Frazz by Jef Mallett follows the adventures of an unexpected role model: an elementary-school janitor who's also a Renaissance man. While he's sweeping the hall, he's whistling Beethoven. Or Lyle Lovett. He paints the woodwork in the classrooms; he paints a Da Vinci on the cafeteria wall. He's a trusted authority figure who is every kid's buddy. He took the janitor's job while he was a struggling songwriter, and when he finally sold a hit song, he decided to stay on at school. Frazz appears in 200 newspapers worldwide, including the Los Angeles Times, Seattle Times, Chicago Tribune and Detroit News. "A few years back, I wrote and illustrated a children's book," says Mallett. "When I was traveling around reading it at school assemblies, I noticed that often, the most respected, best-liked grown-up in the building was the janitor. And I thought, 'Hmm, there's a comic strip in that.'" Often praised for its intelligent wit, gentle spirit and effortless diversity, Frazz won a Wilbur Award from the Religion Communicators Council in 2003 and 2005 for excellence in communicating values and ethics.
© Jef Mallett - All Rights Reserved.
Frank & Ernest by Thaves
Fred Basset by Alex Graham
Comments (28) (Please sign in to comment)
seyleigh said, 4 months ago
The saddest point of any STEM major’s life is when they start to understand those nerdy jokes and one-liners.
“Don’t drink and derive,”still makes me LOL.
masterskrain said, 4 months ago
Of course, a Math Major HAS to know the most important phrase he or she will use in their career after College!
“Do you want fries with that??”
Nabuquduriuzhur said, 4 months ago
Every profession has its inside humor.
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re: masterskrain
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When I was at Oregon Tech, the joke was “what does a B.A. graduate say to a B.S. graduate: do you want fries with that?”
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There were actually good jobs to be had then in the sciences and engineering. I worked in engineering after graduating. That was just before Clinton and the 103rd congress cut 80% of infrastructure spending, shunting it to programs for “protected classes” as they are called, in order to buy votes.
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It was also before the 103rd Congress passed NAFTA, the WTO, and a number of other “free trade” laws that gutted our industrial sector, thus eliminating 11 million manufacturing jobs, and an estimated 44 million jobs that depended upon the manufacturing.
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In 1990, the statistics for jobs upon graduation from oregon’s universities went: 30% for UofO, 70% for OSU, and 95%to 98% for Oregon Tech’s programs.
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While it was not executive order nor the 103rd congress, Clinton on his own initiative changed the way the Feds hired. In 1992, if one had a white male and a woman or minority as the two top candidates for a job, one hired the protected class. Clinton changed it to waiving qualifications for the protected class.
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As a result, there are not that many left in Federal Civil Service that have the required degree for their job. Engineers without engineering degrees, scientists without a B.S., etc. 70% of Civil Service is female and it’s now common to have entire offices where little work is done because no one knows how.
TheSkulker
said, 4 months ago
@Nabuquduriuzhur
And that perfectly illustrates why your “facts” are so suspect: even a sixth grader can see that 30% + 70% + 95 to 98% adds up to a bit more than 100%. But, hey, you’ve never let facts get in the way of your opinions.
Leo Autodidact said, 4 months ago
@TheSkulker
You’ve revealed your own bias.
He clearly meant that 30% OF the graduating class from U of O found jobs in their field, similarly 70% of OSU’s class found degree-related work, and the Tech Schools placed 95 to 98% of THEIR Grads.
An agenda can be a hinderance to clear thinking. As you’ve shown.
KasparV said, 4 months ago
@Leo Autodidact
I fail to see what Nab’s rant has to do with inside humor in a given profession. It starts out there but rapidly deteriorated into one of his usual self serving speeches.
Waaah. All the women just wanted to party.
Oregon is full of druggies.
Wahh. I’m a nice guy and cant get a date.
Notsoastute said, 4 months ago
But was the joke tasteless? Or did it bring unpleasant memories with it?
Tacopielvr said, 4 months ago
@TheSkulker
I’m no fan of the Nabster, but how could you NOT understand what his stats implied??
What-D-Hey said, 4 months ago
How many trolls does it take to ruin the comments section? Just one.
GreggW
said, 4 months ago
Which is why there’s at least one in just about every play by Shakespeare.
prrdh said, 4 months ago
I have to wonder what Jung would have made of this in terms of his idea of synchronicity:
Yesterday I was reading a book that contained an anecdote about a mathematician who posed a problem whose answer was an Indiana telephone number, which, when you called it, produced a recorded message of the mathematician’s voice saying that you got the right answer, but ‘try again’. The weird thing is that the problem was based on a Fibonacci-like series, only instead of the iterative rule being
a(n) = a(n-1) + a(n-2)
it was
a(n) = a(a(n-1)) + a(n-a(n-1)).
prrdh said, 4 months ago
prrdh said, less than a minute ago
Then there are geology jokes.
Once Ferdinand Feghoot went on a wilderness hike with a bunch of Hollywood stars, including Lee Marvin and Sally Field. On the third day, their farthest point from civilization, Ms. Field realized that she was out of Lithium and would suffer a recurrence of her bipolar disorder on the way back. Feghoot said that he had a small chemical lab in his backpack that he could use to extract the element from a suitable ore, but no such ore was to be found. After a few minutes of deliberation, Feghoot sprang to his feet and dug through the liquid refreshments that had been cached at the campsite. Holding up a can of Miller Lite, he crowed in triumph. Pointing to Mr. Marvin, he directed him to polish of the case from which Feghoot had extracted the can.
“But I hate that horse piss,” Marvin protested.
“But you have to do it for Ms. Fields’ sake,” Feghoot insisted. Turning to the others, he explained, “Don’t you see? If Mr. Marvin does as I say, in twenty minutes we’ll have lepidolite”.
sierraseven said, 4 months ago
Did you hear about the guy who thought Polish notation was how Rimsky-Korsakov wrote music?
No?
Oh, well. You know what they say – there’s 10 kinds of people in this world: those who understand binary, and those who don’t.
EdFenster said, 4 months ago
After Noah told the animals to “go forth and multiply”, two snakes remained. They told him, “We can’t multiply, we’re adders.”
Noah went to the top of Mt. Ararat to ask God for guidance, but when he came back, the ark was full of snakes. He said to the parents “I thought you couldn’t multiply because you were adders.”
They replied, “See that table over there? It’s a log table.”
ba-dump-bump.
Night-Gaunt49 said, 4 months ago
@Nabuquduriuzhur
A strange segway from inside jokes to job hiring. A tenuous link.
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I’m not much for jokes so I stay away from them.