down the hatch

At the bottom of the poisoned cup is a graveyard of broken dreams. Poison has been around seemingly forever. The bible is filled episodes since the Fall of poisonous plants and amateur snake handlers testing their mettle and faith against venom. it is even said the Prophet Muhammad ate poison, yet lived on and displayed tremendous energy. The mystic Rasputin was poisoned with wine and tea cakes, but to no effect….It was provocative.In his next to last film Chaplin played Verdoux, a character inspired by a real-life seducer and murderer of wealthy women who operated during WWI, when men were in short supply.

Guardian: The real man, though charming, was clearly evil. But Chaplin, moving him forward in time to the 30s, makes him a victim of the Great Depression – a redundant bank clerk attempting to find any means at his disposal to protect his crippled wife and family by bigamously courting and marrying rich women, securing their property and then returning home with the booty.You could say that, in breaking the taboos of that (or any) society, Verdoux was actually illustrating its hypocrisy: at the time the film was made the millions of war casualties were being thought of as more a consequence of the fight for civilisation than as a painful illustration of the foolishness of power politics.

Image: http://www.toutlecine.com/images/tag/0006/00066795-cigarette.html Read More:http://www.dvdjournal.com/reviews/m/monsieurverdoux.shtml ---his dapper and charming Bluebeard is the paragon of civilized man. He dotes upon his (legitimate) family. He tut-tuts his boy to not be cruel to animals. As he tends his roses (with an incinerator smoking ominously behind the garden) a caterpillar gives him the willies. He dispatches his victims with a painless poison, proof of his generous nature. And he justifies his murderous activities as simply "business," ruthless and above traditional morality, as defined by our morally confused age. Eventually, Verdoux is caught and loses everything, including his wife and son. But then he becomes the accuser, a murderer taught to kill by the society that spawned him. He stands at his trial and — more as Charles Chaplin than a fictitious character — makes a speech indicting the corrupted ethics and power politics of bourgeois society. "Wars, conflict," he says in prison before his execution, "it's all business. One murder makes a villain. Millions a hero. Numbers sanctify."

Perhaps the philosophy behind Monsieur Verdoux, Chaplin’s most pessimistic and gag-free film, was simplistic. But his sarcastic and ironic gravity was astonishing for the time. Eventually, Verdoux, doubling up as Varney, Bonheur and Floray, is caught and loses everything, including his wife and son. But then he becomes the accuser – a murderer taught to kill by the society that spawned him. “Wars, conflict,” he says in prison before his execution, “it’s all business. One murder makes a villain; millions a hero. Numbers sanctify.”

The film, in which Chaplin used sound as effectively as he ever did by dint of a clever if talky screenplay, is not without humour: such as the famous sequence when Verdoux, intent on another murder, falls into the water and is saved by his victim (the gloriously obstreperous Martha Raye, who has already somehow avoided the poison he has made for her).Read More:http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/1999/jul/29/2

Image: http://jestherent.blogspot.com/2008_12_01_archive.html Read More:http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110718/local/man-admits-trying-to-poison-his-wife.376213 ---A 65-year-old man admitted in court today to having poisoned his wife over a number of months with the intent of making her feel unwell. Carmel Farrugia, of Fgura was condemned to an 18-month jail term suspended for four years after he admitted poisoning his wife Anna. The court was told of several instances when the poisoning took place. On one occasion he put bleach on her toothbrush, In other instances, he put a petrol additive in her tea and in other cases he put household chemicals into other drinks. The poisoning took place at their home over several months, the most recent case being last Saturday, when Mrs Farrugia went to the police. Mr Farrugia immediately admitted to the police.---

Le Poison ( Baudelaire )
wine clothes the sordid walls of hovels old
with pomp no palace knows,
evokes long peristyles in pillared rows
from vaporous red and gold;
like sunset with her cloud-built porticoes.
and opium widens all that has no bourn
in its unbounded sea;
moments grow hours, pleasures cease to be
in souls that, overworn,
drown in its black abyss of lethargy.
dread poisons, but more dread the poisoned well
of thy green eyes accurst;
tarns where I watch my trembling soul, reversed
my dreams innumerable
throng to those bitter gulfs to slake their thirst.
dread magic, but thy mouth more dread than these:
its wine and hellebore
burn, floods of Lethe, in my bosom’s core,
till winds of madness seize
and dash me swooning on Death’s barren shore!
ADDENDUM:

CHICAGO (CBS) — A northwest suburban man has pleaded guilty to trying to kill his wife with poison from a puffer fish. Edward F. Bachner IV, of Lake in the Hills, apparently wanted to collect $20 million on the life insurance policy for his wife, Rebecca Bachner. The 2008 federal indictment against Bachner says starting in 2006, he used the alias of Dr. Edmund Backer of EB Strategic Research to purchase four different orders of the deadly puffer fish poison tetrodotoxin from the biochemical manufacturing firm Biotium. The firm sent Bachner four shipments of tetrodotoxin to a Post Office box he used, totaling at least 64 mg in all….The family of a Monroe Township man, whose death in January was attributed to thallium poisoning allegedly administered by his estranged wife, has filed suit against the wife’s employer, Bristol Myers-Squibb, and University Medical Center in Princeton, where the man died.

The suit, filed in Superior Court in Camden last week, charges that Bristol-Myers Squib knew Tianle-Li, Xiaoye Wang’s estranged wife who worked there as a researcher-chemist, should never have been permitted to obtain thallium, a highly toxic heavy metal….

Image: http://www.stardusttrailers.com/scheda_commenti_inserisci.php?id=15553&titolo=I%20Love%20You%20to%20Death Read More: http://www.harrysnews.com/tgWomenWhoKillTooMuch.htm---The film "I Love You to Death" was based on a true story of a woman who tried to kill her husband when she discovered he had been unfaithful. She and her mom tried to poison him, then hired mugger to beat him and shoot him through the head. A fluke led to their being caught and sent to jail. Miraculously, the husband survived. The husband's first response? Soon after he recovered he informed authorities that he would not press charges. His second response? He defended his wife's attempts to kill him. He felt so guilty being sexually unfaithful that he thanked his wife! He then re-proposed to her. She verbally abused him, then accepted.---

…The suit charges the pharmaceutical giant knew Li was volatile and had previously made threats against another employee who obtained a temporary restraining order against her. The complaint charged that the attending doctors at University Medical Center in Princeton, where Wang admitted himself Jan. 14 complaining of virus-like symptoms,

not take Wang seriously when he told them he believed his wife was feeding him poison. As a result, Li was permitted unsupervised access to her husband until the day before his death on Jan. 26, 2011. Authorities said Li, who is charged with Wang’s murder, began feeding him thallium sometime in November 2010 and continued while he was in the hospital….A pensioner who laced his estranged wife’s tea with mercury walked free yesterday….

Read More:http://www.metmuseum.org/Collections/search-the-collections/110000543 ---Painted in 1787 the picture, with its stoic theme, is perhaps David's most perfect Neoclassical statement. The printmaker and publisher John Boydell wrote to Sir Joshua Reynolds that it was "the greatest effort of art since the Sistine Chapel and the stanze of Raphael. . . . This work would have done honour to Athens at the time of Pericles." The subject is loosely based on Plato's "Phaedo," but in painting it David consulted a variety of sources, including Diderot's treatise on dramatic poetry of 1758 and works by the poet André Chenier. The pose of the figure at the foot of the bed was reportedly inspired by a passage in a novel by the English writer Richardson.---

…William Dowling, 69, hoped to win her back by making her ill so that she would need him to care for her, a court heard. His wife Maureen, 64, developed severe headaches, memory loss, indigestion and tingling sensations in her limbs.
She eventually became suspicious after noticing small silver globules floating in her teacup on her regular visits to her husband. Dowling was arrested after police searched his home in Colne, Lancashire, and found a cup a third full of the silver liquid. He pleaded guilty to poisoning his wife and yesterday at Preston Crown Court he was sentenced to 350 days in prison, suspended for two years. Paul Lewis, defending, said his client had only wanted to ‘upset her stomach so that she would feel the need for him to care for her and therefore resurrect the relationship.’…A woman was in police custody last night after her boyfriend unwittingly drank from a cup of coffee that had been laced with rat poison….

Read More:http://pulpsunday.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html

The 44-year-old man was rushed to hospital by ambulance after swallowing some of the poison. Paramedics were called to an address in Manningham, Bradford, early yesterday after he became ill. The medics called in police, who arrested a 26-year-old woman – understood to be the man’s partner. She remained in custody at a Bradford police station for questioning last night. The man was given emergency treatment at Bradford Royal Infirmary but was later discharged as he recovered.It is understood the woman was also treated at hospital for minor effects of the poison. The couple, who live together, are understood to both be regarded as ‘vulnerable’. A police spokesman confirmed officers were called to an address in the Manningham area in the early hours of yesterday to reports of a domestic-related incident.Read More:http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/local/localbrad/9274415.Woman_quizzed_over_rat_poison_in_man_s_coffee/