A joke and a punchline

I'm a big fan of the Internet. It has saved my bacon more times than I can count.

So what if a lot of the stuff on the Internet is useless.

Just look at all the stuff I can use.

Once upon a time, way back in the pre-Internet Dark Ages, I would occasionally question the spelling of a word. Like all my journalist colleagues, I would reach for the handy and well-worn Webster's New World Dictionary, which is the authority for The Associated Press Stylebook, which is the spelling guide for hundreds of U.S. newspapers.

Now, of course, I simply type the word into a Google search and let the Internet do all the work.

Which is fine, as long as you don't mind wading through thousands and thousands of potentially helpful Web sites -- plus porn sites that have adapted every word in every language on the globe into their Web addresses so you see them whether you want to or not.

Despite the online scum, the Internet is particularly useful to folks like me who sorta, kinda, maybe know how to spell a prominent newsmaker's name but would like to be accurate when that name appears in print.

So, you enter your closest guess and hope for the best. Sure enough, up pops enough Web sites to guide you to the correct spelling.

I love it.

Or, let's say you're doing a story about a topic that needs the benefit of a perspective bigger than your own ability to think and reason. Google at your service.

(By the way, "Google" has almost become synonymous with "Web search engine," even though there are many other fine search engines out there. If you use the Internet, you know what your favorites are.)

Let me show you how great the Internet is.

The other morning I went to the fitness center (formerly known as a gym) where my personal trainer, Andy, was showing me how to use a particular weight machine. He calls the exercise the "lawn mower," because it's a lot like starting a lawn mower.

Andy wanted me to do 15 reps with each arm. I told him I had a 7-year-old trustworthy lawn mower that still starts on the first pull, so I didn't know if I would be able to do 15 pulls.

That made me think of a joke about a minister and a lawn mower, and goodness knows I need a lot of humor to get up at 5 a.m. and put my pudgy body on public display in front of men and women -- women! -- who can bench press 200 pounds.

Fortunately, I didn't start telling the joke, because right away I realized I had forgotten the punch line.

But it bugged me all day. It was a funny joke. Why couldn't I remember it?

Ah. The Internet.

I went to Google and put "joke minister lawn mower" in the search field.

I got 11,300 Web sites devoted to jokes about ministers and lawn mowers. That's scary. Of course, most of those might have been porn sites.

Anyway, there was my joke. It goes like this.

A minister decides to start mowing his own lawn after years of hiring someone else to do it. A parishioner gives the minister a lawn mower, but the minister complains that it won't start. "Well, Preacher, you have to cuss at it." The minister says it's been so long since he cussed that he couldn't remember how. "Just pull on the lawn mower's starter for awhile, Preacher. It'll come back to you."

I love it.

R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.