Long story short, eventually Citibank is going to be nationalized, which means in theory we will all own 1/300,000,000th of Citibank!   Pretty cool huh?   Well along with billions of dollars of “toxic assets” we will also get the naming rights to Citi Field for the next 20 years.     Considering the Wilpons may or may not have lost a ton of money in the Madoff Ponzi scheme, maybe the government can bail out the Mets too.   Anyone who stops fucking around and just signs Manny already would have my vote for sure.   It’s been like four years since that’s been a rumor so let’s just get it over with and try to win a World Series here.

Anyway, yes it’s pretty clear that the patch commemorating the inaugural season is a fucking joke, but it’s the Mets what did you honestly expect.   The good thing is that the stadium is basically done and actually looks real nice based on a tour in December via NJ.com.    I also put a video of how the stadium will look like based on a preview of the PS3 game but MTV thought it was a cool idea to have a 30 second commercial before a minute long video so they can suck a dick.

So what I’m thinking is that if us taxpayers are at least going to get the naming rights for Shea, lets name it something good.  Using a low estimate of 100 million tax-eligible workers, that means that if you pay taxes, you are contributing an average of $0.20 a day towards these naming rights, depending on how much you make.   So I’ve got a novel idea – fuck corporate sponsorship of the stadium, they get enough money from $7 beers so it’ll pay for itself eventually.   Let’s continue to honor the man who helped make the Mets happen and change the name to “Shea Stadium” before the season starts.   Novel idea I know, but it actually wouldn’t be the first time that it’s happened.

Quick shout-out to President Barack Obama, hope you are enjoying the your new home and everything else that comes along with being the President so far.  I have a lot of faith in the guy and I think he is fully capable of doing a great job and leading our economy out of this recession.   I do think people are going a little overboard though in terms of expectations, its tough out there.   I’ve seen an absolute ton of bullshit over the last couple of days about how awesome Obama is and how pretty much now everything is cool but ignorance is bliss I guess, oh well.

So considering the unemployment rate is going up, the Dow Jones is headed towards the 6,300-6,600 range for a little while in April or so* and the housing problem isn’t going anywhere he’s going to have to do a little more than have a saxophone duet with Bill C. to make America happy.   I think when it is said and done President Obama, Congress, and State governments will sort things out and put our country back on the path of growth, it’s just going to take a minute.   So in the meantime, I’m buying an umbrella and waiting for that change.

*Not based on anything in particular, but no one is paying any attention to the fundamentals so who cares.   It’ll be back by ‘10 don’t worry.

Here’s some things worth checking out:

CES: Back to the Future With LG’s Watch Phone (WSJ) Fuck the Iphone, I’m getting one of these.

Citi Field: Where Homeruns Go To Die. (Amazin’ Avenue) Discussion about how Citi Field may yield considerably less home runs than Shea.  Since Aaron Heilman and Billy Wagner are off the team, this may not matter so much.

Strictly Fitteds Apparently there’s a blog about fitteds.  Nice.  This one is real sick.

Jaydiohead: Jay-Z x Radiohead – Minty Fresh Beats: Mix of Jay-Z verses over beats made from Radiohead songs.

A real ol’ G.

The Fall of GM – A Visual Guide (WallStats.com)

The End of the Financial World as We Know It and How to Repair a Broken Financial World (Michael Lewis and David Einhorn, New York Times).    Long article but worth reading, breaks down a lot of the ol’ “financial crisis.”

Rap music originated in medieval Scottish pubs, claims American professor.  The best part:
The most famous surviving example of flyting comes from a 16th-century piece in which two rival poets hurl increasingly obscene rhyming insults at one another before the Court of King James IV.    Titled the Flyting Of Dunbar And Kennedy, it has been described by academics as “just over 500 lines of filth”.

And of course -

2009 is going to be an interesting year.

On December 28, 2008 I was given a late Christmas present – the opportunity to watch the New York Jets play the Dolphins, at home, with my team locking up a playoff berth with a Jets win.   Unfortunately for me, I’m a Patriots fan and these are the Jets.

I pretty much knew the Patriots had the game wrapped up all week, but with 50 MPH winds in Buffalo, you never could tell.    The score was only 3-0 New England at half time, with assist to this random dude who held the goal post for Gostkowski.  

Quarterbacks were a combined 20-33, 206 yards, 0 TDs – it was a quick, low scoring game.   Once LaMont Jordan scored a TD in the 3rd quarter to make it 10-0, I knew the game was effectively over, and that only meant one thing.  It was time to be a Jets fan. 

I immediately got ready as I knew that the GUNSLINGER the VETERAN the MVP the SHOW STOPPER Shawn Michaels Brett Favre was ready for some football.  Every Jets fan knows that #4 is set on a Super Bowl ring, and as long as the Jags won BRO we’d be OK.    No way Chaaad Pennington and his limp dick arm comes into the Meadowlands and beats us, son!    

Long story short, Favre sucked dick to the tune of 20-40, 233 yards 1 TD 3 INT.   Ironically, for all the talk of how much of a great cold weather quarterback Favre is, he has actually been one of the worst in the league in December over the last 4 seasons, with 30 interceptions to just 12 touchdowns.   The Dolphins were a hungry team, and you know Chaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad wanted some revenge on the dickhead Jets fans who booed him out of New Jersey.  Either way, I was still a Jets fan and I knew that after we had pulled ahead 17-14 early in the 3rd that we were pulling away for an easy win.   Nah, that’s bullshit.   As a real Jets fan, I knew that this was exactly when the Jets became the Jets and knew they were fucked.    Once the Dolphins scored a touchdown like two seconds later I decided to go back to being a Patriots fan and thinking the Jets were scumbags.   I don’t think I had to change my opinion much from when I was a Jets fan. 

Without going crazy with stats, the 11-5 Patriots are by far the best team to miss the playoffs in NFL history, but shit happens.  We’ll franchise Caaaaaaaasel and trade him to the Lions for the #1 pick and win another Super Bowl.   I may be a Patriots fan, but I’m not stupid; I’m friends with many Jets fans and I have seen many Jets games.  Once I knew that getting to the playoffs was dependent on a Jets win, at home at that, I knew one thing for damn sure –

BASEBALL SEASON HAS BEGUN!

No matter where you turn right now, all you will hear is recession this recession that.    For the most part, being in a recession is relatively easy to define.   Jobs are scarcer; many people are forced to stay in, or accept jobs that are below their skill and/or education level, and many people cannot find work at all.      For the general public, the percentage of (eligible) workers unemployed is one of the most common statistics to be quoted in bad times, one of the easiest to understand and the one statistic that will truly ‘hit home’ so to speak.     I’m going to try to break down what exactly is going on in pretty broad terms so that you can know more than most people without having to learn all the finance bullshit I know.

I’m not really sure what I am going to do with this site but it starts now.