The sluggish economy hasn't been good for industries like construction or manufacturing, but bad times are actually good for weirdness.
So says Edward Meyer, the head archivist for Ripley's Entertainment,http://www.ripleys.com/who is in charge of purchasing the bizarre items featured in Ripley museums -- otherwise known as "Odditoriums" -- around the world.
"We're recession-proof," Meyer told the Huffington Post. "We're actually helped by it. People are always looking for a laugh."
You'd think it would be unbelievably hard to amaze Meyer, a guy whose office in Pensacola, Fla., includes a real shrunken head, a giant spider made of scissors, and a letter from a guy in Hong Kong who sent him his belly button lint.
But it still happens, he insists, as he discovered while working on the latest Ripley book, "Download The Weird."