Time Wasters

I have no idea what brought this to mind, but many years ago my aunt, Linda, and I played a game that she had heard of where you think of song titles containing the word "heart" and replace the word with the word "pump". For example:

I Left My Pump in San Francisco
Oh, My Pump Skips a Beat
Pump and Soul
Pumpbreak Hotel
Theme from Titantic, My Pump Will Go On

You get the idea. In a book I read by the late H. Allen Smith, he and his friends came up with a different version. They observed that the orchestra leader Lawrence Welk pronounced the word "heart" as "hard". Then were sent into spasms of mirth by substituting "hard" for "heart". Being a nice, well-bred lady, I will leave it to you to determine just what was so funny about that.

Anyway, that's one way to waste some time. The Austin American-Statesman ran an article a few days ago about how to waste time at work via a handful of websites. I have a few of those that provide a minute or two of comic relief during a dull day. The trick is to not get so caught up in the distraction that you forget you have a job and get fired. Here are a few of mine and of theirs:

http://www.imdb.com/
The Internet Movie Data Base, where you can dredge up excruciating minutiae about any movie, tv show, actor, director, etc., that you can think of. Great time waster.

http://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/spec.html
The Gallery of Regrettable Food. Believe it or not I actually own some of the cookbooks that he skewers. How sad is that?

http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/
Television Without Pity. Where the recaps are better than the original episodes.

http://www.vectorpark.com/
I have no idea what it is. But it sure can divert you for a bit.

http://www.fborfw.com/fun/bones/
Took me about 4 times before I managed to win.

http://www.kissthisguy.com/
Who hasn't been embarrassed at some point when you realize that the song you thought you knew was saying something entirely different than you thought.

http://www.careerbuilder.com/monk-e-mail/
Try typing a message and hearing it given back to you by a chimp.

http://www.jigzone.com/
Your daily jigsaw, in whatever kind of pieces you would like. I'm partial to the circles myself.

Ok, I've done my part to distract you. Unless you would like to play "questions", where everything you say has to be in the form of a question. The first one to speak without a question loses.

Have you seen the boss?

LSW