foggies

you know, i could've sworn i kept a longer list somewhere but i can't find it

what is the functional difference between me straight-up media journaling by hand versus me writing these entries that literally not a single human soul reads? clickable links i suppose. for posterity.

books

spent: a comic novel by alison bechdel — 4/5
a satire on old-wealthy-people queer culture set in the tail end of the pandemic. sitcom-sharp, incredible artistic details, so satirical that it's serious that it's satirical. never thought i'd read a graphic novel plot B about three semi-retirees getting into polyamory, but i should have expected nothing less from The alison bechdel. i shall purchase this book one day

television

severance season 2 — 3.5/5
i didn't like it as much as the first season but not for the reason you'd think. the first season is intriguing but in large swaths it is style over substance. my hot take is that there is nothing wrong with style over substance in today's bar-in-hell media landscape. it's when a show introduces too many complex stories while attempting to maintain their style (which takes so much time away from the plot!!!) that the cracks form. many bottle episodes i didn't really like. adam scott's outie got so nasty at the end - i am lowkey rooting AGAINST you, evil mark scout! as an original daisy johnson megafan who literally watched aos season 3 in live time as each episode aired, i am overjoyed to see dichen lachman play a supporting character in her billionth scifi tv series

girls season 3? - 4/5
i stopped watching this when my brother left my new city to go home, but while he was here, hbo girls was so fun. so ahead of its time, though if it were made today all of the creators would be crucified by the end of the pilot episode. i had many interesting thoughts in posterity about how twenty-something women in the early 2010s (at least as portrayed in this show) were moderately accountable about their lives and how, in some ways, the culture shifted and people are no longer striving to be personally responsible for the same things. idk call me a boomer call me a bootlicker and traitor to my generation. a generation. you know what i mean

movies

i'm moving away from just linking my letterboxd. i am irritated by the idea of pasting verbatim the word vomit i write on that website onto this log, which i'm pretending adheres to some minimal curatorical standard. so i'm just going to leave the ratings.
in july, i saw:
the odyssey — 4/5
hadestown proshot - 5/5
wolfs - 3/5
avatar aang: the last airbender - 3/5

podcast episodes

i swear i listened to so many more eps that were very interesting but i don't know where that list went. in addition to the episodes recommended in the previous post:
planet money:
- what makes a toy go viral — an interview with the guy behind the dumpling squishy toys at five below, which have taken middle schools all around the world by storm

oops

- dana robby arguing scene is the emmy scene i'm pretty sure
- whitaker santos scene really really fun it's like lifted from ten years of found family tumblr dynamics
- santos is the realest character of the season for me actually i've really come around
- javadi probably second #d4moment
- you know i'm on pitttwt but i still don't agree with how hard young people on twitter are dunking on this season. this kind of tension and build-up is gold + the plotlines are thought through so thoroughly and i think people keep criticizing characters for being biased as if the writers didn't intentionally write them like that i don't know something something decline in media literacy... dude i don't care i am all in on this show
- i know i literally just criticized the show like two posts back which is an opinion i still stand behind but i think we all just need to ride the season out
- JOHN SHEN IS BACK BABY! literally right as joy kwon leaves ugh can we really only have one east asian at a time

i don't know i feel like mental health wise i'm pretty much in the same state as those guys in the pitt

- the craziest part of this whole thing is that they just have all the forms ready
- THAT is a FAX MACHINE
- there was one thing that i wanted to do as a dental student under supervision that's probably not going to happen and it was to give a trigger point injection. it's okay i will do CE in a few more years. i need a tp injection myself, maybe should get it at my school while i still can
- OGILVIE LMFAO i can't even hate him because he is kind of the stand-in for a regular person in this show
- mohan's face card
- also mohan's face
- mohan's character has kind of changed since the first season. i think she treats people with kid gloves on a little too hard
- they're intentionally making abbot do the pinky finger down the throat thing right. i know you. you nasty writers
- camerawork here reminds me of some of the pittfest scenes where everybody was out in the open
- i have been enjoying this extended bit about the rape kit. i'm sure their intentions are to educate and to encourage more women to take the kit, and i'm really truly so glad #wokeshow
- another oral injury???
- gerran howell is actually so mouse boy cute :3
- getting curious about the history of medical devices. wish i had someone i could talk to who works in this field, like a friend or cousin or something. oh wait
- another oral thing wow they should employ a dentist in the OR or something. not that i could repair a tongue lac. hey why don't i know how to repair a tongue lac
- i feel like every kingdon fic on ao3 (pour one out) has cassie being langdon's AA sponsor or something. i genuinely think at least one scriptwriter read the most-kudos'ed pitt fics and felt inspired. don't know how i feel about any of that, feels like an invasion of an unspoken covenant but hey it's 2026 and the internet is still, at the moment, public
- OHHHHH THE OGILVIE HAND MOTION
- NIKOLSKY SIGN MENTIONED
- wait teehee dr. ellis that was kind of hot
- is this the end of abbot's feature this season then? goodbye shawn hatosy your twitter presence was fun for like three weeks
- GERIATRICS???? GET OUTTA THERE LOL also "there are a lot of openings. it might be your best shot" is sooooooooooooo. oh my god that would make me spin tf out

dental school graduation updates. i am kind of past the point of crashing out. things are going. slowly but finally going. had about four weeks of real instability there. i hope my group leader sees that i've been making a lot of effort to give away my phase ii cases and treats me nicely because of it. lots of things to do, many many things to do. i think i will always live a bit regretfully but maybe that's just because there isn't enough time in the day. but maybe that's an excuse as well

boots!

was not able to liveblog this one because i was at the gym

highlights:
- extraordinary episode. i thought maybe it was shot differently: lots of pov shots of characters looking at each other across the clinic through windows, moving shots with a gurney, chasing dana and emma as they worked around louie's body on the bed. bookending the episode with louie's death and debrief cast rather a reflective tone over a relatively drama-free (and trauma-free) plot. instead, the stories were centered around how healthcare workers deal with empathy. from al-hashimi insisting that the incarcerated man be allowed to remain to get better care, to princess apologizing for the way that santos totally dismissed the deaf patient without even saying goodbye, to dana asking perlah to take a few minutes to process louie's death, to their placing louie's hand outside of the blanket to be held, you see how many of these characters genuinely try their hardest to act with compassion in spite of the system that limits their ability to do so. will the incarcerated man live a changed life in prison after he leaves the hospital? will this bring louie back? no, but they still count. this is one of the best points that the pitt makes over and over, implicitly and explicitly.
- this is obviously a nurse-centric episode, which is a pretty creative way to divide up what would otherwise have been a contiguous and tonally homogenous season. i REALLY like how much teaching was done by the nurses to doctors and how much they were able to demonstrate their skills. i especially liked how ogilvie started kissing up to donnie — like, okay yeah actually game recognizes game and it's nice that he's not quite alex karev-ing his way through this ED. it's funny that ogilvie is known as tall whitaker when his default operating mode is all santos, zero whitaker. never see that comparison being discussed in fan spaces. (why is that?) (don't answer)
- at this point in the season, i must remark that it seems like the bigger emotional arcs involving our returning cast members do seem centered around the white male characters, especially robby and langdon (and whitaker to a slightly lesser extent). robby wants a sabbatical and langdon wants atonement; these motivations drive every interaction and conversation about them. meanwhile, the other beloved docs get one-dimensional arcs that explain only their specific mood for this specific day. santos is behind on her charting: that's why she's crabby. mel is nervous about her deposition: that's why she's distracted. mohan's going through some mommy drama: that's why her phone keeps going off (why is this even a recurring thing). javadi has a tiktok and is turning 21 soon? cassie wants to get back out there?? now, i may have grown up in 2010s tumblr, but i am not 16 anymore and no longer believe that the value of a show like this lies in the quantification of shoehorned diversity plot points. these characters are obviously three-dimensional and are written/portrayed in alignment with the first season. i wouldn't bring this up if these women actors (esp supriya, shabana, and isa) weren't constantly pushed into interviews and award shows to talk about how the pitt is the pinnacle of representation. if santos is such a wealth of personality and growth, why has she been whining about charts for four whole hours? can mohan please pick up another call from her mom? ?????
- there is a shocking lack of kingdon. i can't believe i just said that. there is a shocking lack of MEL, actually, who shows up per episode with three lines and isn't even really seen doing things in the background. who is she even treating right now other than the prison guy??? we were strung along for six episodes picking apart langdon's ringless hand, his not bringing up his wife while discussing his sons, only to have the still-married bomb dropped. bro i'm not expecting the writer's room to lean into fanservice and get mel and langdon married by the end of this season, but less mel feels really antithetical to the fandom hype. there is a legion of tiktok editors out there waiting to deploy edits that would get 1.5 million likes if mel and langdon so much as walked past each other. what are they doing?
- at least garsantos are confirmed. THANK GOD. in 2026 i will: read more pitt yuri on ao3
- rip louie i really liked you
- don't get me wrong. i still really really like the pitt

dental school updates:
- i've been going through it
- like really really going through it. like some things really really suck right now
- then i had an epiphany inside the shower as i dropped the sample size of an ouai body scrub that i've been trying to use up before i leave. these things will come. i move out of this city in three months (oh god). it's all getting done whether i like it or not. truly. what is the rush. why then do i feel like i am choking every time i open my school's ugly $1 million door?

see ya a little over a week from now

good february everybody

books:

artemis by andy weir — 3/5
nerd virgin who has never had a female friend before tries to write a book about a hot girl who owns her sexuality. at least he was kind of woke about it. i didn't think the worldbuilding made nearly as much sense as the martian... there is NO WAY there aren't more rules in a lunar colony where everybody could die if the air stopped working. idk there's a reason they're making a movie out of project hail mary instead of artemis. but it was not bad

a court of mist and fury by sarah j maas — 2/5
this book is like if a human wrote AI slop. it has some of the most confusing fantasy worldbuilding i’ve ever seen, essential plot elements revealed only through a second-time close read, character motivations with no development, consistency, or follow-through, and just… (appreciate my homage to her egregious ellipsis overuse) garbage. the macguffin is given to the main characters via a deux ex machina set-up, and then the one-dimensional character (described only with a color) who gives them this book is immediately fridged. the "twist" ending and set-up for the next novel hinge on a super anticlimactic tell-not-show reveal of what should have been a very romantic and pivotal moment that readers would've enjoyed. the power levels between these characters is extremely inconsistent — feyre’s own powers come out of absolutely nowhere and don’t make any sense at all. important things appear and disappear out of nowhere (much like AI), and the writing is SO concept-laden that it makes no fucking sense! why does feyre pause in the middle of fight sequences to come to realizations about how velaris is her home and rhysand is her mate? dude fucking get to it… i can forgive the universe and the tropes. i cannot forgive the very poor writing. why this book series is beloved is beyond me!!! it is BAD!!!!!!!

podcasts:

the strata seasons nine and ten — 3.5/5
i really really love emma sherr-ziarko's voice-acting (even though she seems to be typecast sometimes) and i was delighted to meet her hard-boiled alt-minkowski character here. i SO enjoyed the build-up from seasons five through eight — a kind of longform multi-season story that is not usually told in the audio drama i listen to — but i must agree with the redditors on r/audiodrama: the strata loses steam after it. i'm currently on season eleven and have no reason to stop listening, but i'd said the same about midnight burger after the clementine season and guess where we are? totally stalled. not very interested in the three sisters at all. curious to see if the strata continues to put rust in unlikely ganglord-busting situations where he and his ancient big metal head miraculously escape (mostly) in one piece. but i do love independently-produced audio drama, and the strata pretty much represents the best of it. good work mark r healy i appreciate you a lot

tv:

THE PITT IS BACK and i liveblog it right here every single thursday night yippee

in other news i've become a fan of formula one. i'm not sure how that happened. obviously i am getting into it through an rpf lens.

here is a first-month-fan summary:

drivers i like: piastri, russell, albon
ships that feel compelling: galex, geoscar, carlando, carcar
things with bad vibes: russtappen, lestappen, verstappen

and also i made a new tumblr

will i ever finish my interview travelogue on my irl substack? only time will tell

aaaand we're back but delayed because i had to take a nausea break

- dana's "use the system" to the unhoused man vs javadi saying almost the exact same thing to the possibly unhoused woman with kids last season, to absolute opposite effects... you love to see it (i hate to see it because it makes me feel self-conscious about being like javadi)
- IS dad gonna show up? they keep bringing this question up but it feels quite obvious to me that dad IS going to show up and present the turning point of that story
- ough the shot following robby peeling back the motorcyclist's scalp...
- i JUST noticed joy's septum ring lmao the women in this show keep getting gayer and gayer
- if i were in the ER i too would flirt with mckay yes ma'am
- whitaker is about to lose another patient isn't he
- how come brain tumor guy is lucid now but wasn't before
- robby explaining each part of the CT so succinctly ugh now that's patient communication
- THE DAD! and as usual the pitt fandom was right
- robby doing the debridement on the jewish lady himself is kind of cute
- noooooo fuck oh my god asian lady
- i like the way supriya delivers her lines she seems very self-conscious that she is an actor
- do actual men who are fathers get together and discuss fatherhood like this bc they should
- whoop

friends!!! welcome to the pitt

- whitaker and javadi :) my babies :)
- guys july 4 means it’s the fourth day of samira’s fourth year !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- samira does NOT give a shit about the garcia whitaker drama
- MOHAN I AM SO SO SO SO SO SO PROUD OF YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! goat. goat of all time.
- absolutely delighted by the shots of the wounds through the safety goggles rahhhhhh
- guys i was never really a kingdon shipper the way some of you were but i am afraid that the kingdon hype is going to ruin the vibe……… which was SUBTLE. to begin with. rah come on guys
- SAMIRA SPEAKING TAMIL I LOVE YOU I LVSDFDLSKFJLDSKJF I LOVE:E YOU
- “back in jersey” oh my fucking god hahahahahahaha. oh my god samira is so me
- side note why is the east asian girl so annoying already
- WHITAKER CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT!!! guys i’m super here for the javadi/whitaker friendship + also i’m curious because doesn’t she still live with her parents here in pittsburgh lmfao
- guys i have four confirmed patients tomorrow this is kind of hyping me up
- THE ONLY THING ON MY BINGO BOARD WAS A DENTAL THING and the right call for these guys to make is to call the GPR resident. i think he’s getting an odontogenic infection that’s spreading systemically
- why are they writing in real hucklerobby please stop engaging with fanon i beg you
- bro’s got ascites how do they make an ascites prosthetic like that
- OKAY I FIGURED BUT WELCOME TO DAY FOUR OF RESIDENCY WHITAKER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! omg guys that’s gonna be me this july 4th :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D (student doctor who made a child throw up this morning)
- oh my god mel
- this confused patient that mckay is seeing… why am i getting flashbacks to my urgent care week
- SAMIRA MOHAN SMILING AT A BABY I AM IN LOVE WITH YOUUUUUUUU

hello september!!!!

i had a fun july and august. here are some things that happened:

• stayed with friends in four cities across the US, three of which i'd never really visited before
• slept in four mattress/pillow combos and still couldn't get rid of neck and back ache, so i fear a visit to the physical therapist will be necessary as soon as my new health insurance is up and running (i forgot to register until past the deadline)
• lowkey developed a totally situational new clinic crush on (once again) the only wasian man in the entire group. the last guy was engaged. this guy is like two years younger than me. #totalcougarmoment
• had literally the worst two weeks i'd ever had in clinic. incidents included having a clinical disagreement with faculty that led to a patient's restoration breaking the second he started eating that night, the same patient suddenly needing a root canal on a different tooth, not being able to numb The Same Patient on another different tooth and having to pull an extremely unconventional move to temporize an open tooth using a method we usually only use on pediatric patients, sending my patient to the emergency room due to their INSANE blood pressure, losing my partial denture case i've been working on for 13 months because they decided to get literally the only insurance plan our school doesn't accept, literally all of my crowns falling through all at the same time, probably having to find a new portfolio case due to sheer complexity. writing that down made me kind of stressed wow. WHATEVER.
• went home and accomplished absolutely nothing of academic value. happy to report that all my friends seem to be alive and well, and some of them have wedding dates now!!! fourth annual lily scout meet-up finished (salute)
• submitted all of my residency applications!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

books (all read in august):

i need you to read this by jessa maxwell — 2/5
woman with zero qualifications gets top advice column writing job at newspaper firm after her predecessor was murdered, then solves the murder with two late-middle-aged randos she picked up from a diner. reading this, i was reminded of the trailer for the film argyle (i only watched the trailer). i think i have read a great deal of good (fan)fiction where they really really trim the fat, where literally every detail matters because someone is trying to stick to a word count of exactly 5,000, and now irrelevant dialogue really bothers me. i'm sure this is ironic if you have heard me speak in real life

lies and weddings by kevin kwan — 3/5
(spoilers) realized a quarter of the way through that this is a point-for-point copy of the original crazy rich asians. if there's any one thing i didn't like about the CRA trilogy, it's that rachel turns out to also secretly be a descendant of some billionaire. the exact same thing happens to the non-rich girl-next-door here too, on an even grander scale, and unfortunately this makes up the entire climax of the story. i thought the book series was supposed to satirize the lifestyles of the ultra-rich and make fun of how money makes them lose their humanity etc etc etc, but if the only thing that legitimizes the status of the angelic mary sue regular-person stand-in character in the crazy rich world is that they are secretly a billionaire's bastard child who stands to inherit more money than five generations my family will ever see... then i don't think the message gets through... also the two most irredeemable billionspilled characters in LAW do not go through any personal growth whatsoever (one of them is lowkey forgiven through the undeserved acquisition of like a hundred million dollars; one of them straight-up dies). doesn't matter though #britishhongkongmentioned 100000/10

podcasts:

the cipher by bbc sounds — 2.5/5
intriguing podcast, but i felt that the final three episodes went WAY over the pacing and development of the first seven episodes. great voice acting, but secret societies? aliens? robots? the impending alien-robot war??? they lost the plot man idk it didn't stick the landing at all. fantastic production quality though

television:

the summer i turned pretty — 3/5
i watch this show with/for vibs and psalm and i think it's pretty amazing that we get to watch together even though we are across the continent :) i love the female gaze i love yearning for three years i love messiness!!!!!!! i think belly is too immature for conrad and conrad is too stunted for belly! i feel bad for jeremiah because all he has done is act in an age-appropriate slightly douchey manner! and i HATE laurel's acting whew

the pitt — 5/5
I CANNOT STOP WATCHING THIS SHOW. this is the most i have ever enjoyed watching a medical drama! i love love love love the stunningly well-developed and realistic characters, the depiction of how quickly personal and professional gossip is spread around in the clinic and how everybody knows everything about everyone, the rapid introduction and satisfying resolutions of a whole lot of plot points, the way they don't shy away from showing not only "acceptable" bloody medical procedures (eg. intubation, putting someone on ECMO) but also the more "private" ones (eg. miscarrying into underwear, vaginal delivery of a baby), and especially the depiction of non-romantic, respectful, near-codependent trauma-bonded collegial relationships. the diversity in this show is also unlike anything else i've ever seen; for example, i don't recall ever seeing three brown women in a room all by themselves talking about something that doesn't have to do with their culture (never have i ever could never. sorry mindy i still love you.)

also, if you know me irl, you have heard me complain 8923849238x about how my DENTAL school curriculum leans too hard on medical didactics and not hard enough on applicable dental techniques. while i still stand by this opinion (because why am i learning denture occlusion on the fly while assisting prosth residents, why am i prepping a post space unsupervised on a real person's tooth when it's the second time i've ever used a gates-glidden ever in my whole life, etc etc etc), i am astonished to find myself understanding 70% of what they're doing on this show even before they explain it in laymen's terms. ESPECIALLY the pharm stuff (shout-out my unnamed pharm professor who apparently has 4300 citations on his work). i am learning how to better communicate with my patients, my colleagues, and my instructors by watching these guys do it. i am watching a simulation of very real procedures that i'd only read about in the real-life medical clearances i do for my real-life patients. i am not going to be an emergency care provider, not even training to be a medical doctor, but i am listening and learning and applying. this show found me at a low point in my training (see clinic calamities above), but i think i feel inspired to be better. LOCK IN SCOUT! YOU CAN DO IT!!!

letterboxd (i really really liked kpop demon hunters)

up next for me (irl): more board exams, more complicated patients, possible residency interviews???????

thanks for reading, feel free to drop me a line, whoa have you seen a mirror because you look great today, have a wonderful week, etc etc