Sooo… the weekend. My sister started an Amazon prime trial a few days ago, so we have been watching a few things.

Firstly: Good Omens. I read the book years ago. I don’t remember much about it other than I really enjoyed it. Having watched the first two episodes, little of the story has come back to me, but it’s very well done. I was a bit hesitant because I didn’t feel the Discworld TV adaptations ever really captured the magic of Terry Pratchett, but Good Omens has the advantage of being a standalone book without a vast amount of lore that needs to be somehow translated to the screen.

Secondly: The Expanse season 4 episode 1: Ooh ooh ooh. I really, really loved the first three seasons of Expanse. I watched them around this time last year, when my world was an extremely dark place, and a few of those memories have resurfaced, unsurprisingly, but OK… It completely gripped me and I felt it was extremely well done. It reminded me a lot of Babylon 5 in the quality of the writing. There’s a lot going on and the characters are complex and interesting.

The first episode of S4 is a bit bewildering, but so was S1 and I’m sure it’s laying a lot of groundwork that will be rewarded later. I am a bit concerned some of the characters will lose depth though – Amos and Avasarala specifically – in the same way that Tilly in Star Trek Discovery S2 became a bit of a parody of Tilly from S1. We shall see.

In related news, I was stoked a few days ago when they released the full version of the Belter version of Highway Star (which played during the slingshot scene in S2, or was it S3?). The fact they re-did the lyrics in Belter pidgin is fascinating, though it’s a contrast against the very faithful instrumentation. That’s even a single coil pick up on the guitar, isn’t it?

Thirdly: The Death of Stalin. This is a black comedy. With the emphasis on the black part. This is one of those films I watch and I think “why am I watching this?”. Then I get to the end and think “why did I watch that?”. I didn’t enjoy it. It’s hard to articulate why, but I think it comes down to it being two things in one. Firstly it’s an absurd comedy presented as being serious. Airplane with murderous communists, if you like. Secondly, it’s quite an intense political drama. It doesn’t work for me, because the intensity of the politics is so high that it makes the absurdity seem in poor taste, and the political drama is hard to take seriously when it’s offset against such absurdity. A lot of people liked it though. It seems to be a cult thing. But I think it’s one of the worst films I’ve watched start to finish.

Running: Sadly, my abs are still causing me trouble. I don’t get it. It seems very volatile. I was doing OK this past week, but I’m feeling it today after a very gentle run. I sneezed during the run a few times and oh my god I felt that. I got home and did some bicycles; the first set was quite uncomfortable, but the second set was fine. Explain that.

I think I’ll just have to take some time off, but how effective that will be I’m not sure – it got worse when I started my new job and didn’t run for a week (the muscles tightened up, probably), so it’s hard to know what I should be doing. Maybe I’ll dust off the free weights and start doing some squats and stuff again. I think I must have some kind of muscle imbalance and the compound exercises should sort that out, hopefully.

I am at the doctor on Christmas eve so if it’s still causing me trouble I will mention it.