It’s hot:

New endeavor from a gaggle of (laid-off) Portfolio.com staffers that wish to bring the world more sticky recession news. It’s only for the time-being (so they say) and hopefully it won’t be here forever. Catch it while you still can (good for passing time whilst wistfully waiting for employment opportunities to arise).

1. Watch some of their recommended  feel-good movies–feel good because you’re better off than these suckers:

The Fly–because you could be half-insect.

Cast Away– because you could be stuck on an island and not only have no paycheck, but have to talk to a volleyball smeared with blood.

Carrie–because you could constantly piss people off by accidentally setting them on fire. Well, or maybe you could view this film as a how-to.

The Wrestler–because you could be on the minor leagues wrestling circuit–and yep, that really would be worse.

2. Watch for their daily Recession Briefings — a day’s worth of corralled doom and gloom heds from the papers.

This week:  Mom, I joined the Army–because I couldn’t find a job from CNNMoney
The Department of Defense says all branches of the armed forces met or exceeded their recruiting goals for January, despite the two ongoing wars.

3. Follow Joe the Trader’s daily schedule of life after Wall Street:

Monday, 3:18 p.m.:
Go to Equinox on 45th and Lexington. When it first opened, it was conveniently located near Barclays, Bear Stearns, JP Morgan and the Park Avenue hedge funds. Bear is gone, and I wonder how much longer the others will be around. There sure are a lot more guys here in the mid-afternoon than I would have expected. Are they all out of work too? Or do they just have nothing to do at work? I guess one positive benefit of the recession is that a lot more Wall Street guys will be able to run an eight minute mile.

4. Think you have creativity left in you? One contributor mentions how to decorate your new (smaller) apartment (near JFK)  in these tough times, including a $0 project made from old spiral-bound notebooks. Trash diving is now posh, I suppose.

Me? I just Rasterbate when no one’s looking. It’s free and it feels good:

Photo by Iñigo Amescua (I like how he sees U.S. photography), NYC, 2008, Rasterbated on 8.5 x 11 sheets of printer paper, meticulously trimmed and joined with Scotch tape and a careful eye.