Yes, lateral thinking is the key to this. There's more than one way to skin a cat, and each skinning will give you sligthly different results.

I tried this, only out of curiousity -- I made a green screen still and filled irregular selections with white on a different layer, then imported this .psd file into Vegas and applied the effect 'Blur' set to maximum. Then, using keyframes, I added the effect 'Wave' and changed the params at each keyframe. It works! I then added the swirl effect with keyframes too. I didn't render it though, 'cause I didn't want to spend the time, so I don't know how it impacts the rendering time. But I overlayed this onto a still and adjusted the transparancy of the overlay layer, and also tried fiddling with the compositing envelope to see how it would look on top of an image. You can do lots with this! LOTS! I was quite amazed. Will try to incorporate this into an upcoming 'real' vid using more than just white. It would look great in a title sequence!

I dunno why, but the process is more fun than the result. I just love playing with this stuff! I guess it's the lateral thinking -- trying lotsa different ways all of which are mesmerizing (and sometimes maddening).