A Google-ly cure for a drunken heart

Jessica Mintz, an Associated Press Technology Writer, wrote an interesting story Tuesday, which I noticed on the general news wire.
She began the piece:

“Here’s the scenario: It’s Friday night, and what began as an innocent happy-hour margarita morphed into a few pitchers. After all, those tacos were salty.
“Bidding friends adieu, you jump in a cab, head home and decide a quick e-mail check is in order. And there it is: a message from your ex. Or your boss. Or that friend you’re secretly mad at.
“If you are the kind of person who types tipsy and regrets it in the morning, Google’s ‘Mail Goggles,’ a new test-phase feature in the free Gmail service, might save you some angst.”

What Mintz is writing about is a program by Google, which will ask you a few easy math problems. The “Mail Goggles” require you to answer these problems in a short amount of time before you can send your e-mail, to whoever it might be going to.
If you answer correctly, the program assumes you are logical enough to know what you are typing, eliminating the “drunk e-mail syndrome,” which is a technological advance from my younger days of “drunk calling.”
I have done that quite a few times in my life and, I assume, you have done the same. But before the Internet there were no safeguards from saying something stupid while inebriated. So there have been several people in my life who have had to endure the drunken ramblings of an idiot (I act like this does not still happen, when we all know we still do it and probably always will).
Well, Google can save those of use who prefer typing e-mails over talking on the phone. A little change of your Gmail settings and — poof! — you have “Mail Goggles.”
As I type this, I am saddened I did not read this story by Ms. Mintz last week. It might have saved one of you from hearing your phone ring on end Saturday night.
Although “Mail Goggles” would not prevent “drunk texting,” it would keep intoxicated romantics, like me, from sending you War and Peace-like e-mails.
Too bad this program does not return the same affection presented in an e-mail.
That, too, will come soon enough from those wacky Google folks. Who knows? In time, those Google people might grant me enough money to buy what we want to hear. It could happen. Twenty years ago when I was “drunk calling” you, what average person would have imagined we would have “Mail Goggles” or even the Internet.
So give it time. What else do I have?