Scott Says

Welcome to ScottSays.com, the official website of humor columnist Scott Green. There are a lot of sites on the internet - literally, dozens - but this is the only one that presumes you have any interest whatsoever in me.  On the right, you can access my humor columns, other stuff I’ve written, the Scott Says blog, my weekly podcast (also available on iTunes), and my bimonthly video podcast. You can also check out my biography and an FAQ, whatever those letters stand for.

And don’t forget to register for the site so you can comment on columns and blog posts. If I’ve gotten this site to work correctly, there should also be a way to sign up and receive e-mail updates when new columns are posted.

Wow! Can you believe that so many exciting things happened this semester that my editor asked me to write this column instead of studying for a law school final that could be the difference between landing a prestigious firm job and becoming a minimum wage nasal-hair stylist?

Enough stuff went on that I don’t even have to make anything up, unlike last semester, when I wrote about an “Illinois football team” going to some sort of “Rose Bowl.”

AUGUST

The White House announces President Bush will award University professor Charles Slichter the National Medal of Science for “establishing nuclear magnetic resonance as a powerful tool to reveal the fundamental properties of molecules and solids, enabling a host of modern technologies in condensed matter physics, chemistry and medicine.” Or, as the president puts it: “Real sciencey stuff.”

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, in a move federal investigators later describe as “suspicious,” spends $3 million in state funds for a sack of magic beans. (more…)

Today is the third installment of my extremely journalistic feature, the Sex Column Answer Man. Never mind that its acronym is “SCAM.” The important thing is, I find sex topics college students really want to know about - the questions they’re too nervous to ask - and completely ignore them.

Question: Which do women find more attractive, jocks or nerds? (more…)

After a dozen years of searching, I found the greatest thing on the Internet. Yes, it’s a webcam. No, it doesn’t involve porn.

Here’s the premise: Six Shiba Inu puppies lounge around in a soft foam bed, with no visible means of financial support. Granted, this is the same exact plot as “Friends,” but the puppies are much less formulaic. (more…)

This whole “Chief Illiniwek returns to campus” thing really got me upset. I mean, my column about Obama last week got zero responses on the DI website, whereas anything about the Chief has people firing half-baked comment-board opinions like so many monkeys flinging poop.

People have very strong opinions about this Illiniwek fellow, and if stoking that fire is the way to make people read what I write, fine by me. This tactic served me well in the past, like in last year’s column, “Gay Nazi abortionists should be allowed to marry, according to the Koran.” (more…)

I was at Grant Park last Tuesday for Barack Obama’s election night party. It was surreal - the speech, the election, the strangers bunched so tight against me that we may be married. If I had to use a single word, that word would be “historic,” because you can put “historic” before any noun and make it sound more important than it is, such as “historic bird vomit.”

Beginning at the historic hour of 3:30 p.m., 30,000 lucky ticket holders and our plus-ones filed in two-by-two, cameras around their necks and buttons on their lapels. It was a lot like Noah’s ark, if instead of animals God commanded Noah to save political science geeks. Another field at the park held the overflow crowd, tens of thousands more people who couldn’t get tickets but wanted to one day tell their grandchildren they paid $20 for a Barack Obama T-shirt at one of several official merchandise stands. (more…)

Now that the 2008 election is over, George W. Bush gets to do the cool things all lame duck presidents get to do, such as pardoning whoever he wants. Washington insiders expect him to pardon I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ ‘Moped’ Libby, who was involved in the Valerie Plame leak, and Darth Vader, who tried to quell the rebel uprising but is basically a good guy.

But Bush also gets to begin working on his legacy. This will be tough work. He’ll have to get up every day, sometimes as early as noon, and head to his basement. “Don’t come down here, I’m working on my legacy,” he will say, though to the layperson it will sound like he is just watching Dr. Phil and eating Fruity Pebbles. (more…)

According to Politico.com, a major record studio is reportedly in talks right now to put out a country music album as early as inauguration day, starring - naturally - Joe the Plumber. The guy’s been in newspapers, on TV, and is supposedly mulling a run for Congress. It’s only a matter of time until he shows up in adult films (”Hi, I’m here to fix the plumbing in this girls-only dormitory”).

But I was disillusioned to learn Joe the Plumber isn’t a licensed plumber, and isn’t named Joe. His real name is Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, and because it is misspelled in the Ohio registry, he might not even be able to vote. How could any of us possibly trust his political insight after that? We can’t, which is why I instead called plumbers across the nation - licensed plumbers - to find out for whom I should vote. (more…)

Though I was always told I could be anything when I grew up, the Presidency seemed outside the realm of possibilities. For one thing, I have the personal warmth of a brown recluse spider. Also, nobody believes in me. Zero political connections. Bad hair.

One thing that isn’t holding me back is my college GPA. I’d been under the misconception that most Presidents had scholastic experiences like those of Bill Clinton, a Rhodes Scholar who finished at the top of his Yale Law School class and seduced Dean Wormer’s wife when his fraternity went on double secret probation. Surely the anomaly was George W. Bush, who carried a C average as an undergrad at Yale and occasionally goes on diplomatic missions to Nigeria to check on his promised share of King Mfakefake’s inheritance. (more…)

The World Series begins next Wednesday with two teams I do not root for, and for the first time in my life, I sort of care.

I was never into baseball as a youngster, though I played the game regularly. I had my own strategy in Little League that consisted of never swinging. Sure, this may not fit in with how baseball “traditionalists” play, but they would feel differently if, like me, they had the athletic ability of lasagna. (more…)

As the presidential campaigns round third and head into the home stretch on a Hail Mary buzzer beater hat trick of sports metaphors, there’s one certainty: You will be stunned.

It’s the season when desperate campaigns or excitable media pull some stunt or release information they expect will shock voters into changing their minds. They’re called “October Surprises,” but they’re not the good kind of surprises like when you’re about to cut into your birthday cake and out jumps a scantily clad woman. They’re more like the bad kind of surprises where you don’t know about the scantily clad woman until after you cut the cake. (more…)