State arts funding is down for the second year in a row, and the severe recession has turned many struggling artists into full-time job seekers with little or no time to pursue their passion. So what’s an aspiring or emerging painter, novelist, filmmaker to do?

Well, for one, they can become fans of the Wealthy Patrons for the Arts group on Facebook. The group’s description:

Sounds like a great idea. But if your project remains stuck in the, uh, conceptual phase, languishing for lack of resources, then you’re in need of another avenue of funding. That’s where Kickstarter comes in. This site describes itself as a funding platform where artists can post proposals and ask for donations in return for “products, services or other benefits.” For example:

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Craig Robinson is an artist and illustrator and the creator of Flip Flop Flyball, a collection of brightly colored “infographics”—maps, pie charts, graphs, and other appealingly presented baseball data. His work-up of 2009 Major League Baseball ticket prices illustrates one reason why attendance is down 7% this year, with 21 of 30 teams experiencing a drop. A day at the stadium with the family is no inexpensive proposition. The $7 hot dogs are one thing, the $1,250 tickets are another. That’s the top price for the best seat in the house at Yankee Stadium. That’s right—don’t bother looking for the decimal in that figure. Even if that price included Derek Jeter personally cracking open your peanuts, kind of hard to imagine all those laid-off New York financial industry types laying down that kind of dough anymore.

Probably one reason that the Yankees, with the best record in baseball, have suffered the third-highest drop in attendance.

The housing comeback has hit a snag. In what one analyst called “an unpleasant surprise,” a National Association of Realtors’ report announced a 2.7% decrease in existing home sales in August. What that means long-term,nobody knows. But the real estate blogosphere, for its part, looks decidedly bearish as we continue to sit in the middle of one the worst housing collapses in U.S. history. Here’s a quick look at three of the naysayers.

Dr. Housing Bubble focuses primarily on the once-superheated California real estate market. This recent post examines the reasons behind last week’s Moody’s forecast that California’s (as well as Florida’s) real estate prices won’t re-hit their peak until at least 2030, and issues a caution:

So as California is experiencing its own depression we have a group of people trying to sucker people back into buying homes. The rhetoric seems eerily familiar to the bubble days. “If you don’t buy you’ll be priced out!” or “you’ll miss the next move up!” and people jump on this. Many are going to be shocked as 2010 rolls around. Anyone can logically understand that an economy with depression like unemployment is not a good place for a housing market.

Bubble Meter has been tracking housing since the halcyon days of 2005, when people practically thought buying a share in someone’s closet was a good investment. As you may have noticed, times have changed. This post from last week highlights a recent online comment from a loan offiicer:

Folks, the bubble was all about giving a loan to anyone who had a pulse. That credit is long, long gone, and IMO getting harder to get. No more easy money. 49% of the USA has a credit score below 669. I am guessing (based on actual sales experience this year) that a good 1/3 of all people who could buy a home two years ago are now toast. That doesn’t even include people who are now unemployed and without work or who just recently go re-employed (2 years work history now, no gaps for a house loan). The housing market has further to fall and will not bounce back to prior levels for a long, long time. Sorry everyone. Sorry.

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Who knew that the rock group The Band saw the housing crash coming way before anyone else? Found on the Real Estate Video blog.

The recession has certainly changed the way many of us live our daily lives: second-guessing that impulse purchase at the mall, perhaps opting for the cheaper vacation near home rather than the exotic trip abroad. But it’s also shifting the way some people handle major life events. Couples getting married are scaling down their weddings, and couples trying to end their marriage are putting it off indefinitely. Seriously! Tina Antolini of WFCR in western New England has the story of married couples staying married only because the economy is making them. Check it out.

Podcast: Download (Duration: 7:11 — 5.1MB)

In this merciless economy, it’s good to have a Plan B. But Plans B through Z? The San Francisco Chronicle is running a profile today of 27-year-old Daniel Seddiqui, proprietor-blogger of Living the Map – 50 Jobs in 50 States. Seddiqui’s intro:

Seddiqui’s idea was borne out of frustration at not being able to find work after graduating with a degree in economics three years ago. “I failed 40 interviews straight out of college,” he told the Chronicle. “It was an embarrassment to me and my family.”

So he decided to traverse the country in search of employment. Many employments. 50, to be exact —one per state —chronicling his quest online. The archive of his journey includes descriptions of and photos from each of his jobs. From his first week in Salt Lake City, Utah working for the Church of Latter Day Saints to his 19th in Ringwood, Oklahoma working the oil fields to his 31st in Birmingham, Alabama coaching high school football to his 38th in Baltimore, Maryland cooking for a seafood restaurant to his 47th in Thomaston, Maine, trolling for lobster, Seddiqui gives new meaning to the term “jack of all trades,” and occasionally “master of none.” About his lobsterman gig, he writes:

The ocean is not for me. I knew that before I came to Maine, but I thought I’d give it a try. Within 20 minutes of being on the boat, I was sick. Unfortunately, once you’re out there, you can’t turn back. I had to tough it out for the next 7 hours.

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Let’s pluck the link ”30 Signs You’re About to Lose Your Job” out from the chorus line of the last post and give it a starring role here. Or at least a co-starring one. Because apparently, there’s a cottage industry on the Web in letting people know the signs that they’re about to be fired. A quick Google search turns up a host of links, including these:

• How to Tell You are about to Lose Your Job (suite101.com)
• 5 signs you are about to lose your job (Consumerism Commentary)
• You’re Fired! 20 signs that a pink slip is coming (Wise Bread)
• 6 Signs You Are About to Lose Your Job (Career Vanity)
• The Perils of Employment: Are You About To Be Let Go? (The Effective Admin)
• 6 Signs Your Job May Be In Jeopardy (Hotjobs)

Here are some of the more entertaining indicators, gleaned from these lists:

• Your workspace is moved to an undesirable location.
• You’ve seen a job posting that sounds an awful lot like your job.
• A subordinate is beginning to ask you questions about your responsibilities.
• People whisper more, or the conversation changes as you approach.
• People avoid you at all costs
• People hate you. I mean, really despise you with a passion.

There. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Have you been laid off? Fired? Canned? Pink-slipped? Axed? Downsized? Dismissed? Sacked? Shown the door? Made redundant? Given an exit interview? Escorted from the building by security? Assigned to “special projects” working out of your home with no title and no pay?

It ain’t no self-esteem picnic, that’s for sure. And now even the sandwich-board guy’s being offered a job. Why didn’t you think of that?

Well cheer up, friend. It’s not like there are no pleasures to be had from the jobless “experience.” How do we know that? From reading Stuff Unemployed People Like. The About page:

Sounds like fun. Or more fun, anyway, than sitting in your underwear eating Frosted Flakes with one eye on the Jobs: Customer Service section of Craig’s List and the other on “Live with Regis and Kelly.”

And it’s interesting, the stuff the unemployed like. Cramming in their health care, for instance.

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Owning a car can be quite a cash-draining proposition. Repeat expenditures include gas, insurance, and repairs, and over decades of driving you could probably put your kid through college in what it costs in fuzzy dice alone. From the New York Times “Wheels” blog earlier this year:

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, American “consumer units” (similar to a household) spent an average of $8,758 on all forms of transportation in 2007 (up 2.9 percent from 2006). We’re a car-owning country, so only $537.81 of our average spending went to public transit, including taxis and air travel.

You can use this “Real Costs of Car Ownership” calculator to determine your own outlay. Or, if you haven’t already done so, you might just get rid of your car, save thousands of dollars each year, and re-discover your inner pedestrian.

The Web, naturally, can help. Financial considerations are just one factor driving—or should we say, powering but not via the internal combustion engine—the car-free movement. Environmental, quality-of-life, and even geo-political concerns have motivated this growing community to take to the Web.

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Okay, it’s Friday, and it’s been a long, hard week of slogging through heinous health care industry practices and the reform positions of everyone in the world except for maybe Heidi Klum and Carrot Top.

Let’s just say, for the time it takes to read one meager post, that we’re still living in 1999, not 2009. Unemployment’s below 4%, the Nasdaq’s nearing 5,000, and you’re about to buy a house that’s going to double in value over the next eight years. You’re thinking about spending some stock option money on a trip to New York, because you’ve always wanted to take in the triumphant beating heart of capitalism from the eagle-eye view you’ve earned. Your only fear: Will Y2K put the VCR on the fritz just as you’ve sat down to watch “Ally McBeal”?

In such a time, Economy’sNeat.org might have offered a post about the site Things I’ve Bought That I Love, sub-titled “A place to discuss things we’ve bought that are frivolous and fun.” Things like Christian Louboutin pumps, a solar iPod, and the MargaritaMan margarita machine.

So enjoy the conspicuous consumption of yesteryear. On Monday, it’s back to foreclosures, layoffs, and health plan CBO forecasts…