Sometimes there’s not much work around. In times like these, this is often especially true for ventriloquists.

One day, two out-of-work ventriloquists are talking on the phone to each other and lamenting their condition. The older one says, “Just between you and me, I’ve been moonlighting lately as a medium.”

The young ventriloquist is quite impressed. “Really?” he says. “I didn’t know that you were psychic!”

“Well, to tell you the truth, I’m not,” confesses the older man. “But what I did was rent a storefront and bought a small round table, a crystal ball, and a turban. Then, when people come in, I throw my voice and they think that they’re talking to their dead relatives.”

“What a great idea!” says the young ventriloquist.

“You should try it too,” suggests the first man. “You’ll see, it works great.”

The next day, the young man goes out, rents a little storefront, and buys a table, a crystal ball, and a turban. He opens up for business, and an hour later a middle-aged woman walks in. She sits down at the table across from the ventriloquist and asks him, “Can you put me in touch with my long-lost husband?”

“I sure can!” he answers. “Why, for just a hundred dollars, you can hear your husband speak to you from behind that curtain over there. Now I must warn you that his voice might sound a little different, but that’s because he’s talking to you from the spirit world.”

“That’s wonderful,” says the woman eagerly.

“For a hundred and fifty dollars,” the ventriloquist says, “you could have a two-way conversation with your husband, and talk back and forth with him.”

The woman’s voice rises in anticipation as she asks, “You mean, I could communicate directly with my dear departed Hubert?”

“Not only that,” says the ventriloquist, getting just as excited as the woman, “but for two hundred dollars, you could actually carry on a two-way conversation with your husband while I’m drinking a glass of water!”