Frolicat is available now for $17.25 on Amazon.

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?

Beef up your music library

Are you still using iTunes to purchase music? If you haven’t tried Amazon’s MP3 download service yet, today might be the perfect day for you to dip your toe in this river*.

Amazon.com has a ton of free songs and extremely cheap albums available for download and they are all compatible with you iPod or other MP3 player. I’ve been using Amazon for music for over a year and highly recommend it.

Check it out now by clicking here.

*Before the internet, Amazon was a river in South America.

It’s the BlackBerry Storm 9350, touchscreen phone for just $99! All you have to do do get this price, which is $400 less than the sticker price, is sign up for a new plan with Verizon. Click here for the Amazon page.

I’ve been biding my time until my current AT&T plan expired because I have no service in my new house in upstate NY. It’s been a little over a year without having a fully working cell phone but I’ll finally be able to ditch AT&T next month and make the switch to Verizon. I’m going to check out this Amazon deal and will let you know how it goes.

The site is called DealNews.com and basically it lists hundreds of incredible deals to be found online. I’m not talking about crap that you would never want but good stuff like Mac’s for under $800 and Kensington iPod speakers for $54. I even saw a JVC Digital Camcorder for $200 with free shipping! They also have all sorts of stuff for your home and car and anything else you might be shopping for.

Have you heard of or used this site before? If so, what did you think?

The site is called DealNews.com and basically it lists hundreds of incredible deals to be found online. I’m not talking about crap that you would never want but good stuff like Mac’s for under $800 and Kensington iPod speakers for $54. I even saw a JVC Digital Camcorder for $200 with free shipping! They also have all sorts of stuff for your home and car and anything else you might be shopping for.

Have you heard of or used this site before? If so, what did you think?

And no, unfortunately I’m not getting paid to post about DealNews.com. However, if DealNews is reading, I’m open to selling out.