Welcome to Dead Or Alive? Don’t take that question too literally. Think of this as my version of “where are they now”, except sometimes they might be six feet under and other times they are judging chili eating contests at State Fairs.
I traveled to a local mall, The Berkshire Mall, on Saturday for a few necessity items, which included a new Xbox360. I know what you are thinking and the answer is yes, an Xbox is a necessity. The thing is, I review video games for a living, Microsoft had just dropped the price by $100 and I don’t have to defend my spending habits to you.
As I approached the mall, I expected to pull off the main road and find that the parking lot had been overrun by biker gangs and mohawked hoodlums who had created a new lawless society where siphoned gasoline was used as currency. I was fairly certain that once I made it past this parking lot Barter Town the mall itself would be overgrown with weeds and inside there would be nothing but shuttered store fronts, lost-our-lease fire sales and tumbleweeds. I expected the few remaining stores to be dreadfully understaffed, understocked and over-depressing. I was ready for bread lines at the food-court Subway and Gummi Bear shortages due to the price of sugar.
The reality of my mall trip couldn’t have been farther from what I was expecting. As soon as pulling into the parking lot, I had to join the slow parade of cars roving up and down the aisles looking for a decent parking spot (I finally found one about a mile from the mall). The activity in the mall looked like the day after Thanksgiving in the year 2005 and people were buying, buying, buying! I’ve never been helped by such competent store employees and had my new Xbox bought and bagged in under five minutes.
All of this got me to thinking, is it possible that the recession isn’t as bad as the “news” media wants us to think it is? Conservatives might want to sit down for this but is it possible that President Obama and his administration’s stimulus plans are actually working?
What do you think? Is the recession Dead or Alive?
Sony recently announced that it will release a slimmed-down version of the PlayStation 3 video-game console. The PS3 Slim, set for release Sept. 1, is smaller than its predecessor, has a 120GB hard drive and will cost $300, which is half of what the high-end version cost when it was released in 2006.
