Note: This post was written in exchange for a crappy spider drawing. Send me a crappy spider drawing along with a subject for a post and I’ll write it, no questions asked.

Now that the stock market is hitting new lows and layoffs are on the rise, it’s understandable people are getting a bit bummed out. I’m not exactly a pillar of happy happy joy joy but I’ve managed to maintain an aura of stability, partly because I went through a similarly crappy time at the tail end of the .com crash and harbor an unfortunate love for 1970 sci-fi dystopia films. Next to talking apes and a sperm extractor hooked to Kevin Costner’s nether-regions, a prolonged recession look like a walk in the park.

Anyhow here are some suggestions for keeping your sense of humor during these trying times:

1. Schadenfreude.
2. Watch funny, uplifting movies: I put on Singin’ In The Rain whenever I feel down, but one could also check out Once, The Pursuit Of Happyness, A Fish Called Wanda, or It’s A Wonderful Life.
3. Pick one of these phrases as your new mantra: Sh**t happens. Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Money is the root of all evil. Neither a borrower nor a lender be. When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.
4. Remember how much fun we had as a broke college students. Illegal activities aside, somehow we were able to enjoy ourselves on a student loan imposed budget of $20 a week. Sitting in a bookstore for hours, making one cup of coffee stretch by pushing free refills to the limit, debating the impossibility of time travel, or covering the ceiling with string. I ate pasta, beer, and rice for a month straight with no ill effects – not too far off from depression era egg drop soup.
5. Maybe the joke’s on you. It’s possible this is all some big cosmic joke and someone is having a laugh at your expense. For example, you paid your mortgage on time for years and now some materialistic deadbeat who took out an interest only loan gets a bailout. Ha, ha. Maybe it’s time to laugh along with them, and at yourself.
6. LOLcats. Our pet cats are content despite having no clothes, eating the same food every day, and having a mere box with a pile of sand to poop in. But you certainly don’t need an interest-only loan to purchase a cardboard box, which serves its purpose and is infinitely more fascinating. Maybe the cats are the ones laughing at us (see number 4).
   
7. Pretend. Replace “$” with something meaningless like “crappy spider drawings.” This strategy makes terrible financial news more tolerable. For example: “Financials Need At Least 1.2 Trillion Crappy Spider Drawings” is just so much more fun to swallow. I’m pretending my 401K is filled with puffed rice kernels and used dental floss.
8. Get a cheap hobby. Something fun and new, hopefully social, that doesn’t require much expense, but gets you appreciating the simpler things in life. Riding a bike, volunteering at the food bank, feral cat photography, underwater shoelace tying, used chewing gum collector, crappy spider art appraiser, etc. If you take up the last one, I’d like to hear from you.
9. Start a blog. Blogging is essentially putting words and pictures on a website and seeing if anybody gives a crap. It’s cheap – my hosting is $100 a year. You can maintain a killer blog with merely a steady supply of coffee, DVD rentals, and unemployment checks. From that foundation, you have unlimited potential to spread your creativity far and wide and get chuckles in return. I mean, I just read comments left on a post like this one and have no choice but to laugh – or cry.

Alright, I’ve had enough:

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