On the Accumulation of Crap

So - I was going to move yesterday, but through a complex series of events that I don't fully understand, I've ended up having to move tomorrow.

Sorry, I wish I had a longer post for you, but I've been packing for the last three days and it seems like I'm nowhere near done. It's at times like this that I have to ask myself how did I get 400 books? Why do I have 14 coffee mugs? I understand why I have all the sex toys, but where did all the commemorative pins  come from? 

Where did I get all this? It feels like living is literally literally just the accumulation of objects that momentarily excite you until they fade out of your mind until you wonder where you got it and why its cluttering up your life. 

Anyhoooooooo... I'll see you after I move. 

  

Real Brief Post

Hey folks, 

Real brief post today as this week and next week I'll prepping to move sometime on the 27th. I'm really busy with prep work for that, so no big post this week or next week. I'll try to have some life updates as I go, post some pictures of the new place. 

Anyways, I'll chat later.  

Boy Erased: Book & Movie Reviews + Personal Thoughts

Caveat Emptor: this post will address some weighty subjects, conversation therapy, suicide, sexual assault, self-harm and loss of religious faith among them. 

In the opening moments of Boy Erased, a pastor compares a room full of damaged people with a dollar bill, reminding them that even if the bill is crumpled or is ripped up, that doesn’t change it’s inherent value. If it’s damaged it can be taped together, and it’s still legal tender. As such, people who are looking to heal their scars can be treated, they can find peace, and their scars can fade. 

All true (provided your dollar isn’t more than 50% destroyed.) But it’s a deceptively wholesome moment. After all, a Dollar only has value because we’ve agreed societally that it does, and because most of the people in that room aren’t damaged in the way the counselor says. I see I’ve left out some crucial information. Before introducing the dollar to the conversation, the counselor leads the room in a call-and-response mantra: "I am using sexual sin and homosexuality to fill a god-shaped hole in my life. But I am not broken and God loves me." You’ll question just how much the pastor believes the second sentence over the rest of the movie. 

Based off Garrard Conley’s memoir of the same name, Boy Erased is a slightly fictionalized account of conversation therapy practices. (I say slightly fictionalized - while the movie doesn’t follow Conley’s life entirely, it remains true to the events of the book, while removing some elements and adding real conversation therapy practices that didn’t take place in book.) Before addressing the book and the movie’s main subject matter, I have to take a quick detour and address the film making. 

This project was adapted and directed by Joel Edgerton (young Owen Lars of the Star Wars prequel fame) and stars Lucas Hedges, Nicole Kidman, Russell Crowe in a career best performance, and Edgerton himself. The supporting cast is made up of American theater staple Cherry Jones and two musician cameos, Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and singer Troye Sivan. There are no bad performances here. I’ve already mentioned Russell Crowe’s performance as a career best, but Cherry Jones, Kidman and Edgerton all deserve praise. Hedges and the other performers who play the “patients” in the conversion program were all awardworthy and it's a shame that most major awards chose to ignore this project. They play scared, determined, angry, confused, and they hide all that under masks of complete sincerity. That’s a lot to ask of any actor and it gets brutal. 

As for the movie itself, it occasionally plays like a horror film, full of dark shadows, intense psychological harm, and self-loathing that can make it hard to connect to the characters, especially the parents of the kids being forced into this awful situation. Two minor, monstrous characters spring to mind; one a literal bible-basher who treats his son to a mock funeral that plays like the blanket party from Full Metal Jacket. The other monster is a coward and a rapist. Here, I have to bring up that the movie accurately portrays Conley’s outing as coming from an abuser who took advantage of, and raped Garrard. He later posed as school counselor, called Garrard’s family and outed him, including accusing him of abuse. This sequence is arguably the most horrifying moment in the movie, as the trauma of the event is shown to torment an already conflicted Garrard to the point of self-harm. It doesn’t help that Garrard’s father is implied to not believe his son’s protestations of innocence, or at the very least blames the victim, which feeds into Garrard’s self-loathing spiral. 

Given the subject matter, I think I can forgive the movie as coming off like a horror film. That said, I have to clarify that the movie is never exploitative or shocking for the sake of being shocking. It’s difficult to watch, but nothing is played for cheap drama. Instead, it’s brutally, depressingly real. And somehow, it manages to keep to the memoir’s goal of finding understanding. 

Garrard Conley’s memoir is not a muckraking expose; plenty of those have been written or filmed about the immoral and fraudulent practices of conversion therapy. (I wont go into detail of actual practices, but I am going to link to several stories from survivors and the APA’s condemnation of the practice.) Instead, Boy Erased is an account of traumas stacked upon traumas, search for understanding and healing - not just for Conley, but for his entire family. Ultimately, it’s Conley’s attempt to understand his father; a difficult love letter to a complex family. He doesn’t chastise his father for sending him to conversation therapy, nor does he denigrate his father’s faith. In fact, he implies that his relationship with his father, whose Christian faith remained intact, improved to a more understanding if not totally accepting relationship. 

I feel like I’m loosing my point here. Let me return to something before I sum up; both the book and the movie of Boy Erased are definitely worth your time. Outside of some inconsistent tonal moments, the movie is a wonderfully filmed, if difficult to watch story and I believe it’s important to watch. Sadly, some of the book’s more poignant moments and some characters were removed for pacing reasons, but the essential story about healing and understanding remains. The book is powerful, compelling reading. It’s clearly affected me. 

There’s a line from the books epilogue that speaks to me; “I will not call on God during this decade-long struggle. Not because I want to keep God out of my life, but because his voice is no longer there. What happened to me has made it impossible to speak to with God, to believe in a version of him that isn’t charged with self-loathing. My ex-gay therapists took him away from me.” (Boy Erased, page 335)

It reminds me of scene from the movie Spotlight (2015), where Phil Saviano, founder of SNAP, tells the Spotlight investigative team that priests who molest children don’t just cause physical and emotional damage, they also cause spiritual damage. 

Whether or not you believe in God, you have to recognize the danger of so-called reparative therapy practices. Insisting that a fundamental part of a person is worthless or corrupt or evil damages not just the psyche, but also the way these people see God. Most of the people who enter these conversation camps already see themselves as broken or sinful, and all they are told inside only compounds this negativity. 

I’ve never had any conversion experiences like Garrard Conley, but I do come from extremely religious circles that condemn homosexuality. Much like the characters in Conley’s memoir, I grew up sincerely loving my faith, and over time exposure to the toxic beliefs of my peers or my friends wore down on my beliefs. I don’t know if I’ll ever seek any kind of religion again. Frankly it’s too soon to say. 

The insidious thing about the opening of the movie is that the pastor is almost correct. People do have inherent value and that value isn’t dependent on anything, especially not an foundational part of human life like sexuality. But unlike a dollar, a human life’s worth isn’t just a social construct. That’s the hardest truth to relearn. 

As the World Turns

 Happy Easter, One and All. 

I wish I had a book to review for this post, because I don’t have much to really talk about. I could talk about my personal life, but I have explicitly tried to avoid that with this project so far. I’ve been trying to share cultural  opinions on here, keeping my personal life to a minimum. I’m realizing that this goal might be misguided. Not that wanting to keep a private life is a bad thing, but sharing critical opinions means that you have to share personal opinions, thoughts and beliefs. (I refer you back to my post about the Big Nowhere.)

Of course I don’t have to share more than that, and I am going to keep my private life private, but I’d be lying to you if I didn’t acknowledge my personal beliefs creeps in from time to time. And if my beliefs sneak in, my personal life might too from time to time. Now that the Easter holiday is on us, I think I’ve been reflecting on where I am in my life and where this year has been going. I apologize if this a maudlin topic, it’s just what’s been on my mind. Either that or it’s way too late on a Friday night and I’ve been drinking more than usual. 

...

OK so it’s the next morning, and I was totally drinking too much when I wrote the opening paragraphs here. I do like what I said though, maybe I should be drinking more when I write...

In any event, trying to review where this year has been going isn’t a bad idea. I started this year with only one goal in mind, improvement. I have now realized I really needed to specify what I want to improve on. OK then. I really want to get more mobile, I want to exercise more and I want to be healthier (jury’s out on progress.) I want to find a new job that’s better paying and that fits my skills better. I want to spend more time writing (work related burnout has been killing me here, but I’ve recently joined a writer’s group that will hopefully force me back into exercising creativity. 

What sucks about some of these goals is that they’re outside of my control (the job market is FUCKED) and I basically just have to be incredibly lucky to achieve them. In terms of being healthier, I’m battling genetics and some serious anxiety issues. In terms of being creative I’m battling the same anxiety and burnout. Well, frankly, fuck all that. I’m still going to try and do it. It’s not like any of these goals are impossible. It’s not like the world is so fucked that I can’t do any of these. 

*You raise your eyebrows, stand up, walk over to the window, pull the blinds apart to reveal a world on fire set to a soundtrack of agonized human screams. You close the blinds, cutting off the screams, and raise your other eyebrow at me, making a mad-eyed-staring-face*

OK, yeah, the world is fucked. I know that. I’m trying to keep a sense of hope about things. That’s kind of the point about Easter, isn’t it? 

Anyone who reads this probably knows I was raised Catholic, and while I’m more agnostic in my spiritual beliefs now, the effects of the traditions I was raised in still have left their impression. Easter (or if you prefer the old Saxon pagan term Ēostre) as a time of renewal, of spiritual growth seems like the perfect time to remind ourselves that we can always improve, and that life gets better. As fucked as everything seems right now, well, we can still hope that things will change for the better as the world turns. Isn’t that what hope in the Resurrection really means? 

Anyways, I hope you all have have a wonderful day. 

Shorter Post Today

For whatever reason I’ve been a little too burned out this week to sit down a write a long post about the things I usually write about. I’ll blame work and stress from doing taxes and the possibility of moving next month as the cause of said burnout. So here’s some random reflections I’ve had about the month of March. 

Reading goals

Largely fell behind this month thanks to extraneous pressure. What didn’t help is that I started another one of Brandon Sanderson’s MASSIVE fantasy novels too soon after finishing my last one. Seriously I needed to wait longer. I’m still planning a post in appreciation of Brandon Sanderson but I think I’m going to wait until after I finish the Stormlight archive. Meanwhile I’ve transitioned to reading some smaller books, a biography of Harvey Milk and the Swedish book A Man Called Ove. Oh and the Akira manga. (Those in the know will laugh when I call it “shorter.”)

Writing goals

Fallen behind. Long Story. Don’t ask. 

Movie watching goals

Early this month I started watching all the James Bond movies in order, I’m almost done with them and I’m thinking about writing a multi-part retrospective on the entire series. I’m not certain if I’d break it down by decade, by movies or by lead actors, but I’ll think of something. 

Personal Goals

All over the place this month. The week I disappeared and didn’t write anything I was at a convention making friends. Specifically I was at the Texas Bear Round Up, which for the uninitiated is a gathering of Bears (my gay social group) and the people who like Bears. I had some friends flying into town and it was lovely to see them all again. I had a lot of fun, made a lot of friends, and I’m doing well afterwards. Otherwise I’ve failed on some of my movement and exercise goals for this month. April will be better. 

Conclusion

So that’s where I’m at. I’m moving next month and I don’t know how closely I’ll be sticking to any posting schedule as a result. Hell I don’t know how well I’ll be sticking to a reading schedule. Like so much of life, it’s all up in the air right now. I’m doing well though. I hope you are too. 

Movie Appreciation Time

My apologies, I missed last week’s post due to an unavoidable mission of revenge. It was a thrilling tale of bereavement, alcohol, curses, barbecue, dance clubs, and jaywalking. I’ll tell you all about it sometime. But now that I have achieved satisfaction, I’m free to rant about somewhat topical movies. 

I’m not the biggest fan of the Oscars, (not until they start recognizing stunt performers at least - Casting’s a step in the right direction.) But I do like to keep abreast of winners and losers each year, if only to compare the actual best movie of the year with the movie whose producers have deep enough pockets to win. See, I do really like movies, and I do kinda care about what the “best movie of the year” is, if only because it’s so hard to tell sometimes. Like in 2005 you had Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Good Night and Good Luck, and Munich competing as “best picture” for any number of critical lists. Meanwhile the Oscars picked Crash, a movie that most retrospectives agree is one of the worst picks for any year. (I haven’t seen it so I’ll reserve judgment, but considering the line up... Good Night at least should have taken it.) 

I don’t go out to see many movies, but it seemed like 2025 didn’t really have a knock out good lineup like 2005 did. What a difference 20 years makes, huh? I hadn’t even heard of a few best picture nominees when they were announced (which, shame on me, was mostly because they were foreign language movies that actually seem really good.) 

But the only three I had seen, One Battle After Another, Frankenstein and Sinners all seemed like strong contenders for Best Picture. I was immediately and absolutely certain of three things right off the bat: 1) Sinners was the best movies of 2025 and it would not win best picture. 2) One Battle After Another was so-so and would 100% win best picture. 3) In the event it didn’t, Frankenstein would be selected on the strength of it’s visuals. I have no way of verifying prediction 3, but 1 & 2 were spot on. 

One Battle After Another

I called this one as the obvious best picture winner because of its nominal political relevance. But for a story about former leftist revolutionaries battling a psychotic anti-immigration officer, this movie really doesn’t have much of a political message. Far from it. Not, it’s actually about a frankly inept father setting off to rescue his daughter from psychotic white supremacists after her mother abandons the revolution and her family. 

Yeah it’s a strange one. It’s adapted from Thomas Pynchon novel, so of course it’s strange. The question is, is it good? Uhm... yes? 

Obvious praise time: the cast and crew do a good job. Paul Thomas Anderson’s direction is fine and Leo DiCaprio as Pat / Bob does a good job, but I feel like they both shouldn’t get a free pass just for doing their jobs anymore. Are they exceptional here? Not really. PTA’s direction is really good during the last 30 minutes, but before that was merely fine. Leo’s acting was good throughout, but I was honestly was much more interested in the other characters. Chase Infitii as Willa, Bob’s kidnapped daughter, Benicio del Torro as Bob’s best friend, Sean Penn as the villain Col. Lockjaw. Comedy writer Jim Downey gets a memorable cameo and the rest of the cast is fine. 

And that’s kind of the problem. It’s just fine. It’s not exceptional in any way worthy of Best Picture. It doesn’t have a memorable or important political message, or even anything interesting about fatherhood or living as the daughter of a former revolutionary. 

Frankenstein 

I tried to write down what I thought of this movie when it first came out, and ended up with a shambling, 2,000 word mess of an essay that was neither positive nor negative. The conclusion I drew is that it’s a good movie, but it still pales to the Karloff / Whale duology from the 1930’s. 

I don’t want to be harsh on del Toro’s vision here, but I feel that this movie misplaces it’s affection for the Creature. Thematically, the movie is focused on sympathizing with “the Other” - and the creature is indeed very sympathetic. Compare this too the book, where the Creature, while sympathetic, is filled with wrath against his Creator for bringing him to life and abandoning him, swearing vengeance upon Victor. That sort of happens in del Toro’s version... but the Creature isn’t really angry that he was abandoned. He’s more upset that he’s cursed to be lonely for the rest of his unnaturally long life. 

Thematically, this version just fell flat for me. I love a lot about this movie, the visuals, the set design, the costume design, the inclusion of the North Pole expedition from book. The cast is mostly good, Mia Goth, Felix Kammerer, Lars Mikkelsen and Charles Dance are memorable, if a little undersold by a strangely flat script. I have my issues with turning Victor Frankenstein into a mustache-twirling villain, but Oscar Isaac plays him well enough. I have to praise two performances especially; Jacob Elordi as the Creature and David Bradley as the Blind Man. Both bring incredible pathos to their characters and have a really sweet relationship in their scenes together. 

On his own, Elordi kills it as the Creature. I wasn’t enthusiastic about his casting mostly because I knew him from Saltburn (which I hate having to think about) and Euphoria (which I straight up hated). Well, that’ll teach me to judge a performance without seeing it. He’s phenomenal and really should’ve gotten best supporting actor, not Sean Penn.

Sinners

Sinners was one of the few movies last year I was genuinely excited about once I heard of it. A genre-twisting southern-gothic vampire musical set in depression era? Staring Michael B Jordan and directed by Ryan Coogler? Sign me the fuck up. Yeah, it’s plot is basically a remix of From Dusk Till Dawn, but it’s the kind of remix that takes a good central idea and reworks it with different themes and directorial choices. 

Sinners is about music’s power to reach from the past and connect us in the present. A simple animated prologue establishes the power of music to heal communities, specifically highlighting the musical traditions of the Irish, the Choctaw tribe, and descendants of African tribes. What do these three communities have in common? If your answer is they are all subjugated cultures, you have been paying attention. 

Of course, Sinners focuses on African-American culture. Sinners is set during the Jim Crow era South, and makes full use of the setting. The atmosphere of the central location, references to hoodoo culture, and Blues music enrich the setting. I can’t praise the soundtrack enough; movie-original blues song I Lied to You is a highlight, a showstopper sequence that bridges the blues’ origins in African music and it’s future in rock and roll and hip-hop. It’s one of the most beautiful musical sequences I’ve ever seen. 

I have to praise the final act’s turn to violence. Not only is it a brutal vampire slaughter that rival’s Midnight Mass’s final episode, but Michel B Jordan gets to unleash hell on a hapless set of Klansmen, which is cathartic as all hell. Seriously, I much more prefer Sinners’ approach to contemporary politics than One Battle After Another.

Since I just mentioned him, I’m going to say that Michael B Jordan deserving his Oscar for playing twins Smoke and Stack. The rest of the cast is great; Hailee Steinfeld is incredible, newcomer Miles Caton sings his heart out during the aforementioned I Lied to You scene, and Delroy Lindo and Omar Benson Miller give us some wonderful moments of comedic relief, and Wunmi Mosaku brings a sense of wisdom and gravitas to her role as the hoodoo practitioner Annie. Jack O’Connell plays a great villain, Irish vampire Remmick, simultaneously sympathetic, fun and pants-crappingly scary.

Conclusion

Clearly I loved Sinners, so I might be biased. I won’t go so far as to call the Oscars racist for not choosing it as best picture (they did give it 4 deserving awards after all: Best Actor, Best Original Screenplay, Best Cinematography and Best Original Score) but I do think that the Oscars are reluctant to award Sinners anything because it’s a horror film. 

My take on it is the Oscars were trying to be a little more politically conscious this year (Conan O’Brien’s alternate Oscars joke was proof enough - Coco was great by the way.) Frankenstein would have been a safe middle of the road choice, but it was never going to win. So the only two viable choices for Best Picture were One Battle and Sinners. (Well ... Weapons should have been nominated for Best Picture but the most the Oscars would stoop to recognizing it was Best Supporting Actress - and Amy Madigan fucking deserved that win.) I don’t know if Sinners was a step too far or if One Battle After Another was just the more palatable option. But, if you want my opinion, while One Battle comes from a good place, it’s really messy in execution and refuses to explain itself. Sinners comes from a place of great artistic inspiration, and it has the nuance to parse its themes to the point where you can draw your own conclusions without needing to explain itself.

The Other Side of the Big Nowhere

 Fair warning; this post might delve into some heavy themes including suicide and homophobia. 

I’m reading a history books about gay life in Washington DC during the 20th century, which spends a decent page count on the concurrent Red and Lavender Scares of the early 1950’s. If you’re unaware and can’t guess, the Lavender Scare the expunging of queer people from governmental roles. It began roughly the same time as Joseph McCarthy’s red-baiting bullshit, but if this book I’m reading is to be believed, it lasted much, MUCH longer than the Red Scare, well into the late 1960’s. This expunging largely targeted gay men by the look of it, or at least this book doesn’t go into fate of lesbians that much. (btw, I won’t name this book because the author is - apparently - a jackass and I don’t want you to support him. It’s a shame because this is a fascinating side of history that needs to be recognized; while there are apparently other books on this subject out there - such as this one  - I’m finishing this book before I move on.) 

Anyway, this book I will not name has produced several good effects in me, namely, it’s led me back to today’s subject, The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy. 

If you’re unfamiliar with Ellroy’s output, I can’t adequately express what a kick in the head it is to read him for the first time. He seems off-putting at first, and that’s way too tame a descriptor. Even if you know his works, you you might assume he’s a horror writer rather than a crime writer or the Historical Romance writer title that Ellroy prefers. You could call his books copaganda the way the LAPD is glorified, but at the same time, every police officer in Ellroy’s books are unfailingly presented as draw-string shitbags barely better than the criminals they catch or kill. Watching any of Ellroy’s interviews leaves the (accurate) impression of a raconteur with a vocabulary from a 1940’s GOP locker room. He’s big, he’s bold, he’s the self-proclaimed Demon Dog of American Literature, literally in your face and barking. The hardest thing about reading an Ellroy book is the violence, the raw sexuality, the aberrant criminality that abounds on every single page. Very few cops are not corrupt, bigoted, arrogant or unreliable and very frequently are dealing with criminals barely worse than the cops themselves. These are stories about bad men hunting worse men, while beautiful women look on. 

That’s Ellroy’s surface. His critical reception has largely been positive thanks to his peerless ability to write stories about LA, but there’s much more to him than historical fiction. There’s a reason Joyce Carol Oats called him the American Dostoevsky. The slightest amount of digging into his story reveals someone intimately familiar with the true darkness humanity is capable of expressing, and the light that is so often buried underneath. Ellroy has tried to find that light for himself many times. His mother Jean was murdered when he was 10, and he’s has stated that her murder haunts him and influences his writing. He’s tried to solved her murder on his own several times, documenting his investigation and their overall relationship in several memoirs.  He never found his mother’s killer, never even came close, but he did find some kind of light in the darkness. Usually, his characters will too. His protagonists are very rarely better than the criminals they catch, but on rare occasions, you may even see a glimpse of nobility in them, buried under miles and miles of genuinely unpleasant actions.

The Big Nowhere is where I finally understood what James Ellroy was trying to do with his books. It’s the second book in a series of four novels collectively known as the LA Quartet, the other volumes being The Black Dahlia, LA Confidential, and White Jazz. (LA Confidential was adapted into a movie in 1997 and remains how most people - including myself - are introduced to Ellroy.) The Quartet is a sort of secret history, telling the story of LA from 1948 through 1960. It’s fiction, but to aid with historical verisimilitude Ellroy includes real crimes, providing fictional solutions to events as diverse as the Black Dahlia murder to the Sleepy Lagoon killings. The Big Nowhere runs concurrently with the infamous HUAC hearings that produced the Hollywood Ten blacklist, with the main plot thrust being a red-baiting LAPD investigation into a stagehand union. The second main plot running through the book is about a young and naive LA County Sheriff as he traces a serial killer who mimics the killing patterns of Wolverines - and who exclusively targets gay men. 

Beware - major spoilers lie beyond. I’m doing my best to minimize. 

In crime fiction, the private eye’s greatest motivation is obsession, and Ellroy’s detectives are masters of that sordid art. They get obsessed with the usual suspects, women, drugs, money, and the all-important elusive solution. This sheriff in The Big Nowhere, Danny, becomes obsessed with his case, obsessed with catching this killer of men. The only problem is - his colleagues and his enemies wonder why he’s so obsessed about a homo snuff killing. 

You can draw your own conclusions, conclusions Danny is reluctant to draw himself. 

For understandable reasons, as it turns out. When Danny is outed (and framed for the murders he’s investigating) his life is ruined. Faced with the decision of suicide or being outed under a lie detector questionnaire, Danny chose the less painful option. If my most recent history read is accurate, that was a fate all too common in the era.

From the perspective of a person familiar with Ellroy’s style of protagonist, I was amazed that he didn’t treat either Danny or the serial killer - who is also gay - as simplistic character. Yes, bury your gays applies and they’re not exactly positive depictions of gay people, but they are first and foremost complete characters - complex, tragic and strangely sympathetic. (I won’t describe the events that drove the killer to violence, but they are horrific and make an almost irredeemable monster into a disturbingly sympathetic character.) 

I want to show that kind of sympathy to the characters in the books and stories I write. Hell, that’s the kind of sympathy / empathy I want to have for people in the real world. That really is the miracle of Ellroy’s style. Beneath the bluster and the conservative raconteur persona lies a sympathetic, remarkably kind author who understands the depths humans can sink to. He respects his characters, but they don’t get special treatment. The good leave for the big nowhere and the bad live on. That’s life, depressingly enough. That’s our history as a country. 

On a personal note, The Big Nowhere is the book I was reading when I was finally starting to accept my own sexuality. That is largely why it's remained my favorite book. As you can imagine, Danny’s story resonated with me - especially in his final scene. That moment... wooof. It’s one of those rare times where you just have to put the book down and stare out the window after reading. 

At the time that I read it, I realized I was facing a decision like Danny. I want to be clear, I wasn't facing the same stakes, I was never that desperate. But the choice was similar. Acceptance or letting my soul step into the big nowhere. I know I made the right decision.