Guys, my week has been like a concrete basket of poop. It stinks but you can’t lift the basket, and you’re not sticking your hands in it, so really the best thing to do is take a power washer to it. I don’t know who coined the phrase “Laughter is the best medicine,” but that is what I’m getting at.

I’ve got some wonderful online time wasters that will keep you giggling long after you hit the hibernate button on your ‘puter (assuming you ever do). They do require the start of an imaginative thought, but your 10 percent input will soon yield the other 90 percent smirk producer.

First in the line up is a Google game. My husband emailed this game to me a day or so after musical artist Kanye West sullied his resume by playing surprise-microphone-relay with Taylor Swift on the MTV Music Video Awards. If you didn’t already know, Swift was amidst her acceptance speech for Best Female Video, when West appeared on stage beside her and yoinked the microphone away from her. I guess there was no healthcare townhall meeting available for emotion escalation, so he decided to take a stand for Beyonce’s music video over Swift’s. Swift was left standing, awestruck and humiliated, as the music played for her exit.

So what’s the Google game? Firstly, if you use something other than Google, you may not have noticed that the search blank automatically suggests phrases as you type. At this point in time, when you type “Kanye West is a,” you’ll get a list of completed sentences, the politest of which is “Kanye West is a joke.” The rest are not printable here. Apparently, the current popular concensus on the Information Super Highway is a negative view of Mr. West.
Try this with other phrases. Use personal things like the name of a dog or co-worker. Use a current events sentence like “people think [insert politico name here] is.” Pretty soon, you’ll need to Google ways to clean the spew off your monitor.

Below are a few that I Googled, followed by their results.

“My car is” …totalled, now what …in the front yard …my lover.
I’m pretty sure all three of these sentences emanated from a teenager.

“How to clean” …a laptop screen …a coffee maker …a microfiber couch.
I needed all three of these. Glad I typed it.

“What should I” …do with my life …weigh …major in …do next.
Apparently there are a lot of people seeking some serious answers, but also using Google as a new type of Magic 8-Ball.

“The swine flu is” …a hoax …a joke …fake …manmade …a lie …deadly …overrated.
Now, I don’t know what to think.
“Google is” …your friend …going to take over the world …watching you …making us stupid.
Okay, maybe you shouldn’t play for a long period of time.

For the next game, don’t leave Google just yet. My dad offered this bit of fun to me. He must get really bored sometimes, or in dire need of getting extra goofy particles out of his brain. This stems from a game he used to play with the phone book yellow pages, where you look at the top of the pages for the categories. It might say something like “plants-plumbers.” That is a weird kind of plumber that I hope I never need.

My guess is that he started Googling these phrases to see if there was actually such a thing as a plant plumber. But now he just thinks of some ridiculous phrase and Googles them. I tried it for a couple of minutes to check its amusabilty quotient. Below are some of my results.

“Horse pickle” yielded www.horsepickle.com, a site for someone who helps you pick a racehorse to bet on. That’s actually a really good name for the site. “Baloney car” turned up a forum with a guy seeking ways to mess up someone's car. I didn't see the movie “Fight Club,” but apparently it demonstrates that if you leave baloney on a car, it ruins the paint.

“Fish boss” found Ron "Fishboss" Buntrock, who guides salmon fishing tours in the northwest states. Good to know. My last try was “buffalo birthday,” which yielded the site of a cake artist in Buffalo, New York. Besides making some amazingly beautiful and yummy-looking cakes, she makes murals out of solid color cupcakes, including one really big picture of President Obama. I wonder how people felt about eating it. I’d be down for an ear or eye, but I think eating the nose would gross me out a little bit.

Alright, here’s the last spew inducer of the day. I don’t remember how I found this site, but it has been at least a year, and I recently found it again. I played it with a few people on MySaline.com, with us all going to www.wordsmith.org/anagram and typing our names in the blank. After you do that you click the “Get Anagrams” button, and you get a list of words with your entry scrambled. The results can be hee-larious. The first thing I did, of course, is type in my name, “Shelli Russell.” Since my life has been a teensy stressful lately, it was right-on to see my name translated to “relishes lulls.” Indeed, I dream of and even draw pictures of secluded island shores with rippling water and palms trees. Lull! Can you hear me?

Next, I started experimenting with some famous names. Osama Bin Laden = “abandon a smile.” George W. Bush = “he grew bogus.” Bill Clinton = “I bit Lincoln.” Oh, man! That got me crying from the cackles.

I decided to go with some local names. I tried the name of The Courier’s Publisher, Brian Bloom. I got “limbo baron” & “in labor mob.” I will not comment on those. Here are some more I tried:

Military Road = “limy radiator” and “yo radar limit.” I didn’t like this one very much: MySaline = “many lies.” (State Senator) Shane Broadway = “a nearby shadow.” He does seem to be everywhere. Some local mayors had related results: (Benton Mayor) Rick Holland = “rock and hill,” while (Bryant Mayor) Larry Mitchell = “Calmer Hill Try.” (County Judge) Lanny Fite = “innate fly.” This could attribute to his affinity for the Saline County Airport.

Lastly, let’s try some of The Courier staff: Matt Burks = “Mutts Bark.” I suppose they do. Lynda Hollenbeck = “Candle Belly Honk.” The visual on this was just too much! Sorry, Lynda! “Benton Courier” got a lot of results. Perhaps the paper could be involved in rodeos as “I neuter bronco,” or a favorite social game as “one Bunco trier.” This one has me perplexed: “beer to unicorn,” but one thing is certain here in my column: “corn be routine.”

This column was originally printed in The Benton Courier on September 20, 2009. See the archive of Shelli's columns.