the mechanical bride

When I got back from Krakow I had just finished reading the Curtis White book I've already gone on about in a previous post.  He mentioned a few books a number of times, so much so that I wondered if it wasn't some kind of subliminal advertising. If that was indeed the case it appears to have worked, for I ordered the complete poetry and prose writings of Wallace Stevens, Viktor Shlovski's Zoo, or Letters Not About Love, and Herbert Marshall McLuhan's The Mechanical Bride as soon as I got home.  Wallace Stevens arrived first, but I haven't had a look through it yet, and McLuhan's sinister looking book arrived in the office this morning. I can't wait to take a closer look, especially after reading the preface waiting in line to get my morning coffee. Now here's a chap who isn't afraid to pull a few punches! Check out the first paragraph: 

Ours is the first age in which many thousands of the best-trained individual minds have made it a full-time business to get inside the collective public mind. To get inside in order to manipulate, exploit, control is the object now. And to generate heat not light is the intention. To keep everybody in the helpless state engendered by prolonged mental rutting is the effect of many ads and much entertainment alike.

Ouch. Love it. Will report back once I've finished reading it.

Until then, I leave you with a gorgeous little track. I'm a big fan of Foals (and not afraid to say so!). They're coming out with a new album in May and have released a sneak peak of their new single, Spanish Sahara. I'm not super keen on the official version, but the Mount Kimbie Remix is aural bliss.