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I've always felt that within the lyrics to the song, "Outside In," Poster Children has an excellent definition for what directly leads to the phenomenon of burnout.

"Trade the future for a payment
On a suitable replacement
For everything you've lost along the way."

Eventually, it begins to feel more automatic to simply stop caring about what you're not doing instead of working and otherwise engaging in preparation of the acquisition of things like physical possessions or the proposition of stability, which is sadly often just a cycle that feeds itself. The burnout comes when your brain realizes that life has been passing you by while you've been instead focusing on things that are really supposed to be enabling you to live it.

The only things worth a crap in Urbana-Champaign are the university...

Given that the cities are so utterly dominated by the size and population of the University, that's not really saying much. Almost (but not quite) like saying that the only thing worth a crap on Manhattan island is New York City.

And, anyway, during the years I lived there, '90-'96, I found plenty of off-campus things to appreciate: The Blind Pig; the Courier Cafe; Espresso Royale on Oregon; several great local bands including Poster Children, The Moon Seven Times and The Suede Chain; Bikeworks bicycle shop; the New Art Theatre; WEFT community radio, and many others.

I'll give you that it's not the most exciting place on earth by a long shot, but there's a lot to do if you have any immagination at all, and compared to the other rail-side corn depots on the line to Chicago, it's a real oasis.

(In addition to not being as slow as dirt, I mean.)

One of the obvious and natural things for a site like this is to try and link people together via shared interests, quirks, ideals, memberships, and so on.

Friendster lets you list these things, but has a terrible search interface -- if you like the band Poster Children, you can say so, but then trying to find other people with the same interet will reveal everyone who mentions either "poster" or "children". Basically, broken.

People try to work around this by creating fake "people" for abstract ideas -- there's a whole article about it at Salon. But the Friendster site people, instead of capitalizing on this, decided t hat this "subversion" is a plague trying to destroy their system. And, this work-around does make the social network part less useful -- having no way of distinguishing links between real people from those via Mickey Mouse is a problem.

Instead of trying to kick every abstract concept, cartoon character, university mascot, and geek web site logo off of the network, these things should be *encouaged*, but defined as separate from real people. It's both more fun *and* more useful. And it's exactly what Orkut does -- in addition to your own entry, anyone can create a "Community", and join as many such communities as they like.

So, Orkut is cooler because they have this feature -- but even more because they understand *why* to have it.

If you don't like the RIAA, don't buy their stuff. There are a lot of really great bands on independent labels because of the economics of the music biz. They know they can make just as much or more money (and retain far more creative control) by being on a small label and touring. Shopping may not be quite as convenient because their music is often not carried by the big chain stores. It's worth the extra effort though because, unlike most of what the major labels put out, these bands don't suck.

Some great bands on indie labels include:
Sarge
All Natural Lemon & Lime Flavors
Sarah Shannon (ex-singer from Velocity Girl)
The Dismemberment Plan
Future Loop Foundation
Helium
The Poster Children
Anna Waronker (former singer for That Dog)
Rainer Maria
Glade
The Jeyds

Some online places to shop for indie music include:
Insound.com
Parasol Records
Restless Records (Golden Palominos, They Might Be Giants, Flaming Lips, etc.)
Matador Records (Helium, Pizzicato Five, Bettie Serveert, etc.)
FuturePopShop.com

More than that, there are labels that manage to put out multiple albums every year, pay the artists higher royalties, and still make a buck. Touch & Go's royalty rate is around 50%; I believe that of DeSoto and Dischord sits at around 40%. The entire feast-famine business model of the major labels is essentially flawed; a band on an independent label--or making professional-quality music themselves, a la the Poster Children--and touring frequently (but without putting out a video or sinking hundreds of thousands of dollars into studio time) can make a living where most bands playing the majors' game can't. It's that simple. Steve Albini broke down the numbers in an essay for The Baffler, and for all his personality issues, I'm inclined to trust his numbers.
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Don't call me I won't pick up the phone
Don't try knocking I won't answer the door

Apartment of my dreams, surrounded by machines
This room's got everything I need

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