firecat

First things first: Benedict Cumberbatch alert! He plays Smiley's protegé in the movie. So now he has played the super-detective (in the BBC Sherlock) and the sidekick, with equal aplomb.

I got very confused while watching this movie, even though I've read the John le Carré book it's based on. It has been a long time since I read the book, but I was sitting there thinking "I'm just not cut out for watching twisty movies any more." (It didn't help that I watched it in the theaters with no subtitles, and I've lost what little facility I had with hearing softly spoken dialogue, especially in non-American accents.)

So for me the movie was as if someone had taken the book, cut it up into scenes, put the scenes in a hat, and picked out a few of them at random to film them. They were beautifully, lovingly filmed. So it was actually as if the book were cut into scenes and then haikus were written out of the scenes, and then the haikus were filmed.

Afterward, I saw Roger Ebert's review, and he said, "the screenplay...is not a model of clarity. I confess I was confused some of the time and lost at other times....perhaps...I don't have a mind suitable for espionage." So if he couldn't follow the story either, then I guess I don't have to feel bad. I might re-read the books and then re-watch the movie to see if it makes more sense.

It was nice to see Oldman play someone other than a sociopath. Although I have to say he went as far as he could toward making Smiley sociopath-like.

( tiny spoiler. also, possible spoilers in comments )

Via moominmuppet

"Mortgage defaults are causing health problems in people over 50" by Annalee Newitz

Excerpt:

The study was led by University of Maryland epidemiologist Dawn E. Alley, who said:

More than a quarter of people in mortgage default or foreclosure are over 50. For an older person with chronic conditions like diabetes or hypertension, the types of health problems we saw are short term consequences of falling behind on a mortgage that could have long-run implications for that person's health.

...
While this information may seem like common sense, this study is one of the only examples where such "common sense" has actually been confirmed scientifically.

Well, I'm glad research like this sometimes sees the light of day.

Original study

If you're maybe noticing that you're older than you used to be, and are feeling sad/angry/confused/worried/frustrated that you haven't accomplished as much as you/other people in your present or past/annoyingly critical voices inside your head think you should have, and if you're maybe feeling something like "I'm not a real grownup like everyone else," and if you're maybe also feeling sad/angry/confused/worried/frustrated that your body isn't working the way it used to, and you're maybe thinking, "if that's true then how am I going to DO all those accomplishments that I/other people/voices in my head think I ought or want to do?", and maybe you're also wondering how are you going to dig out from under the accumulation of habit and procrastination and self-doubt to some sense of satisfaction in your life again, then post this same sentence in your journal.

Friends keep saying stuff like that where I can see it, and I've been feeling it for a while now too. One said it really well in a friends-locked post:

It's been hard for the last some-odd months, with my age catching up to me, not to feel that I've been a continual failure in school, work, and my personal life. ...

I've been trying so hard to hide from my friends -- most of them not very close, even if they were before -- the fact that I'm not in their league in any sense of the word. ...

Come to think of it, I don't do yard work because I'm afraid of being looked at/judged by passersby. I don't do artwork because I'm afraid of ill-judgment and meaningless or worthless praise. This has gotten as bad as it ever was in the worst years of my adolescence. Worse, because I don't have the energy or the twenty years ahead of me to think I have plenty of time yet to pull myself out of it.

It was a revelation to read this, especially the part about "as bad as it ever was in the worst years of my adolescence," because that's exactly what bugs me about the similar feelings I have—"WTF? I thought I was DONE with these feelings of self-consciousness. No one told me they would come back, dammit! I thought 'mid-life crisis' just meant you went out and got your virtual red sports car and had done with it."

When a whole bunch of my friends and acquaintances are having similar uncomfortable feelings, and especially when each one is having these feelings privately and feeling shame about it because it seems like no one else has them, I ask myself whether there's some kind of cultural pressure going on, and I ask myself whether maybe we would do better examining these tendencies and pressures together, so we can figure out where we stand, and which of the beliefs and tendencies to embrace, and which to say pbtpbtpbtpbt!!!! to.

I wonder how that could be accomplished.

Do you have those feelings? Could you use a way to talk about those feelings with other folks who struggle with them?