WEAKNOTES.
Greetings! My name is Wilson. I was born in 2026 at the age of 38.
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I want to write weeknotes. They feel like a good way to flex my writing muscles between bigger projects. Weeknotes also offer a platform to reflect and express myself in a sincere, semi-public way that makes me physically cringe. If I can get past my self-consciousness, I might be able to push forward in other areas where my confidence sucks (writing and generally). Plus, this exercise serves the most important purpose of all: filling my shiny new blog with glorified lorem ipsum.
But as much as I’d love to copy the format wholesale, my life is incredibly monotonous. I have a civil service job I can’t – nor particularly care to – talk about, paired with a near two-hour daily commute. Then there’s the usual upkeep of being an adult, and I go to the gym multiple times a week for mental health/vanity reasons. By the end of each day, I’m too tired to do anything beyond taking a bath. Commit to posting every week and the format would die almost instantly of boredom.
So instead, I’ll write ad hoc until I reach around 750 words – maybe fewer should I include a pretty photo – hit publish, and see if I can sustain this for more than three editions. Who knows? I could look back at these entries one day and discover I was actually a very interesting person (spoiler: lol, no).
Hence the name: Weaknotes. Hope you enjoy. Like and subscribe, etc.
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I took part in a surprise extreme sport on Sunday. Adrenaline coursed through my veins as I loaded the washing machine, while a massive bastard of a wasp I’d just sprayed writhed near the detergent and fabric conditioner bottles – stinger raised, intent on bringing me down with it. I never saw the corpse afterwards, which means the wasp is alive and ready to exact revenge the next time I use the downstairs toilet.
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A lovely afternoon walk beneath the cherry blossom trees.
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Like any cool bro who’s not a nerd, I sat in a multinational coffee shop idly searching for domain names on Porkbun. My sudden “oohhhh” and shuffles of genuine excitement got at least a side-eye from the people at the table opposite.
In case you haven’t noticed: I found that not only was wilson.blog available, it was on sale for $3.60. Yoink! Someone has massively screwed up by failing to renew it, because even though the sock and tennis racket manufacturer isn’t exactly clamouring to enter the antiquated text-based communication game, wilson-dot-whatever domains often sell for thousands of dollars. I mean, I'm not convinced that .beauty is a real suffix and yet the registrars want $2183.84 a year for it.
And here we are. Although, given the quality of my ‘content’, wilson.blog will probably be worth $0.04 when I’m done with it.
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My partner and I belatedly went to watch Super Mario Galaxy – sorry, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie™. We had a fun ride with the first one, which caught more flak than it deserved for being a kids’ film aimed at kids.
This, however, was shite. Easily my worst cinema experience since that horror film about the haunted swimming pool.
It jumps straight into a loud, colourful blur without reintroducing or easing the audience into the chaotic world — there's another princess, Mario and Luigi are driving dirt bikes in the desert, Yoshi’s here now, and let's-a go, I guess. What follows is ninety minutes of boring, self-referential action-platforming with the occasional cutscene spliced in. The jokes are missing, leaning heavily on the audience's deep knowledge of Nintendo’s IP (R.O.B. and Mr Game & Watch references for the young 'uns). I couldn’t tell you a single thing about the plot either, other than Bowser and his Scrappy-Doo child having a planet for some reason.
Strictly for fans of the ‘franchise’, then? Giving brands a pass when it comes to critiquing films never sits right with me. Strip away the Super Mario-ness of it all and what’s left? Turn Mario the plumber into Dave the electrician, swap Yoshi for Bubsy 3D, and replace Jack Black with, uh, Jack Black. The answer: nothing. For anybody going in cold, this must be as incoherent as the Minecraft movie – sorry, A Minecraft Movie™ – was to me. Cinematic ADHD. A kids’ film aimed at iPad kids.
(By the way, shout-out to my longtime friend Van for his valiant attempt at Mariosplaining to Mark Kermode.)
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And that’s 750+ words... in less than a week. Hmmmm. Ordinarily, I won’t pad it out with so much Pompidou regarding the inner workings of Weaknotes itself. The struggle for stuff to write about begins now.