La Vie En Rose by Grace Jones

I heard this on the radio yesterday morning and it gave me the most wonderful earworm all day long. If you would like to be exposed to a most inspiring cognitive contagion from the amazing 1970s just click on the "Go" button. 

From the point of view of a synaesthete and a person who studies synaesthesia I find two things about this music clip notable. The word "rose" in French might mean "pink" or "magenta", and the fashion worn by Jones in two appearances singing this song match that kind of colour, but the clothes certainly don't match the colour of the singing, which to my mind is saturated red, with the soaring parts of the music becoming yellow. The other thing I find interesting is the way Jones' arms go up as the pitch of her singing goes up, a definitely cross-modal or perhaps synaesthetic mode of artistic expression in which location equals musical pitch. 

Lili's thought of the day

It's been a long time since I read document as boring as your Linkedin profile. 

Lili's advice of the day

Comments are welcome but they might take a while to get thru the moderation process.

Lili's concern of the day

Am I the only person left wondering where the corrupt end of science ends and the real stuff begins?

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ivory-tower-phony-sex-lies-fraud-alleged-w-va-university-n199491

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22329864.100-its-time-to-criminalise-serious-scientific-misconduct.html?full=true&print=true#.VBmClPmSx8F

https://pubpeer.com/

http://retractionwatch.com/

It's like staring at a train smash; it's not a pretty sight, but it's impossible to resist the force of curiosity.

Of course, the best lies are the ones that reveal the truth

I guess it should come as no surprise to see Helen Dale becoming even more involved with Australian politics. I wrote about Dale as one of the fascinating Australians in one of my lists of famous people, lists which I no longer bother to keep up-to-date. She might never live down her fame in Australia from the 1990s as the literary hoaxer who made the Australian literary establishment look like the bunch of dicks that they always were, but I would argue that other Australians have also had a lend of the world of arts and letters, but those other fakers never got flayed alive in the town square. 

I've read that Paul Fenech, Australia's king of low-brow comedy television and film came in as the winner of the short film competition Tropfest one year, the film submitted under a name that would suggest that he was a lady of Jewish heritage rather than a Maltese-Indigenous Australian man with a subversive sense of humour. This stunt was reportedly pulled just a year or so after the "Demidenko Affair" but folks don't hate Fenech, in fact he's very popular in some parts. I put that down to sexism. Women aren't allowed to pull the wool or have a lend, because women are expected to occupy the moral high ground, in the most whiny and humorless manner possible.

And who would not agree that there is more than a passing resemblance between the deception pulled-off against Australia's literary crowd by the late author Elizabeth Jolley, and the curious incident of the platinum blonde in the embroidered peasant blouse? Jolley and husband were pillars of the world of books and the bookish in Perth in the 1980s. National Living Treasure Jolley was a mentor to the iconic Western Australian novelist Tim Winton. Jolley had such a lot to answer for, but in my mind it doesn't get too much lower than writing a letter impersonating the abandoned daughter of one's husband to keep alive a prolonged and odious deception among family. Anyone who would dream of such a trick is certainly a different breed of human being than the apologetic dill that was Jolley's persona, both as a writer and a public figure. Turns out Jolley was a Living National Lie but there was no big cuffuffle, because her real story didn't break while the herd still held her close to their hearts. Out of Jolley and Dale/Demidenko, who was the biggest liar, I ask you? A genuinely odd Aussie lass who wrote a novel from a politically unpopular POV while pretending to be an ethnic, or a first class creep, liar and home-wrecker in private affairs playing the part of a lovably unfashionable borderline-autistic creature of the keyboard to an audience of wine-pickled dickwits?

Lili's tip of the day

If you are reading this post in Sydney at the time of publication you only have to wait a half an hour to view a creepy old Val Lewton movie on ABC television. And what are you doing up at this hour? 

Lili's commonsense thought of the day

The very first question that they should ask in any career guidance questionnaire is "Do you fall to pieces at the sight of blood?". And question number two should probably be "Do you generally find people irritating?". 

Lili's older and wiser thought of the day

I volunteered for that crowd for months, and the communication I got from them was housekeeping stuff to do with shifts and asking extra favours. Then I parted with some money to pay online for someone else's ticket to one of their events, and now my inbox is regularly graced with chatty newsletters from the CEO, in which he wishes to convey how much management value their people above all else. 

Lili's sad thought for the day

They've left another young asylum-seeker to die. Another man in his twenties, his whole life ahead of him, lost his life in an entirely preventable and foreseeable chain of events, the result of imprisonment at the infamous Manus Island detention centre. Both young men were in the custody of the Australian federal government/the Abbott Government/Team Australia, call it what you will. Neither had committed any crime. They sought refuge. Instead the worst possible thing happened, and Australia is to blame. If you don't do anything to change things, this shit is just going to keep on happening over and over again. Do you give a damn?