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Who Says You Can't
Buy Happiness?
by Mad Dog
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A study found that increasing the frequency of sex from once
a month to once a week provides as much happiness as a $50,000-a-year
raise. Don’t be surprised if when your next performance review rolls
around you don’t get the raise you’d been hoping for but instead get
offered that hottie in accounting. |
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Everyone wants to be
happy. Well, everyone except 21-year-old poets, Andy Rooney, and the
Counting Crows. That’s why we spend so much of our time trying to fill
our lives with more of the things that make us happy, like family, sex,
money, and spiritual development. Just kidding about the last one. After
all, this is America, where spiritual development means buying a used
copy of Enlightenment For Dummies and sticking it under a leg of
the dining room table to keep it from rocking when you cut your steak.
The problem is that, with all the
happiness choices we have, many of us think money is the key. Even
though we’ve heard over and over that money can’t buy happiness, we
can’t help but remember all the times we ran with scissors and
didn’t poke our eyes out, so we’re understandably skeptical of
anything They say. That’s why it’s nice to have scientific
validation. No, a study wasn’t released that concluded you can indeed
poke your eye out if you run with scissors, though I wouldn’t be a bit
surprised if such a study has been done, most likely funded by the Glass
Eye Institute of America (motto: “Here’s not looking at you,
kid”). The study I’m talking about was titled "Money, Sex and
Happiness: An Empirical Study" and it found that increasing the
frequency of sex from once a month to once a week provides as much
happiness as a $50,000-a-year raise. Don’t be surprised if when your
next performance review rolls around you don’t get the raise you’d
been hoping for but instead get offered that hottie in accounting.
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What all this ignores is the fact that if you have the money
you can buy the sex, therefore you can be happier. So in a slightly
roundabout way, money can indeed buy happiness. Hah!
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The economists who did this study specialize in the little known
field of “happiness economics.” I know, I’d never heard of it
either. They do research on how things such as unemployment or the
position of an employee's desk affect one’s happiness. I don’t know
about the desk part, but being unemployed is pretty much never a
positive when it comes to a person’s happiness, and I feel safe in
saying that even though I don’t have a degree in economics. Hey, if
Mick Jagger, who does hold a degree in economics, can sing “I'm so hot
for her, I'm so hot for her, I'm so hot for her and she's so cold”
with a straight face, I can say pretty much anything I want.
The study also found that a lasting
marriage brings $100,000 worth of happiness a year. In other words, a
single person would have to earn an extra $100,000 a year to be as happy
as a married person in a similar position. Now should you have a lasting
marriage and have sex at least once a week — hey, quit laughing, it
could happen — you’d be $150,000 happier than the single person
sitting around eating Chinese food out of the container while watching
reruns of Blind Date thinking, “I may be unhappy, but at least
I don’t have to go out with that wacko and have someone draw cartoon
bubbles that make fun of me.”
What all this ignores is the fact
that if you have the money you can buy the sex, therefore you can be
happier. So in a slightly roundabout way, money can indeed buy
happiness. Hah! I don’t need no stinkin’ economics degree or
government grant, though come to think of it the grant would be nice
because it would give me extra money I could use to buy — oh, you get
the idea.
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A
German TV documentary called The Last Penis Operation recently
featured the story of a man whose wife left him after he showed her his
two penises. It kind of makes The Simple Life look like Masterpiece
Theater, doesn’t it? |
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Unfortunately, even it were true that money could buy happiness,
many of us would be shopping down the wrong aisle. Look at all the
lottery winners who have squandered their money on flashy cars, his and
hers RVs, bad business investments, and anyone who sticks their hand out
except me, winding up flat broke in two years. And what about men. We
couldn’t find happiness if it sat next to us on the Barcalounger
during the Super Bowl. Hell, most guys equate happiness with their
penis. I know, big shock, isn’t it? Well now we have proof that it
just doesn’t work that way.
Ask any man if he’d have more and
better sex — which we now know is the equivalent to a big raise at
work — if he had two penises and he’d laugh. Not because it’s
funny, but because the answer’s so obvious. Well, it turns out the
answer’s not as obvious as you might think. A German TV documentary
called The Last Penis Operation recently featured the story of a
man whose wife left him after he showed her his two penises. It kind of
makes The Simple Life look like Masterpiece Theater,
doesn’t it? It turns out that Michael Gruber lost his natural born
organ in a motorbike accident, so doctors built him a new one. It worked
so well that he fathered a child, but Gruber, being male, wanted a
better one so he asked doctors to build him a nicer model. The doctors,
being cautious types, left the first one in place until they were
certain the new one would take. When Gruber showed his wife the double
header, she packed up and left. So much for doubling your pleasure.
So now we’ve not only proven that
money can indeed buy happiness, but also that two heads aren’t always
better than one. Keep all this in mind the next time you ask for a
raise. And the next time you have sex.
©2005 Mad Dog
Productions, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
These columns appear in better newspapers across the country.
Reading one of them is the happiness equivalent to having sex by
yourself.
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