And so it is that I present the first issue of The Whimsical Adventures of Mr. Douche.

Utah and Vermont seem to have a lot in common – area codes 801 & 802, their adjacent positions in alphabetized lists of states, cool mountains, and great skiing. In spite of the similarities, Vermont definitely one-ups Utah as “God’s country.” We have Ben and Jerry’s, awesome maple syrup, green mountains, the best sharp cheddar cheese east of Wisconsin, and heck, even Brigham Young and Joseph Smith were born in the state. What really puts Vermont over the top, however, is one of the greatest, young, underground jam bands around, Twiddle. If you like bands like Phish, String Cheese Incident, and the Disco Biscuits you’ll love these kids from Castleton, Vermont. Jam band music is a bona fide cultural institution in the Green Mountain State – most of the teenagers I know have their iPods packed with music from groups like the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers, and contemporary acts like Phish (another Vermont band), and locals cram into big and small venues all over the state for jam band music festivals and shows.

Like their predecessors Phish, Twiddle is quickly becoming Vermont music legends. Twiddle is all about the live show and offers their tunes (most of them live recordings) for free on mtheir website (www.twiddlemusic.com). Up until a few months ago, I had only heard a few Twiddle tracks on a local radio station, but finally caught them live at a ski resort bar where I work (Grizzly’s at Stratton Mountain). Similar to other acts that fall under the rubric “jam band,” The guys craft songs drawing upon several genres (sometimes all in one piece). This style amounts to a mish mash of funk, reggae, jazz, hip hop, bluegrass and progressive rock, and they often express the genre crossover during the bridge within their songs.

Twiddle is composed of a four college buds from Castleton State University in Vermont. They are fronted by Mickey Savoulidis on guitar and vocals, Ryan Dempsey on keys, Brook Jordan on drums and bassist Zdenek Gubb. While all of these guys are exceptionally capable musicians, Gubb’s bass grooves really set the tone for Twiddle’s compositions. Their live sets are akin to Jazz club sessions and each member has space to develop and contribute a mood to any given piece. Through it all, Gubb keeps their tunes tight and interesting.

The band recorded its latest (second) album, “Somewhere on the Mountain,” in 2011 and released it last Halloween. The recording consists of five songs and clocks in at a little more than thirty minutes brilliantly exemplifying the musicians’ capabilities. A noteworthy illustration is the ten minute epic, “Beethoven and Greene.” The song begins as a catchy rock tune with some infectious lyrics, which after a few minutes transitions into a Sublime-sounding reggae affair (Sublime is an obvious influence on this band), then back to the original song structure. Moments later the floodgates open and the band rips into a “zydeco-esque,” rock-jazz jam (does this make any sense?) for nearly the remainder of the cut, until they slow it down again returning to the reggae riff to finish up the piece.

Many locals don’t pay too much attention to Twiddle’s studio albums because their shows and live recordings are so good. Although I loved seeing them live, I find some of the cuts on the new album to be just as compelling as their concert performance. My favorite song on the album is “Doinkinbonk!!!” which possesses all of the energy and creativity that makes Twiddle’s live sets so popular. The song is led by Dempsey’s piano and keys through the first half, building the piece until it collides with the other instruments at about the half-way mark. The fallout initiates a guitar solo and an all-out jam through most of the remainder. I’ve heard the song live, and the band airs out the jam section much longer than the studio version, but the recording still captures its magic.

Okay, if it isn’t already obvious, I’m shamelessly promoting this band. Twiddle is embarking on a Rocky Mountain tour in March (hitting Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana), and I was disappointed to see they weren’t making a stop in my hometown SLC. So if this stuff sounds like your cup of tea, check out their website, download some tunes, and get your Twiddle on (and pray this big taste of Vermont – the real Zion – comes to Utah someday).

I’ve been unhappy, living in pain of mistreatment and abuse a long, long time

Expected to understand why people are incapable of doing what they should regarding/concerning me

Professed love so intensely applied/given improperly

 fathers, pastors, husband so-called covering

Everyone has a justifiable reason, they can’t love me properly

It continues to end up as abuse, abnormal use of me

Perform, work, be loyalty to me, fulfill what I need, support my vision and honor me

Love’s reality hurts and disappoints as it crushes expectation, femininity, and submissiveness, respect and trust dependency on covering

No one has understood or embraced fully the essence of me, proven capable of the responsibility of me… I’m too much; the price is too high, self-serving agendas remained top priority

I never got the chance to benefit positively

And they get away with it, every disgusting foul thing possible; leaving me empty

Open, vulnerable to areas exposed, mistreatment produces ills all its own

From baby to girl, woman to wife, evolved the person I am now that I’m grown

Accused of being too independent, defensive, a thinker and strong

Intimidating, confrontational to a man, girl you are just wrong

Forget the fact these jokers dropped the ball, failed numerously

Didn’t protect or provide beneficially

A drop and a twiddle, every so often, to pacify and solidify

Their request to merit/validate their receiving,

Did what they should have, expecting more than appreciation; gratification

Pimps, Preachers, Pappy’s called covering

Teaching, prompting, the turning of tricks for love

Age/circumstance doesn’t matter

You’ll always end up; having to earn what should be freely given

Because it’s what’s felt/desired to be given from a passionate heart

LOVE ME BECAUSE YOU WANT TO…NOT BECAUSE YOU FEEL YOU HAVE TO

When does the cycle end?  Will I ever experience Covering?

I’m angry, hurt, discombobulated; totally taken a back

Struggling to separate reality from failed attempts

To be hopeful, live in possibility, believe in COVERING

A concept never seen or experienced, just heard about

Self gratifying fathers used my body for their pleasure

Spiritual shepherding biased to their need of possessed gifting

Blocked by their need of me, failed to teach me properly

I learned lessons pertinent to their dreams, aspirations and current feelings

All strikes against me, hitting me at the core of intimacy

Believing in these men, giving them all a chance

To redefine and prove the truth of Covering

FATHER GOD PLEASE HELP ME….

You kept me Connected, allowed me the opportunity to yet give the benefit of the doubt, you made me naturally nurturing, empowered me to be supportive, sustained the true authentic heart you created…granted me wisdom beyond my years…enlightened perception of what is and what should not be…You showed me the freedom of forgiveness…how not to impose my own penalty or banish my heart to the prison of this is how life and love will always be

Instead of Covering I continued to meet indifference, selfishness, and contradictions of their perspective roles confined to their inadequacy

Family, friend, fowl existences, fake, failures, frightened by what they didn’t allow themselves to be

How bad I felt, how toxic were my thoughts, how empty my heart in terms s of trusting God’s heart expressed toward me

At, after all this… He would provide proper, protective, purposeful COVERING…

God how can I trust it? How can I trust him?  In the stillness of my delirium God counseled me…he talked to me about Him, about me, and told me particulars about the heart or assignment of love He would provide.  Every time affirming…”you can trust him”.  When I refused to listen, couldn’t hear beyond my pain or disappointment he sent other people who said the very same thing until I finally came to a point of full surrender

Trading in my receiving blanket, the story I carried around as a badge of honor to my internal pain and fear

So I gave it all up…released it…and told God I willingly surrender myself erected defenses and every thought or feeling antithetical God that cancels out the free-flowing work of the Holy Spirit to bring about your plan and purpose in my current reality…Not knowing that He really would address this issue I had with COVERING

For years I’ve been Praying God’s purpose for me would prevail over these aggressive attacks

That I’ll end up the person, woman God intended me to be

Not reasoning away pain, justifying lack or living reliant upon the decisions of man

After some time I could see, utter even my need of you, I finally grew out of pain and put on the desire to allow you the opportunity to walk in or out the role God designed, desired, and designated so you can exemplify his love for the church.

I see clearly now that God covers me, and provides for me the example all these men failed to exude…I am not the things I formerly accepted, agreed to and affirmed. For always and forever He’s

Offering me acceptance, unconditional love and everything I need.  Because I trust His care of me…I trust His choice of you and you’re care of me…

Producing in me a sincere desire to experience the benefit of duel COVERING

God’s providing, doing something new, is allowing me an authentic experience replica to His expression, example of proper

COVERING

Cover Me

1. Clip your toenails.
2. Organize your grocery store coupons.
3. Admire Polt’s ass.
4. Twiddle your thumbs.
5. Stare at the wall.

6. Watch the Puppy Bowl on Animal Planet.
7. Read a book.
8. Watch The Notebook to balance out the world.
9. Organize a box of Fruit Loops by color.
10. Call all your butch friends who are watching the Super Bowl, just to chat.

11. Roll pennies.
12. Watch paint dry.
13. Clean out your closet.
14. Stuff everything that you took out of your closet into another closet.
15. Alphabetize your DVDs.

16. Comb your back hair.
17. Go shopping.
18. Clean out your refrigerator.
19. Replace the batteries in your smoke detectors.
20. Clean the dead bugs out of your ceiling lamps.

21. Make sure that everything hanging in your home is perfectly level.
22. Tweeze your eyebrows.
23. Catch up on Glee.
24. Look up naked women on the Internet and ponder why vaginas are just so damn disgusting.
25. Actually read one of those m/m short stories that Tam is always reviewing.

26. Masturbate.
27. Watch grass grow.
28. Play solitaire.
29. Add hundreds of pointless life events to your Facebook timeline.
30. Organize your porn.

31. Prune your pubes.
32. Microwave random things until they explode.
33. Perfect a foreign accent.
34. Plot world domination.
35. Perform an interpretive dance of LMFAO‘s I’m Sexy and I Know It.

36. Bake and decorate a cake.
37. Plan your future wedding.
38. Go grocery shopping (the store will be EMPTY).
39. Re-read every C&R post and comment on all of them.
40. Actually visit Our T.V. Night (because no one ever does).

41. Build a sex machine.
42. Nap.
43. Compose a C&R guest post and email it to Adam.
44. Learn the beautiful art of flower arraigning.
45. Drink alcohol until you pass out.

46. Lick the black mold that’s growing on your bathroom wall.
47. Clean your house.
48. Exercise.
49. Go see a movie.
50. Dream up 50 more things that you could do instead of watching the Super Bowl.

Special thanks to Mikey and Craig for their assistance with this post.

Small minds twiddle their thumbs and puzzle over which great minds to emulate.

Einstein was not much good at math.

Edison couldn’t punctuate.

I just noticed that I can twiddle my thumbs while typing. That’s because I only use two fingers to tap away on the keyboard. Thirty five words a minute. How great is that?

“TOYING WITH A MANS JUNK” Acrylic on paper – Mr.Inconnu

Going to Have to Have a Break..

Another Band Practice With ‘Snakebite’ Tomorrow.. I Think There Will be Another Recording Done (With a Better Camera i Hope) … If we do, It Should be Attached to the Next Post, so i Hope you Enjoy it

Anywayz, i Hope you all had a Nice Weekend, and I’ll Probably Make Another Update Post on Thursday for you all

Adam.

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nécessaire au snorkling des fruits et des boissons à volonté Sachant que l on tient facilement à 6 amis je vous laisse faire le calcul par jour et par personne A bon entendeur Nous arrivons sur Pee Pee Island remember La Plage avec Caprio et Ledoyen à couper le souffle Aussi beau que dans le film C est vraiment le paradis Une succession de cartes

Nice Life Apparel invites you to get a taste of the real Vermont at the Perfect Wife Restaurant and Tavern tonight December 23rd. There will be a raffle featuring many great prizes and dollar PBR all night. If you’re in the area get yourself on down to 2594 Depot Street in Manchester, Vermont! If you’re not in the area well that sucks for you.

Recently I implemented an MBean in JBoss to use as a batch trigger from a ControlM implementation and was surprised (probably shouldn’t have been though) that all my carefully crafted security for the JMXConsole and Web Console was ignored with complete impunity by the tool (twiddle.sh) that I used to invoke my MBean. Since then I’ve been through a pile of pain trying to get an RMI call to a JBoss XMBean to require authentication and I thought I’d put some instructions in plain language on how to do it.

I do this for two reasons:

1. because I bet a lot of developers miss this one; and
2. because the documentation and other information I find online is limited and confusing.

For demonstration I’m going to use a standard JBoss MBean for setting system properties in a running application container.

A Simple Example of Setting a System Property in JBoss using Twiddle

Using the default JBoss version of twiddle.sh (in the bin directory beneath JBoss home) against the default JNP location of JBoss (localhost:1099) you can execute the following to set a system property in a running container.

# this assumes you're in the bin directory of JBoss Home.
./twiddle.sh -s localhost:1099 invoke "jboss:type=Service,name=SystemProperties" set myprop mypropvalue
'null'

To verify that you have been succesful (assuming you didn’t get an exception in the last operation) you can do the following:

# this assumes you're in the bin directory of JBoss Home.
./twiddle.sh -s localhost:1099 invoke "jboss:type=Service,name=SystemProperties" get myprop
mypropvalue

This example will work from anywhere on your network where you’re not prevented from reaching the JNP URL of the container (prevented by a firewall or IP filter for example) regardless of the JMX Console and Web Console security you’ve put in place (there is plenty of documentation around for securing the JMX Console and Web Console). This is because the JMX Console and Web Console are HTTP based and as such are secured in the normal way you would secure a website on JBoss (i.e. in web-inf.xml and jboss-web.xml) whereas the invoker layer is not HTTP based and as such must use an alternate method of security; the key file in this operation is the jmx-invoker-service.xml file in the JBoss deploy directory.

Securing the Invoker Layer

The invoker layer is the one you are calling through when you query or invoke on an MBean via RMI (i.e. with twiddle.sh – as above). This layer is not subject to the security constraints you will have placed on your HTTP based JMX Console or Web Consoles.

To make this layer secure the key file you’re interested in is the jmx-invoker-service.xml in the JBoss deploy directory; and the key operation configuration you will need to change is for ‘invoke’.

The default configuration of the invoke operation in this file is:

<server>

	<!-- excluded for brevity -->

	<mbean code="org.jboss.jmx.connector.invoker.InvokerAdaptorService" name="jboss.jmx:type=adaptor,name=Invoker" xmbean-dd="">
		<xmbean>
			<description>The JMX Detached Invoker Service</description>
			<class>org.jboss.jmx.connector.invoker.InvokerAdaptorService</class>

			<!-- excluded for brevity -->

			<operation>
				<description>The detached invoker entry point</description>
				<name>invoke</name>
				<parameter>
					<description>The method invocation context</description>
					<name>invocation</name>
					<type>org.jboss.invocation.Invocation</type>
				</parameter>
				<return-type>java.lang.Object</return-type>
				<descriptors>
					<interceptors>

						<!-- Uncomment to require authenticated users -->
						<!-- <interceptor code="org.jboss.jmx.connector.invoker.AuthenticationInterceptor" securityDomain="java:/jaas/jmx-console"/> -->

						<!-- Interceptor that deals with non-serializable results -->
						<interceptor code="org.jboss.jmx.connector.invoker.SerializableInterceptor" policyClass="StripModelMBeanInfoPolicy"/>

					</interceptors>
				</descriptors>
			</operation>
		</xmbean>
	</mbean>
</server>

So to switch on authentication we do what it says and ‘Uncomment to require authenticated users’:

<server>

	<!-- excluded for brevity -->

	<mbean code="org.jboss.jmx.connector.invoker.InvokerAdaptorService" name="jboss.jmx:type=adaptor,name=Invoker" xmbean-dd="">
		<xmbean>
			<description>The JMX Detached Invoker Service</description>
			<class>org.jboss.jmx.connector.invoker.InvokerAdaptorService</class>

			<!-- excluded for brevity -->

			<operation>
				<description>The detached invoker entry point</description>
				<name>invoke</name>
				<parameter>
					<description>The method invocation context</description>
					<name>invocation</name>
					<type>org.jboss.invocation.Invocation</type>
				</parameter>
				<return-type>java.lang.Object</return-type>
				<descriptors>
					<interceptors>

						<!-- Uncomment to require authenticated users -->
						<interceptor code="org.jboss.jmx.connector.invoker.AuthenticationInterceptor" securityDomain="java:/jaas/jmx-console"/>

						<!-- Interceptor that deals with non-serializable results -->
						<interceptor code="org.jboss.jmx.connector.invoker.SerializableInterceptor" policyClass="StripModelMBeanInfoPolicy"/>

					</interceptors>
				</descriptors>
			</operation>
		</xmbean>
	</mbean>
</server>

If you haven’t changed the default security realm for your JMX Console (i.e. java:/jaas/jmx-console) you will now have an invoker layer secured with the same credentials as for your JMX Console. To change this add a new security realm to your global login-config.xml in the conf directory of your container and match the name you give it in the securityDomain attribute of the Authentication Interceptor.

I’ve not yet delved too deeply into setting a specific set of roles, at this point I set my invoker user to JBossAdmin which means that user can do pretty much anything exposed to JMX. That’s ok for my purposes tho (feel free to write a response with the details of setting roles for particular JMX functions ).

Invoking on a Secure Invoker Layer

Ok so now that it’s secure how do you invoke an operation on it?

With the default JBoss twiddle.sh utility there are arguments -u (or –user=) for user and -p (–password=) for password.

# this assumes you're in the bin directory of JBoss Home.
./twiddle.sh -s localhost:1099 --user=myuser --password=mypassword invoke "jboss:type=Service,name=SystemProperties" get myprop
mypropvalue

These arguments work fine except your password is now in clear text and even worse is visible in the process list while it’s executing – in clear text with ‘password=’ conveniently placed for extraction by a simple script!! This seems a bit of an oversight in the tool to me.

To get around this issue in my environment I took the source and modified the main class of twiddle.jar to accept a password from Standard In (patch is below – no promises or guarantees though) which prevents the password showing in your password list and allows you to use standard encryption utilities to decrypt and pipe it into the process without ever making it visible clear text.

You would now invoke as follows:

# this assumes you're in the bin directory of JBoss Home.
mypassword | ./twiddle.sh -s localhost:1099 --user=myuser invoke "jboss:type=Service,name=SystemProperties" get myprop
mypropvalue

or better; from an encrypted password file (or better yet a repository) such as follows:

# this assumes you're in the bin directory of JBoss Home and have previously encrypted your password and encryption key into ~/.<username>.key and ~/.<username>.psw.
KEY=`cat ~/.<execution username>.key`
PWD=`cat ~/.<execution username>.psw | crypt $KEY`

PWD | ./twiddle.sh -s localhost:1099 --user=myuser invoke "jboss:type=Service,name=SystemProperties" get myprop
mypropvalue

to encrypt your password to be used as above you might do:

echo "<password>" | crypt > ~/.<execution username>.psw

which will request an encryption key which you would save as follows (for this example anyway):

cat "<encryption key>" > ~/.<execution username>.key

These files would, of course, be accessable only from your execution user.

Securing the JMX Console

For reference the key files you’re interested in here are:

• conf/login-config.xml
• deploy/jmx-console.war/META-INF/web.xml
• deploy/jmx-console.war/META-INF/jboss-web.xml

Securing the JMX Web Console

For reference the key files you’re interested in here are:

• conf/login-config.xml
• deploy/management/web-console.war/META-INF/web.xml
• deploy/management/web-console.war/META-INF/jboss-web.xml

Stack

These instructions will apply broadly but for reference purposes the stack I have is:

• JBoss 4.2.3.GA
• Java jdk1.6.0_13
• Windows XP or Solaris 10

References

http://www.jboss.org/community/wiki/Twiddle

http://www.jboss.org/community/wiki/jbossserver-aquicktour

https://jira.jboss.org/jira/secure/attachment/12313982/jboss-securejmx.pdf (PDF Document)

Patch For Twiddle to Take Password from StdIn (no promises or guarantees)

Index: src/main/org/jboss/console/twiddle/Twiddle.java
===================================================================
--- src/main/org/jboss/console/twiddle/Twiddle.java    (revision 94201)
+++ src/main/org/jboss/console/twiddle/Twiddle.java    (working copy)
@@ -24,8 +24,10 @@
 import gnu.getopt.Getopt;
 import gnu.getopt.LongOpt;

+import java.io.BufferedReader;
 import java.io.File;
 import java.io.InputStream;
+import java.io.InputStreamReader;
 import java.io.PrintWriter;
 import java.net.MalformedURLException;
 import java.net.URL;
@@ -41,7 +43,6 @@
 import javax.naming.Context;
 import javax.naming.InitialContext;
 import javax.naming.NamingException;
-
 import org.jboss.console.twiddle.command.Command;
 import org.jboss.console.twiddle.command.CommandContext;
 import org.jboss.console.twiddle.command.CommandException;
@@ -148,7 +149,7 @@
 }
 };
 }
-
+
 public Command createCommand(final String name)
 throws NoSuchCommandException, Exception
 {
@@ -383,7 +384,7 @@

 out.println("A JMX client to 'twiddle' with a remote JBoss server.");
 out.println();
-      out.println("usage: " + PROGRAM_NAME + " [options] <command> [command_arguments]");
+      out.println("usage: [echo <password> | ] " + PROGRAM_NAME + " [options] <command> [command_arguments]");
 out.println();
 out.println("options:");
 out.println("    -h, --help                Show this help message");
@@ -397,6 +398,10 @@
 out.println("    -u, --user=<name>         Specify the username for authentication");
 out.println("    -p, --password=<name>     Specify the password for authentication");
 out.println("    -q, --quiet               Be somewhat more quiet");
+      out.println();
+      out.println("A password should be passed in by echoing it and piping it to the command. If you");
+      out.println("use the -p (--password) option your password may be visible in clear text in a ");
+      out.println("process listing such as `ps -ef`.");
 out.flush();
 }

@@ -421,6 +426,28 @@
 Getopt getopt = new Getopt(PROGRAM_NAME, args, sopts, lopts);
 int code;

+        /* Get standard in if it's there - assume it's a password. This is to allow a password to be passed and
+         * prevent it showing in a process listing (e.g. ps -ef in Unix). The -p argument will be ignored if
+         * the password is passed through Standard In.
+         */
+        boolean passwordRetrievedFromStdIn = false;
+        if (System.in.available() > 0) {
+            InputStreamReader inp = new InputStreamReader(System.in);
+            BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(inp);
+            String stdin = br.readLine();
+
+            if (stdin != null &amp;&amp; stdin.trim().length() > 0) {
+                String password = stdin.trim();
+                SecurityAssociation.setCredential(password);
+
+                passwordRetrievedFromStdIn = true;
+
+                if (log.isDebugEnabled()) {
+                    log.debug("Password retrieved from standard in. Ignoring -p argument.");
+                }
+            }
+        }
+
 PROCESS_ARGUMENTS:

 while ((code = getopt.getopt()) != -1)
@@ -531,8 +558,13 @@
 SecurityAssociation.setPrincipal(new SimplePrincipal(username));
 break;
 case 'p':
-                 String password = getopt.getOptarg();
-                 SecurityAssociation.setCredential(password);
+                  if (!passwordRetrievedFromStdIn) {
+                     String password = getopt.getOptarg();
+                     SecurityAssociation.setCredential(password);
+
+                     log.warn("Password retrieved from -p argument. Your password may be visible in cleartext in a process listing during execution. " +
+                             "Consider using Standard In to enter the password instead (i.e. echo \"password\" | twiddle ...)");
+                  }
 break;

 // Enable quiet operations

 light="true"

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Burlington is known as the mecca of the Northeast for aspiring jam bands and hopeful musicians, and with big names such as Phish and Grace Potter and the Nocturnals calling Burlington home, musicians in Vermont’s Queen City have big shoes to fill.

Twiddle, a young quartet hailing from the hills of Hubbardton, Vt, are stepping up their musical game and have been giving Burlington music fans a much needed dose of high energy live shows and intricate grooving music.

The band has been rocking out in the Burlington area for over three years and they call their unique musical style is a blend of progressive rock, funk, reggae, jazz, Latin and classical elements.

“During a Twiddle show every person in the audience is on their feet and having a great time,” said Jennifer Zalkin, a UVM senior. “It is evident that they are skilled musicians with tons of energy and unique style that keeps us coming back for more.”

Started by singer/guitarist Mihali Savoulidis and keyboardist Ryan Dempsey in June of 2004, Twiddle has been writing songs and performing across New England along with drummer Brook Jordan and bassist Zdenek Gubb.

As the son of UVM’s very own Dr. Stephen Dempsey, Associate Professor in The School of Business Administration, Ryan Dempsey and his fellow band mates have performed several times on the UVM campus and have played in front of hundreds of people while headlining in the Higher Ground Ballroom.

“I like the fact that there is a lot of different types of music in Burlington,” said lead singer and guitarist Savoulidis. “It seems like the city is constantly searching for a new sound which is a breath of fresh air in a really formulated over produced popular music scene.”

Citing bands such as Umphrey’s McGee, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones and Phish as some of their greatest musical influences, Twiddle has played in venues across Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Maine, and even in the heart of New York City.

Their first CD, “Queen City Live”, features original music recorded at live venues throughout Vermont and their full-length studio debut, “Natural Evolution of Consciousness” was released in 2007. Currently they are gearing up for a busy summer where they will be playing at bars, clubs, restaurants, and outdoor festivals all over New England.

“There are so many different people you can connect with from so many different backgrounds in Burlington and there’s always something going on, especially when it comes to music,” says Jordan, the drumming phenom who was born and raised in Rutland. “I’m just really grateful and excited that we’ve been accepted in some part of the Burlington music scene and get to play places like the Higher Ground Ballroom.”

Twiddle will be headlining in the Higher Ground Ballroom on April 25, 2009. For tickets and more information on the band, visit their MySpace page.

Clip from Twiddle’s most recent performance at Higher Ground

www.go-ask-alex.com

The economy,i guess, is the same. After stimulus, it will fall again, and tumble and and fall again, and finally hit the bottom. i believe another great tumble is coming after the stimuluses.

Obama is busy tuning the US economy.

let's do the stimulus, altogether ,now

This week(2Mar ~6Mar), there’s a big tumble, citigroup shares dropped like lead, today. It is natural for share holders to dash for it, after a long and risky wait. The question now is: Do you have some more stimulus monies. The banks and companies are like shouting: All stimulus monies, welcome! Give us more! We try not to fire more employees. The people shouted: Help us! But the people were given peanuts. Give to the banks and companies and watch the monies vapourised or help the people who in turn spend and help boost the economy.