Scott Green

I hope your finances are in order because if you don’t act right now, you’ll miss your chance to purchase historic Illinois.

Think about what you’d be getting:  the place where Abraham Lincoln practiced law; the state from which Abraham Lincoln was elected President; the land where Abraham Lincoln is buried; the home of the ’85 Bears.  Illinois was the state with the can-do spirit to take a skinny black guy with a Muslim name and, in just four short years, get him to move 700 miles away. Read the rest of this entry »

I think it’s wonderful the House has passed health care reform legislation.  Not on the merits of the bill.  It’s not like the thing will become an actual law during my lifetime.  What I’m excited about is that with all the yelling and name-calling and baseless accusations, congressmen in both houses haven’t had time to actually legislate, which means no official recognition of Oprah Winfrey’s birthday or $4.5 billion Roland Burris Institute For Political Ethics.

It takes forever for Congress to enact any kind of substantial change.  You can thank our founding fathers for this.  The system by which a bill becomes a law may seem silly and arbitrary, but bear in mind that the Constitution was written with great deliberation by learned men who thought it’d be hilarious to make the rules silly and arbitrary. Read the rest of this entry »

In this week’s installment of Scott Solves Your Everyday Problems, I’ll get to the bottom of this pesky issue of the 96 percent of the universe that’s gone missing.

I’m not making up this problem.  I learned about it in Michael Brooks’ new book, “Thirteen Things That Don’t Make Sense.”  We can be certain it’s a sound scientific work because it features a cover blurb from “New Scientist,” a magazine so prestigious it was once edited by noted scientist Michael Brooks.

Anyway, according to Brooks’ book, only 4 percent of the cosmos can be accounted for.  The way scientists figured this out is, they looked into their telescopes and, using knowledge accumulated over the centuries, discovered the lens caps were still on.  So they looked again and found that certain stars are accelerating away from us at rates higher than the laws of physics can explain, though frankly, considering some of the stuff that happens on this planet, you can hardly blame them. Read the rest of this entry »

This classic Scott Green column was originally published October 31, 2007.  Scott returns from vacation with an all-new column Monday, November 2.

It’s Halloween again, the time of year American children go trick-or-treating only to have their candy taken away because there might be a razor blade in there.

This was the warning when I was little, anyway.  I also used to be told not to eat fruit, in case it was poisoned.  This was unnecessary advice to give a nine-year-old.  I was more likely to eat those religious pamphlets. Read the rest of this entry »

I want to know what this country’s coming to when a humble little multinational conglomerate can’t sell its energy drink without some mom-and-pop brewery making a beverage whose name contains many of the same letters.

The Hansen Beverage Company, which makes Monster Energy Drink, learned the Rock Art Brewery, a small hard beverage company in Morrisville, Vermont, named its new beer “Vermonster.”  So Hansen did what any reasonable entity would do when someone introduces a product with a vaguely similar-sounding name:  ignored it and went on with its business. Read the rest of this entry »

President Obama does not celebrate victory like a normal person.  A normal person, finding out he has won the Nobel Peace Prize, would post it on Facebook, then run around firing his gun into the air.

But not Obama, the kind of guy who celebrates by adding an extra teaspoon of sweetener to his Mueslix.  Nothing crazy at all, even though the Nobel committee caught him completely by surprise.  I mean, his most daunting presidential peace-making mission consisted of getting a black professor and a white cop to not gouge each other’s eyeballs on national television.  The effort he expended on this was walking to his lawn and drinking beer. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve had a few days to digest the International Olympic Committee’s rejection of Chicago as host of the 2016 Summer Games, so it’s time to calmly and maturely reflect on whom to blame.

One option is President Obama, who gave a speech as part of Chicago’s final presentation.  Obama failed to win over enough IOC members, even though Mayor Daley specifically asked him to.  Daley is also potentially at fault, for not leading Chicago to become the sort of dynamic and corrupt metropolis the IOC was looking for, namely:  one that was located in South America. Read the rest of this entry »

I plan on having kids someday, and I have no doubt the clever little bastards will track down their dad’s old humor columns.  So let me state for the record that abstinence is the most important thing on the planet, with the possible exceptions of vegetable-eating and not bothering me during Bears games.

As Sex Column Answer Man to the rest of you, I’m here to dispel old misconceptions about abstinence, and replace them with entirely new ones.

Question: Should abstinence be taught in schools? Read the rest of this entry »

Rod Blagojevich is no stranger to losing causes.  He was removed from the Illinois governor’s office.  He wanted President Obama to name him Secretary of Health and Human Services.  He’s a Cubs fan.

I learned the last one Thursday afternoon, when Blagojevich sat in the row behind me at Wrigley Field.  He was at the game instead of promoting his book, “The Governor,” which had only been in stores nine days and was in direct competition with Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol,” another government-themed work of fiction. Read the rest of this entry »

I was deeply in love with my girlfriend and couldn’t see spending my life with anyone else, so it was time to prove it, by listening for hours about which shade of white our wedding tablecloths should be.

I know more about wedding details than I want, but less than I should.  I’m getting married next June to my fiancée, Michelle, even though she’s an Aquarius.  And for a lot of stuff Michelle wants my opinion, provided it’s the exact same as hers. Read the rest of this entry »