Just to cheer you up amidst everything you’re hearing about financial collapse and hard times a-comin’, here’s my favorite Great Depression joke:

A guy is standing on a street corner, selling apples. The sign on his cart says, “Apples— $5,000 apiece.”

A passerby stops and looks at the sign. “That seems like a lot of money to ask for an apple,” he says.

“Yeah, it is,” says the vendor. “But all I have to do is sell one.”

For some reason I always think of novel writing when I tell that joke. Because we deal in a commodity that’s worth zero, until we find somebody willing to pay for it. Then suddenly we have a valuable asset.