Mephistos

This is the greatest thing in a long time that I have accidentally stumbled upon in while.  Matter of fact I would call this even better then sliced bread.  So, as I was noting in another blog thread here (at least in the comments), I needed to find some big band era swing type of music and that while I do enjoy the sound of the music, I am really not familiar enough with it to be able to out and just by a CD – if I had found such anyway.  On top of that, I am horrible with remember song names and performers.  So I did a search for just just things when I had a few minutes between things this morning thinking that I would see what I could find in such a genre and go from there.

In my search list, and the only one that seemed to point to something I could stream to get an example of the sound and make sure it was I was wanting to pursue was this link to Pandora.  So, I clicked the link, Read more…

Fuel prices are coming back down.  This is a good thing.  Of course they are coming back down only because of the actual slacking of demand on oil right now.  That is largely coming from the decrease in demand from the United States, which has been in gasoline sticker shock from most of the spring and summer of this wonderful year so far.  It should also be noted, that a lot of the saber rattling that has been going on so far in the last few months over in the middle east has amounted to naught and that weather predictions have thus far proved to have little impact on production as well.

Are the the fuel prices we are paying at the pump likely to go back below $3.00 per gallon?  It could, but I doubt it will personally.  Certainly the days of $1 and change gas per gallon are long past us. Read more…

A couple of weeks back, Phil Gram made some comments about the recession  that we are in largely being a state of psychological recession.  He got a good deal of flack in the media about such comments but I think he may actually be right.  Now, keep in mind, I feel that psychologically, if you are are thinking something, it becomes or at least begins to reflect such in reality.

To begin with though, lets do some defining of the terminology we are using.  A pretty good set of definitions and a bit of depth in explaining what I am referring to can be found at the American Management Association’s website, in a review of the book One Foot out the Door, by Judith M. Bardwick.   The basic idea put forth in the book is that as a mass of folks start to feel a little bit uneasy Read more…

If you are at all familiar with you you know the whole of that quote is “All I really need to know I learned in kindergarten,”  which is the title of a book and a fount of wisdom by Robert Fulghum.   I have always felt a little slighted by such a book title, as where I grew up there was not a county/state school system kindergarten and it did not become a required thing until some number of years after I started school.  I have always joked, knowing the basic contents of the book, that it is no wonder I don’t like to share and am not good at playing well with others – as I didn’t attend kindergarten.

I had a realization this morning as I attended church, which was the first time in a long time for such an occurrence mind you.  My realization was that the kind of things that were being taught in kindergarten Read more…

Currently I am sitting in front of a tavern in downtown Lexington, historic old court house across the street, blues music riffing through the outside speaking, enjoying a bourbon, dog at my feet.  Life is good if not for being so hot.  Of course, I might not be so hot if I had not just come from a swing dance.  I had no idea how hard that would be for me nor how much energy it would use over the a couple of hours.

This was something that had been planned for a bit as it is something that I want to do and it is also something I know that some other people I know enjoy on a regular basis.  Actually they are apparently a bit of regular with it at this place up around D.C. that is pretty much a historic site straight out of the 30′s or 40′s itself.  How awesomely cool would that be? Read more…