electronic music family tree

check it out: ishkur's guide to electronic music. i first looked at this a couple of years ago, as i was trying to make sense of electronic music nomenclature. this morning, glaucon said something about wanting to wiki electronic music to help him figure out various aspects of the nomenclature, and it reminded me of this site. it was a bitch to find it again (i didn't remember the name "ishkur"), so i'm posting the link here. i think i'm going to add it to my links column too, just for ease of access.

anyway, the guide takes the form of a tree showing relationships between and among various sets and subsets of electronic music genres. it's amazingly comprehensive--a tangled network of nomenclatures and relationships. you click on the name of whatever type of music you want to know about, and information comes up in a little window while a representative sample of that type plays in the background. that's true for most of the types, anyway--i haven't by any means investigated them all. by way of example, the "goth" bit plays a sisters of mercy song. you might not agree with the particular sample chosen to represent a type of music, but you have to admit...whoever put this site together put an astounding degree of thought and work into it.

anatomy

yeah, so i went to see "bodies...the exhibition" in downtown seattle yesterday. i was in there for over 3 hours, and i can't believe the sheer quantity of notes i generated--lots! unfortunately, they don't allow photography of any kind, so i had to write down, verbatim, all of the bits of textual apparatus i wanted to remember and to be able to quote. in addition, i jotted down descriptions of the various displays in the exhibit (especially the full-body specimens), making note of what they emphasized (and in a couple of cases what they left out); the mood, the lighting, etc. i also purchased one of their catalogs, because it has photographs of many of the specimens that were on display (and a few that weren't), and is arranged according to a similar logic as the exhibition. i wish it contained the same textual apparatus, but it doesn't appear to. obviously it has a lot more text than the exhibition itself, but i was hoping for some replication of the various placards and signs, etc.

i guess i should explain a little... the first chapter of my dissertation will focus partly on this exhibition, so i had to go see it, even though i have political reservations about it (i don't want to go into it here, but would happily explain via email if you'd like). i tried to get a press pass, but nobody would return my calls or emails, and i was worried about missing it, so...i shelled out the $26.50 for a ticket. (re: missing it--the exhibition is supposed to end on december 31st, but i have seen indications that they might be extending their seattle stay until april; nevertheless, i didn't want to risk being wrong about that.)

(shame)

after seeing the picture of betty ford that's hitting all of the front pages, her face crushed with grief, i feel like an absolute heel, a heartless ass for saying anything even remotely humorous about gerald ford.

god. i can't remember the last time i saw such naked pain reflected on a human face. politics aside, my heart goes out to betty. she obviously loved jerry. now she's facing an aspect of old age that punches me in the stomach whenever i think about it: carrying on without one's lifelong partner.

(an odd side note: my best friend when i was a little kid, who grew up in the house across the street from mine--her parents were also named betty and jerry. they are both deceased now.)