Eco-Tuesday Interview

Thanks to Willow Croft for arranging and conducting an eco interview with me. Great to reminisce about environment, travelling and writing with someone I feel is on the same wavelength on those topics; and dredge up some memories of writers and creations that influenced me, from somewhere in my memory!

cancel culture jeopardy Phd philosophy

If I ever had white privilege,
I ignored it to inspire greener global village,
but 15 years of gYg-esture they want to pillage!

No room for racism:
More room for rapism?

No room for big populations:
No room for mass immigration!

No room for animals:
as humanity claims all!

True: BLM were threatening violence if Trump won, so are equally to blame for Capitol violence, although BBC etc never cite that; although they are always excusing Islamist terrorism on racism or Western foreign policy. Most ‘right-wing’ extremists of the last 20 years have been reacting to Islamist/Black attacks; although they claim to be reacting to us; in an eternal clash of cultures. Ironically, US/European soldiers are protecting African black Christians v Islamists who rape and behead them!BLM say they’re inspired by the Vietcong, and that’s how they worked: small attacks provoking big reactions. Like other terrorist groups: such as the KLA in the Balkans, and al-Quaeda/I.S. in the world: 9/11 was one such big provocation, with the reaction inspiring I.S. etc.

The BBC did go big on this murder, unlike the black on white ones I recently posted. It does provide a good warning too: that nobody can be trusted; not even baby-faced married ‘family men’. It’s like with Weinstein, even without the ‘criminal crimes’ he did at work; he already had a wife who looked much too good for him, and children; but still felt the need to cheat and compete; and to resort to the dirtiest tricks to do it!

I was reminded of my time in academia (media department) watching this rom-com film, mostly set in an American media corporation. Available now on Film4 in UK.He was having fun, while looking for the ‘one’ too; unknowingly competing with a ‘married powerful man with a family’ most of the time!

Is life like a solar hourglass? Without top/bottom. Spinning around:
energy, money, food, drink, happiness and love star bound?

gYg hourglass of my writing: turn at ‘middle-age’ to go over where I was before, newest 1st… still falling in a familiar world

I think the thing I have most in common with the sun is how humanity gets us both wrong; seeing things from their ego all the time

This could be the BBC-style British liberals she’s talking to; who just seem to repeat the BLM propaganda; with many (most?) white too; just as relevant this side of the Atlantic:

Some people think we’re in a post-truth world, and I’m in a post-youth one. As I wrote several times, the greenYgrey (2005-2015) was my goodbye to youth, a metamorphic transition stage squeezing out the last drops, while looking back, and trying to provide advice to today’s youth. I’ve still been ‘playing along’ with the greenYgrey times for those who seem to be ‘fans’; all over the world!; but sometimes they are ‘negatives’ trying to make out it’s something else. My mindset now is that of a middle-aged ‘rational’: quite cynical but not without ‘humanity’; and still trying to do good as I see it: for all life on Earth; which I know is a cycle of contesting interests, and difficult enough to see any progress in GB and Europe… with all the forecasts for a downhill trend due to world overpopulation… that doesn’t mean I want to kill off humans… I would like more birth control, but that’d mean the main monotheistic religions pushing it, and stopping their ‘population arms race’, so they can boast they’ve got the most followers!

Yesterday I wrote I was in a post-youth world, and then I watched this, and thought Brand is too. When he wrote his ‘Revolution’ book which was in shop windows the same time as my ‘XaW Files’ was ignored, and getting lots of media and academic plaudits, he was a philosophical numpty!Compared to this real philosopher he still sounds like a stumbling student.But he does seem to have been studying it in the 5 years since ‘Revolution’, and now has a more balanced approach.I can now watch it without cringing. So for those who thought I was ‘jealous’, you were very wrong. I was just worried about you being led astray, and the effect on the country… and children.I think he was trying to do good all along, but like many ‘youths’ who learn a little politics and philosophy, he acted before he knew what he was talking about; true knowledge takes years.

Social ‘grapevines’ are usually fuelled by ‘manure’. As this band was known as CCR, the ‘grapevine’ revolves around SSR: Sensationalism, Sex, Romance.The greenYgrey was supposed to ‘mature’ without ‘manure’; with the child grooming epidemic most in mind; but the majority of the media and ‘gatekeepers’ seem determined to keep the social turmoil growing with wave after wave of immigration bringing new rules and speech to learn, instead of improving what they already know.One of the reasons against me moving to a country that doesn’t speak English is that i’d need to spend time learning that language; instead of stuff I’m more interested in, such as life, nature and space. Instead of learning how to live better as Britain, over the last 25 years British people have been learning how to live as ‘multiculturals’, with loads more ways to be punished and feel anxious, watching ‘what they say all the time’; and now even ‘think’ with ‘unconscious bias’; increasing any ‘inferiority complex’ present because of their social status,

Regular readers may have been surprised that I posted a video that favoured a black woman over a blonde white professor days after saying I’d rather be in a relationship with a poor Nordic than a rich Arab. That was the difference between social and political; as my social opinions are different to my political; whereas the average person seem to conflate the two; as with celebrity etcThen I seemed to twist around again, praising the expertise of a professor over an ordinary man (comedian).That shows that like in most things in life there are no consistent rules; no black and white (either way); more greenYgrey. Like in literature, there are no hard and fast consistent rules; separate one word meanings for everything; for most things there are general rules, but you still have to distinguish on a case by case basis!

Above are recent Facebook posts, with more context there.

fantasy writing food for thought

Fantasy and food creations are similar in that they are both built for presentation to the public. As food is usually a lot of tasty ingredients binding together some nutrition to a traditional recipe…fantasy is usually a lot of entertaining imagery binding together some philosophy to a traditional format!

This movie discusses how Joseph Campbell identified that global fantasy follows basic themes, with the golden buddha story at the start having relevance for the transformation of Greenygrey to greenYgrey:

With relevance to the above, when I started reading for my PhD in 2000 I got side-tracked; my supervisors decided; by structuralism and semiotics, started with Saussure’s langue and parole:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langue_and_parole

15 years later I think this book made it all worthwhile, ending my ‘fantasy journey’:

premier league football writing

Liverpool’s Lovren was the biggest football star in XaW Files: Beyond Humanity (now free to read online with Amazon Prime: last Prime Day today!).

After it was published, Liverpool won the Champions League and Premier League titles. He was then blamed for any defensive lapses when he played!

After leaving in the summer, Liverpool’s defence has collapsed! Including against Leeds, who were the main team in XaW Files; they were promoted last year!

Now, Liverpool seem to have joined their main rivals in the Salford Red Devils triangle!

Coincidence? Weird or What (good TV show, giving different versions of an event, and letting you… be Sherlock!).

Lovren has now moved to St. Petersburg, where the first chapter travelling Russia ended with a chess theme, Bond parody wordplay and a tennis love match between Kournikova and Sharapova:

You Can Lead a Horse to Tennis

I thanked the horse for its Saint Petersburg info, and asked if it fancied a stroll. It agreed, and introduced itself as Wiki Steedia. We walked around some of the green parks and grey streets, until reaching a tennis stadium. There was an exhibition match being played there between Russian greats Anna Kournikova and Maria Sharapova, so I asked Wiki if it wanted to watch. Wiki said neigh. It said it would love to, but knew of an open chess tournament taking place in an exclusive club, and thought it might be able to get some work as a bit-part player there. So we said goodbye after I thanked it for the lift and flight from Moscow.

I was sad to see Wiki leave, and thought You can lead a chess horse to tennis, but you can’t make it play.

Tennis Love Match

I was sorry to say goodbye to Wiki, but was glad I opted to watch the tennis, as it was a great game. Kournikova took the first set to love, then Sharapova took the second to love. The third set was the decider, kind of like the Y in greenYgrey.

The games went to serve throughout the third set, and they played a tie-break rather than one having to win by two games. Kournikova had just taken a three-love lead, with an incredible volley, when I felt something tugging at my leg.

I looked down, and was astounded to see it was Love, the mixed-up vole; the lovely love correspondent at the greenYgrey.

From Russia with Love

‘Follow me quickly,’ Love said. ‘It’s time for you to leave Russia. You must not stall any longer, for this episode is already well over its time limit, and you don’t want to be using up all your time with no sign of our ol’ Wolfhol yet.’

I had to agree with Love. I had become engrossed in the Saint Petersburg sights and tennis match, and lost sight of time.

I followed it out of the stadium, and down into the Sportivnaya station. I loved the greenYgrey look of the station. Love said it did too.

We passed through Admiralteyskaya, Sadovaya and Zvenigorodskaya metro stations. I remember arriving in Obvodny, and thinking it looked like the CERN Large Hadron Collider. It was to be my last thought for a while, because then we seemed to shoot off at proton beams speed, and I lost consciousness.

References:
Neigh/Nay is a word for a horse noise and a slang word for no. Fyodor Dostoyevsky biography: http://eng.md.spb.ru/dostoevsky/other_museums/omsk/?more
From Russia With Love was a 1963 James Bond film.
Saint Petersburg and Russian literature information from Wikipedia.
You can lead a chess horse to tennis, but you can’t make it play works kind of like that old chestnut phrase: You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.

XaW Files free to read online at Amazon Prime: https://www.amazon.co.uk/XaW-Files-Beyond…/dp/B019NOY9ZU
Lots more free thinking fun loving wordplay on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/marc.l.latham/

brand baa baa: belarus not far, compared to america

Branding became a buzz word as I finished my Communications Studies PhD in 2005. As I specialised in criticising PR (focusing on the political spin of the then New Labour government, with PM Tony Blair advised by Alistair Campbell) I was critical of it, considering it marketing brainwashing.

I launched the Greengrey world after leaving university. The colour scheme was inspired by the dominant landscape colours I saw, and my ‘marketing’ of it was partly a parody of branding (finding greenYgrey colours everywhere, like in the Conservative advert image above); doing it for real with an environmental message (need the green to prevent all grey) in a tongue-in-cheek manner.

After seeing more sun, even on mostly grey days, I later rebranded it to greenYgrey; with the parody side of me also wanting to just do a ‘rebranding’; maybe inspired by my workplace’s ‘rebranding’ (see below).

I would probably have endeared myself more to my home city/county by calling it the Whiteyblue (maybe a were(polar)bear!?); fittingly later becoming whiteYblue; as those are its traditional colours. However, the parody element probably wouldn’t be appreciated.

I was about five years ahead of the big corporate I was working for part-time. It got serious about its branding by coordinating all its ‘image’ into one colour; including staff uniforms (like our kit!); unfortunately in the city/county’s main rival colours (red)! I might have become a big fish in their marketing division if I’d volunteered my expertise earlier – but I didn’t really believe in it, and especially not in their industry!!

Taking the Knee Cause/Brand Brainwashing!

That’s one of the reasons I’ve gone off sport in the last couple of years; the dirty/money takeover. All the Premiership footballers ‘taking the knee’ because of one incident in a distant country; after ignoring the child grooming scandal for a decade or two in our own, and the terrible crimes committed in Africa on a daily basis; at the end of the season adding insult to injury… and then there was covid-19 to put everything into perspective.

Like many things, it all seems to be inspired by the USA, with a lot of the footballers watching sport there, and probably dreaming of a Hollywood career or life afterwards?!.. as I was at their age… before Weinstein and Meghan put me off!

Will they be taking a knee for the Belarus demonstrators who’ve apparently been killed, in a country much closer than the USA. I don’t think so, because white on white doesn’t have the Hollywood effect coming from California… or the influence, money and fame!

I don’t really want to become involved in Belarus/Russia/EU politics either, but think it should be more relevant than the USA to us; if it was about geography and ethnicity rather than power and money.

I was relieved to see some motor racing drivers refuse to take the knee – while still wearing t-shirts denouncing racism – to see some sign of individuality. Was it because they are European, higher class, or more educated; or a bit of each, or more than one.

Whatever the reasons, I was impressed; unlike with the footballers’ 100% conformity. Unfortunately, they are traditionally more from the sport, country and class I am; although its become less and less so over the years; but if I didn’t disagree with them I’d look just as brainwashed.

Nostradamus and Me: Beyond Humanity!

Like Nostradamus, I think my writing includes a lot that could be considered prophetic for the current Covid-19 pandemic. There was a theme of self-isolation and distancing towards the end of the greenYgrey era, culminating with the apocalyptical ending, and title ‘Beyond Humanity’. It was a general feeling though, combining terrorism and overpopulation, rather than a clear sighting.

I didn’t see the extent of it in Europe and the USA even when it was making its away across from China. The first reports of hundreds of deaths per day in Italy were a big shock!

Circumstantial Coincidences?

When I posted a link to a previous post containing reference to my Children of the Quorn (Children of the Corn parody that preceded the emergence of Greta Thunberg and the school strike movement – I don’t know if she was inspired by it though!?) last week the blog post was mostly about criticising Ozzy for selling a toy celebrating him biting the head off a bat; the coronavirus is thought to have originated in bats, before getting into the food chain in Wuhan.

When I looked for the first mention of mistYmuse on this site (inspired by the end of mistYmuse 2019/20, and my mapping of my horizon posts this week) this morning the unrelated 2018 post’s main photo is of Gwyneth Paltrow, star of Contagion, a disaster movie that gives a much clearer prediction of the Covid crisis: starting in China from a bat. Director Steven Soderbergh said that making the movie made him think a real pandemic was only a matter of time!

Over the last couple of years I also watched the Ancient Aliens episode on plagues and epidemics, also from 2011, and also saying another pandemic was due. It focused on how the Fatima sighting (generally claimed as sun/religious [Wikipedia], but they think could have been a UFO) had preceded the Spanish Flu pandemic a century ago. It thinks aliens use pandemics to control the human population. I think that’s a slim possibility, but lets humanity off the hook; as blaming higher powers such as gods too.

Modern Shamen or Creative Thinker?

I have had a lot of sights, thoughts and dreams that I think could be considered prophetic, but they are all unproveable, and most people probably have them too, and if they predict disaster they aren’t usually acted upon anyway (as the current crisis shows, governments and workers are reluctant to stop the economy/travel even when disasters are happening !) so there’s no point claiming them… kind of like the vague muddled messages I saw people describing in the ‘Mothman Prophecies‘ movie about the  Point Pleasant bridge collapse.

There is one bit of data that does back up my claim that I had some kind of transcendental thoughts during the writing of XaW Files: Beyond Humanity: I had by far my best Fantasy Football Season (it was also the season Leicester totally upset the odds by winning the real Premier League, which was probably a factor?.. and probably not connected?.. as I hope the chairman’s later helicopter crash outside their ground wasn’t!).

XaW Files: Beyond Humanity

So I think XaW Files should only be bought as a brilliant book of fiction with deep thinking writer insights, but as Neil Young said about his songs, he doesn’t write them, he just writes them down; I haven’t felt like writing fiction much since, but have written a couple of short stories!

Do I think I’m as good as most of the ‘Western shamen’ making money out of it: probably, yes.
Do I think I’m as good as adult-lifelong religious shamen and meditators: probably, not.

Do I want to think myself special: Yes
Do I want to be blamed for disasters: No

So if I can’t stop disasters, and am just going to be called a charlatan, I’ll stick to just being a writer and poet; and I still believe in my work… and that it’s been criminally overlooked… but if you’ve read it, as more people seem to do than sales show… then that’s something for me.

Now, I think I’m best suited to little poetic philosophy snippets that I freely post in spontaneous prose on Facebook!

 

Sun Rising Spring Equinox in Leeds Photos

Sunrise quote  by a better runner than me, followed by a few of my sunrise photos from the Leeds spring equinox, from pre to post, and then my books, that also celebrated twilight times, and tried to create a better UK and world, following Scandinavia’s green example:

“Why run? I run because I am an animal. I run because it is part of my genetic wiring. I run because millions of years of evolution have left me programmed to run. And finally, I run because there’s no better way to see the sun rise and set… What the years have shown me is that running clarifies the thinking process as well as purifies the body. I think best – most broadly and most fully – when I am running.” ~ Amby Burfoot

Poetry in Motion Princess Kate Remembers What Made Her Great

I was disappointed Princess Kate seemed to have become a Calamity Kate recently, buying a shotgun as Britain goes weapons crazy!

Kate Returns to Form

So I was delighted to see Princess Kate return to great greenYgrey form on a visit to Blackpool recently (maybe tangerine would have been more fitting though?), sporting big green and grey, and a little yellow in the arrow symbol of her handbag and the umbrella handle.

So I wrote this Folding Mirror poem to celebrate, adapting it from a spontaneous poem that seeped down effortlessly from the unconscious, and that is included below the FM one.

 Swapping Shotgun for Umbrella, Remembering gYg Princess Era

Princess Kate taking up shooting
was like a poisoned ↑
through my greenYgrey wolf ♥.
Seeing  symbol on handbag
like Y in disguise
deflated, like crushed umbrella.

is T a good umbrella symbol, between windy Y and deflated ↑

Thankfully, brolly she’s holding
in stormy Blackpool photo
sheltered her from rain.
One day when sunny again
Kate will consider birdsong celebrations
more important than dinner conversations.

The original poem posted on Facebook.

Princess Kate taking up shooting
was like a poisoned arrow
through my greenYgrey heart
but seeing the symbol on her handbag
I see it’s just like a Y in disguise
deflated like a storm-broken umbrella.

Thankfully, the brolly she’s holding
in the stormy Blackpool photo
sheltered her from the rain
and one day when the sun shines
Kate will consider birdsong celebrations
more important than dinner conversations.

If you liked the above, and love birdy animals, you should be very interested to know it’s the last day or two, depending where you are, of my latest poetry book and second of the greenYgrey trilogy – fantasy fiction parody comedy Australia travel -being free on Smashwords:

Werewolf of Oz: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/325567

242 Mirror Poems and Reflections: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/321583

 

Banksy Art – Suicidal Tendencies – Umberto Eco – Marcel Duchamp – German Protestors

Hero hippies aren’t on crack
they’re on the railroad track…

… adding colour to the greenygrey
human nature beautiful display.

Banksy YouTube Conspiracy?

I wrote Banksy’s shredding of his painting at Sotheby’s was reminiscent of Suicidal Tendencies’ Art of Rebellion album cover in yesterday’s blog post.

I also wrote it was a total coincidence I was listening to it on YouTube. I think it was, but it was a suggested video, or their Freedumb album (1999) was first, and AoR followed, so who knows how it works; I don’t!

Maybe Banksy works for YouTube, or knows somebody that does?

Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum

If you think about things like that, the possibilities are endless. I recently read Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum (1988), and he makes that point; that there are always connections if you look hard enough; something I showed in my XaW Files: Beyond Humanity.

I am now certain XaW is a credible Eco for beginners: a less scholarly, but more entertaining version. We both studied semiotics at university; I did mine on my own, straying from the methodology the department wanted, starved of supervision in my first year.

Both books have thin plotlines and are more a writer digging deep into philosophy, psychology and knowledge, for personal learning and sharing. I was bored for much of the over 600 pages of Pendulum, and think most modern casual readers will be; whereas I wrote XaW in small entertaining sections, ideal for the modern social media user with low attentions spans, because that’s what I am; especially because I think I always have had ADHD.

Eco (no relation to environment!) passed away a while ago, and was obviously a great writer and academic, so I’m not being ‘competitive’!

Banksy Art History – Marcel Duchamp’s Readymadesy

The greenYgrey didn’t find the greenYgrey world’s Andy Warhol, Andy Wolfhol, on the XaW Files travel quest, but it did find Marcel Duchamp and his Readymades. I realised that the relevant images and photos I’d been rebranding greenygrey/greenYgrey; and then POP (PinkyOrangePurple) were like what Duchamp had done a century earlier, in what some people consider the most important artistic contribution of the century. I named mine readYmades, in line with the greenYgrey rebranding!

Jonathan Jones traced Banksy back to Duchamp in an article on MSN today. There is even a link to the Suicidal Tendencies’ Art of Rebellion album cover featuring the Mona Lisa, as Jones cites Duchamp’s drawing on a copy of the Mona Lisa.

A fresh coffilosophy thought now wonders if Suicidal Tendencies knew of Duchamp, and they were referencing him by featuring the Mona Lisa. Are they modern dadaists, protesting against elitism and war in their own LA way… the possibilities are endless..!

I hadn’t connected the railroad tracks image at the top of the blog post to the Banksy-Duchamp article when I started writing this, but now I realise it’s my latest greenYgrey readYmade.

The greenYgrey may have left Earth, but it’s spirit lives on…

I apologise if this blog post has been too long, and it’s been very male. Gwyneth Paltrow was on the news this morning promoting her Goop brand, and she talked and looked great, and many women are capable of great art and deep thinking, as I’ve tried to strongly promote over the last fifteen years of arduous; sometimes fun; creative writing… and editing, which is never really fun, but is rewarding when improving the spontaneous prose and eliminating errors that would have spoilt it.

 

‘Ata Alien’ Mystery Solved? Four New Genetic Mutations Found

The Independent via MSN  reports today that the Atacama body mystery featured in my Valentine’s Day poetry has been solved after research, and it has been proved human.

However, they report ‘The investigation also revealed four genetic mutations presumed to be involved with bone diseases, all of which were previously unknown to science.’

I don’t know that much about it, but could that leave the door open to it being a hybrid? Especially as I read in another article on MSN, about humans, that:

‘Humans are among the least genetically diverse species, mostly because we probably descended from a small group of early humans who lived in East Africa. Population geneticists describe genetic diversity with a measure called “effective population size.” Basically, effective population size is how many people you would need to reproduce the genetic diversity of our full population. For humans, this number is really low and hovers around 15,000 individuals. It is kind of crazy when you consider that actual population size is 7 billion. If compared to mice, some species of them have an effective population size of 733,000.’

So, putting the two articles together with a quick wrIus (writer-genius, wri-ius blending) connection it seems amazing that four new mutations were found in one ‘human’ if we are ‘among the least genetically diverse species.’

Talking of amazing I noticed a new wrIus blending in the fourth paragraph of the ‘Ata’ article: ‘has been the subject of intense speculation among online alien enthusiasts ever since it was revealed to the world.

‘alien enthusiasts’ just leapt out as the blended alienthusiasts!

Space Alien Documentaries

I’m continuing to keep up with space watching Quest at 9pm on a Saturday night. Now they’ve got repeats of NASA’s Unexplained Files on, which isn’t as up-to-date or sensational-as-in-amazing as the UFOs Lost Evidence that premiered last year. I’d now seen most of the cases on YouTube, although they provided more explanation, and sometimes seemed to provide adequate proof, such as space junk.

Highlights from a couple of episodes ago were:

1. three objects seeming to be leaving the Earth, flapping wings; the team reported that corroborated sightings outside their craft by two different teams of Russian cosmonauts in 1984, who were reported as saying they’d seen winged golden angels glowing outside their craft. It reminded me of the Watchers from the Noah movie; I watched it for the first time last Christmas; which are angelic beings in the first testament (but can also be traced to other Middle-East religions/myths, such as the Mesopotamian Apkallu, which had the same ‘handbag’ as Mayans across the Atlantic Ocean, as previously mentioned on my travel25years sister site):

The Creation depiction also had a lot of gYgPOP (greenYgreyPinkyOrangePurple) relevance:

Conducting further research this morning I found this Ancient Aliens documentary series clip, and thought the ‘angels’ depiction was reminiscent of yellow Ys, as in greenYgrey!:

2. ‘noise/music’ heard for nearly an hour on the ‘dark side of the moon’, where/when communication with Earth is lost, by an American Apollo mission. I wondered if Pink Floyd knew before writing Dark Side of the Moon?

The last episode’s highlight was ‘alien life’ bugs brought back from the moon by Apollo 12. The programme’s balanced investigation considered NASA’s explanation that it was contaminated before leaving or after returning to the Earth’s ocean.

I also recently caught up on the Conspiracy Theory programme Area 51 investigation from 2009-2012 on TruTV. You may find it online, but I don’t know about the legality. Corroborating the ‘Ata’ is human findings, it found that the weird sightings in the south-west of the USA were human military and space aircraft or holograms (explanation for Phoenix, Arizona massive craft also featured in my Valentine poem).

I am still open-minded and agnostic about it all, thinking there must be life out there, but not knowing what it is exactly. I had my ant theory about humanity on Earth a long time ago, and concerning space, I think we could be like fish in the ocean to us, seeing other creatures entering our part of the water: a newish little rock pool in a vast expanse of ancient existence.

There’s a lot of people who know a lot more about it than me, including anybody with Discovery Channel and who’s watched all the Ancient Aliens documentaries!

My XaW Files book is a parody comedy, and has nothing much to contribute on the alien space issue, although there is a mysteries theme throughout, mostly focusing on me the writer’s mental process. I became interested in the subject again more from watching new evidence on Quest last year.