Posts Tagged Jake Thompson Cartoon
What you might’ve missed during spring
Posted by Scott Green in Humor Columns on May 12th, 2009
It’s important for great societies to keep histories of all their goings-on. We might as well keep one of ours, too. It’s in this spirit that I present my recap of spring semester 2009, because otherwise I might accidentally study for finals.
JANUARY
Zipcar places two rental vehicles on campus to serve 40,000 students. “It’s super convenient to use,” says junior Horace Glorf, “and as soon as my turn to use one of the cars comes up in eight years, I’m totally going to Walgreens.”
Governor Rod Blagojevich is removed from office by the state legislature. To prove he is more than a shameless attention seeker, Blagojevich appears on 3,178 talk shows.
To conserve resources, the Lincoln Avenue Residence Hall cafeteria becomes the second on campus to go trayless. Enough water is saved that, for the first time ever, some LAR residents take showers. Read the rest of this entry »
How I engaged my favorite reader
Posted by Scott Green in Humor Columns on May 7th, 2009
Graduating college columnists like to write about what the school paper meant to them, how much they love their readers, and a bunch of other nonsense. With the readers, for example, my main interaction has been the DailyIllini.com comment boards, where people post threads titled “You can’t be serious” after I suggest the president host pot parties.
Instead I’m writing a follow-up to my Feb. 14, 2008 column. That one was about how I’ve never been good at dealing with females I’m attracted to, dating back to when I was 13 and could barely ask my crush, Michelle Zimbler, to dance with me at my own Bar Mitzvah.
I’d never told Michelle I liked her. In the column I wrote: “I needed to keep her totally convinced I did not have a crush on her, because the only good that could have come from her finding out would have been a long-term relationship, marriage, a brood of healthy children, and the founding of a charitable organization to feed starving third-world children. Luckily, I dodged that bullet.”
Things have changed. Read the rest of this entry »
Poker lesson number one: live near an ATM
Posted by Scott Green in Humor Columns on April 30th, 2009
There’s no need to worry about the shrinking job market. Plenty of great positions are still available for qualified college graduates, provided that college is Harvard. Otherwise you’re going to have to find more demeaning backup employment, such as rodeo clown or auto industry executive.
That’s why it’s a shame this year’s $25,000 World Poker Tour Championship, which concluded Saturday evening, attracted only 338 players, down from a high of 639 in 2007.
My backup job was going to be professional poker player, but this year’s WPT champion, 21-year-old Yevgeniy Timoshenko (pronounced “Yevgeniy Timoshenko”), only made $2.1 million. “I guess it’s an honor to win,” Timoshenko said, “but this isn’t enough to buy more than two or three private islands.” Read the rest of this entry »
Shakespeare, you old hack! Happy birthday
Posted by Scott Green in Humor Columns on April 23rd, 2009
Public school education focuses on long-dead poets and trigonometry but de-emphasizes things that are actually useful, like how to cheat on your taxes or identify a narc. This is why I know so much about William Shakespeare, literary icon and total hack.
Today is the Bard’s 445th birthday and the 393rd anniversary of his death. (It’s bad to die on your birthday, because people only give you one present.) Chicago’s Mayor Daley declared it “Talk Like Shakespeare Day,” which is a troubling sign for the economy, because Shakespeare couldn’t have offered much of a bribe.
It’s a major pain to talk like the guy because he wrote using “iambic pentameter,” which means “unnecessary apostrophes.” Let’s say you have to go to the bathroom. You can’t just say, “I have to go to the bathroom,” because that statement is surrounded by quotation marks. No, you’d have to say, “Verily, m’ bladd’r ars’t ‘bout t’ ‘xplode; O, won’t thou help’st me t’ thine t’e’r’l’e’t?” Of course, by the time you finish the sentence, it’s too late. Read the rest of this entry »
Red hots! Get yer red hot newspapers heeeeeeyah!
Posted by Scott Green in Humor Columns on April 16th, 2009
Walk into the newsroom of any major paper and you’ll see, hard at work, hordes of gainfully employed Americans with no fear of losing their jobs.
These people are repo men. The journalists are the ones cowering under their desks, churning out article after article about how newspapers are dying.
Things used to be better. In the golden days of journalism (March 7-12, 1905) newspapers were advocates of the people. “Muckraking” reporters wrote stories about which factory violated safety codes or what conglomerate used slave labor or whose meatpacking plant put rat parts in hot dogs. “More disgusting hot dog stories,” golden era editors were always bellowing.
Reporters who covered these beats were the Michael Moores of their time, only skinnier, because they were terrified of hot dogs. They produced a product people wanted, and were so satisfied with their jobs that no one ever left to start a blog. Read the rest of this entry »
Our newest justice, after these messages
Posted by Scott Green in Humor Columns on April 9th, 2009
Here are two facts that seem, on their face, unrelated:
1. Speculation is ramping up about which Supreme Court justices might die or retire this year, and who could replace them.
2. “American Idol” is still the top rated show in America.
I think you see where I’m going with this: The justices should beat Simon Cowell to death with their gavels.
If that’s not practical, we could hold open auditions and let viewers at home decide who advances to the nation’s highest bench, under the theory we couldn’t do much worse than the Court’s current membership.
Justice mortality is a serious topic, one that would also make an excellent name for a Bond girl. Consider this recent quote from U.S. Senator Jim Bunning (R-You Kidding Me), who told reporters in February – I swear he really said this – that “Ruth Bader Ginsburg… has cancer… nine months is the longest anyone [with that kind of cancer] would live.” Read the rest of this entry »
Finding an apartment in Chicago GREAT, RUSTIC fun
Posted by Scott Green in Humor Columns on April 2nd, 2009
I finally get why people become homeless. My search for a Chicago apartment has made a refrigerator box seem awfully inviting, provided it has central air and a view of the lake.
Finding a place in college was never this hard. When I was an undergrad I picked a real estate company, its sales staff showed me some properties, and I chose the one that smelled least like a train station restroom.
In Chicago this method doesn’t work, mostly because rent is so high I can’t afford the train station restroom itself. Instead I turned to Craigslist, the Web site that helps people find apartments and then stock them with prostitutes. Read the rest of this entry »
Michael Jordan will save our economy
Posted by Scott Green in Humor Columns on March 19th, 2009
I have a plan for fixing the economy that involves Michael Jordan, so Michael, please contact me at your earliest convenience.
The idea struck me a few weeks ago when I had dinner at a Chicago restaurant Jordan owns. I’d been stewing about a tiny piece of steak that cost approximately as much as the gross national product of Honduras when in he walked – my childhood sports hero; the greatest athlete of the 20th century; the man who inspired thousands of balding white guys to shave their heads. Read the rest of this entry »
Lawyers have ethics? They bet they do
Posted by Scott Green in Humor Columns on March 12th, 2009
“Legal ethics” is not an oxymoron, and if anyone feels differently, I will file a frivolous lawsuit against you.
I learned about legal ethics to prepare for last Saturday’s Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination, a standardized test that most states require lawyers to pass. I had to study hard, because most of the questions look like this:
Lawyer, a lawyer in State, a state, represents Client, his client. While in court Lawyer distracts Judge, a judge, such that Judge turns and snags his robe on Doorknob, a doorknob, exposing Judge’s buttocks. Client subsequently laughs so hard he dies of an aneurysm. Is Lawyer subject to sanctions?
A. Yes, unless Client filled out Form 47F (Buttocks-Related Aneurysm Waiver).
B. Yes, but not if everyone stays cool and just keeps their mouths shut.
C. No, if it is the Feast of St. Stephen.
D. No, because the Buttocks-Related Aneurysm Waiver is actually Form 47G. Read the rest of this entry »
The Unofficial SCAM guide to hookups
Posted by Scott Green in Humor Columns on March 5th, 2009
Tomorrow is Unofficial St. Patrick’s Day, the magical time of year when all students, regardless of age, gender, race, ethnicity, singing ability, etc., accidentally step in vomit.
This is because the entire campus spends the day drinking, often setting alarms for 6 a.m. to get a head start. It’s absurd. The only real reason to be consuming alcohol at 6 a.m. is because you haven’t stopped from the previous night.And with all that drinking comes hookups, so you’ll need me, the Sex Column Answer Man, to guide you through it and also to watch any amateur videos you shoot.
Question: Should I aim for the drunkest girls?
Answer: Absolutely not.
Q: You’re saying it’d be unethical to take advantage?
A: I’m saying it’d be devastating to get rejected by someone with a BAC of 0.20. Read the rest of this entry »
WHAT’S NEW- A really, really large SCAM March 2, 2010
- You’re Ghana love the Snow Leopard February 18, 2010
- Seeing how Chicago democracy Sootts me February 2, 2010
- Walking down the aisle… at Bed Bath & Beyond January 19, 2010
- Rich like Mario January 5, 2010