My boundless faith and gaga love of Google found a rare challenge.
Larry and Sergey: I'll never let anything get between us, but you might try warning me next time, okay? Communication is important...