This is your captain, Jason Tessellation.

1. I got my hair cut today, and somehow that inspired me to start a blog.* I think it has something to do with the fresh-startiness of walking out of the salon into the sunlight and feeling the breeze on my shorn and shaven neck. I always forget that my customary curly bob starts out its life looking all sharp and stylised and symmetrical. My fringe, which by the end of its run hangs down into my eyes, gets razored back into something wee and indie. The curls get blown into a Miranda July bowl. No doubt looking uncharacteristically hipsterish has contributed somewhat to the blog-starting – we’ll see where it ends up when I go back to looking like my usual demented art-teacher self.

2. We have an American staying at our house at the moment, and he described hanging out at Federation Square yesterday in the 30-something-degree heat as “feeling like an ant under a magnifying glass”. That is exactly how it felt.

3. I have been a tad obsessed with this recently, and find myself singing it under my breath as I do the dishes. I think I am a little bit warped. "He'll save the children, but not the British children..."

4. I've spent the last week in full-on editing mode, so much so that just getting through 1-3 has felt slightly weird. I suppose one of the reasons to start a web log, as the kids call it, is to just get into the habit of writing every day, a habit which, like flossing and watching Neighbours, I embrace passionately but only periodically. Since I've fallen into the daily editing habit, my inner-writer and my inner-editor are at inner-war with each other. It makes writing light, off-the-cuff comments fiendishly difficult, as every word is scrutinised and revised and despised and terrorised... sorry, scrutinised and revised.

5. As you may have guessed, Jason Tessellation is not my real name.

6. Nor is it my 'blog name'.

7. Huh.

8. I had a whole big spiel here about privacy, MySpazz and the changing nature of media consumption and production, but I got off my high-horse and deleted it. The only relevent bit was that I don't know yet whether it's a violation of someone's privacy to write about them without their knowledge in a public forum. Do the rules change if you use a fake name? How much can people and their lives become public property if you only know them in a private realm?** I don't know whether I want to advertise the fact that I now have A BLOG!!!1! by going up to people and asking, "hey, would you feel violated if I wrote about you without your consent? How about violated in a good way?"

9. Jesus, I was going to try to avoid the big "I'm feeling a bit self-reflexive about starting a blog, so I think I'll write about how a blog is basically a self-reflexive organism anyway" bit. Too bad... I guess I'll just have to leave off here before I get any more convoluted and go and drink some gin.

10. And so it was.




*On thinking about it, there were a few other factors, such as the fact that I have blogged before and enjoyed it. I've been putting off returning to the blogosphere mainly because I feel as though I need to have something wildly interesting happening in my life to justify taking up other people's time and the surely-infinite metaphorical real estate of the internet. But I was lying awake at three this morning, listening to the rain, and I realised that it would be a pity if nothing interesting ever happened in my life and then where would I be and I need to make my own fun etc. I also realised that insomnia is a not uncommon occurance in my life and having something to do in the wee hours of a sleepless morn would be rather a good thing.

**This sounds a bit dirty and fantasy-novel-esque but I'm sure you see what I am getting at.