Frazz by Jef Mallett for June 16, 2024

The saying is wrong. What it should say is Money can’t buy ETERNAL happiness. Money can buy happiness in the same sense that it can buy food or gas for your car. Eventually your supply will run out and you have to spend more money to have it again.

To quote a famous songwriter “Money can’t buy everything it’s true, What it can’t buy I can’t use.”

OK, we’re now (just barely) up to 3 (count ‘em, 3) references this year to Frazz’s supposed career as a song-writer. At this rate, I believe we’ve got another 3.14159 coming in 2024.

American pi?

Can’t buy happiness, but it can pay off a debt and provide relief from stress which can lead to happiness.

From Wikipedia: The Navajo identify the mountain bluebird as a spirit in animal form, associated with the rising sun. The “Bluebird Song” is sung to remind tribe members to wake at dawn and rise to greet the sun.

Money won’t buy you love. But it WILL buy you breakfast.

Long lead up to . . . ? [Kinda wouldn’t mind seeing a shift in characters from time to time.]

As a poor student, I found a $1 bill laying on the sidewalk outside the Psych building on Campus one day. No-one around. I stopped and looked at that bill. Looked all around to see if someone was observing me. Thought for a moment and then picked up that $1. I’m not sure about the happiness, but that $1 bought a lot of uncertainty and anxiety for a moment.

Most money I ever got without earning it was an inheritance. It would have made me more happy to have some extra time with my Grandma.

I once bought a scratch ticket with my last dollar. That ticket won me $50. It was literally like winning the lottery.

I used to win 50-50’s and other small lotteries all the time. My friends were all amazed. Then my life was saved by dumb luck and I haven’t won a lottery since. I think I used up all my luck.

That’s a pretty decent depiction of an Eastern Bluebird. And that gives me some happiness.

Great strip today – and I hope this is a segue into the roots of “Frazz” as a struggling songwriter who strikes the bigtime with a hit song, but realizes he likes the kids and his gig as a school janitor so much, he stays on the job because he wants to, not because he has to.

Frazz and crew outdoors. Thx Jef.

If you don’t have a dollar, a dollar has great marginal utility. If you have a hundred dollars, that utility is greatly reduced.

Frazz and Caufield are definitely discussing first world problems.

Ouch!

O, to find the Lottery Jackpot of Happiness!!

Yeah, give ’em the bird…

I was running the Peach Tree Road Race 10K on 4th July and in the crowded pack of runners I spied a $20 bill on the roadway and quickly scooped it up. Had to have been someone’s cab fare home. I didn’t ask any questions. Bought beer at the Braves game that night with it.

Money can’t buy you happiness, but it lets you live in misery with nicer stuff.

Enough money does grant happiness, too much can make it go away.

They say that money can’t buy poverty.

I found a twenty dollar bill once at a difficult time. It helped me when I needed it, so that gave me a little happiness. Though working toward something long term, like I have now, has meant greater happiness as it’s not always about me. Happy Father’s Day.

It’s all about expectations. I am thrilled to find a quarter.

Money can’t buy happiness, but it sure can make misery a lot more comfortable. For Stephen King, Misery brought money.

As I watched a bluebird happily remove and consume chunks from a live struggling cicada on my deck railing, I am reminded that the species was once endangered between 1920-1970 until people started puting up birdhouses

When I’m out, I always look. I’ve found pennies (people ignore them, I don’t), nickels, dimes, and sometimes quarters. I’ve also found paper money as well.

Rented happiness lasts as long as rented beer.

How about the $56 billion of happiness for Elon Musk? Will that make him happy?

Money won’t buy happiness. But it will buy freedom from worries of being financially poor, and that buys a lot of peace of mind. Having been at the very bottom myself (and certainly nowhere near the top now…this is all just rhetoric even if it’s true) just the freedom to not wake up repeatedly in the night every time you have a nightmare about the water/electric/rent bills…that is actually worth quite a lot.

And there he goes again, making a lot of nonsense assumptions. Why does he think he just magically knows all this stuff?

I like the artwork of the bird.

Money won’t buy you happiness, but poverty can buy you misery.

Studies have shown that for people in dire poverty, money does buy happiness.

Once an individual or family has enough worldly resources to know consistently that it will be fed, clothed, and sheltered for the foreseeable future, the amount of happiness that additional money will buy drops considerably.

Almost any bird will do; it doesn’t have to be blue.

I currently live in a rural area and have found misplaced, discarded or fumbled paper money no less than four times in the past year and a half while out for a walk. Three times it was a twenty, and the other a ten.

“You’re dead for a real long time, you just can’t prevent it — so if money can’t buy happiness, I guess I’ll have to rent it!” — “Weird Al” Yankovic, “This Is the Life”

I ain’t happy, I’m feeling glad

I got sunshine in a bag

I’m useless but not for long

The future is coming on.

Gorillaz – “Clint Eastwood”