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Reuben, Reuben

Reuben, Reuben is a 1983 comedy-drama film directed by Robert Ellis Miller and starring Tom Conti, Kelly McGillis (in her film debut), Roberts Blossom, Cynthia Harris, and Joel Fabiani.

The film was adapted by Julius J. Epstein from the 1967 play Spofford by Herman Shumlin, which in turn was adapted from the 1964 novel Reuben, Reuben by Peter De Vries.

The main character in DeVries's novel was based largely on the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas, who was a compulsive womanizer and lifelong alcoholic, finally succumbing to the effects of alcohol poisoning in November 1953, while on a speaking tour in America.

Plot
Gowan McGland (Tom Conti) is a creatively blocked Scottish poet who ekes out a day-to-day existence by exploiting the generosity of strangers in an affluent Connecticut suburb, where he recites his verse to various arts groups and women's clubs. Gowan is something of a leech, cadging expensive dinners from well-off patrons (usually stealing the tips afterward) while seducing their bored wives and affecting a superior attitude toward the smug bourgeois types he exploits.

Although a talented poet, he is a chronic drunk, indifferent to the wounds he can casually inflict with his wit. (When one of Gowan's middle-aged conquests undresses for him, he mutters, "Released from their support, her breasts dropped like hanged men," reducing her to tears.)

Gowan falls in love with a young college student, Geneva Spofford (Kelly McGillis), who has everything to lose from a relationship with a drunken deadbeat poet unable to hold a job. Gowan instigates two ugly incidents that eventually cause their breakup: first, a bar fight from which Geneva rescues him, and later, when he causes a scene in a fancy restaurant where the waiters know he has stolen their tips.

He also suffers an ironic comeuppance from Dr. Jack Haxby (Joel Fabiani). The dentist, after finding out about the poet's affair with his wife, uses the ruse of free dental care for ruining Gowan's smile and forcing him to wear dentures. When Gowan finds out, it is already too late, and the damage is irrevocable. (Gowan fears losing his teeth, equating it with death.)

Gowan prepares to hang himself, but while dictating his last thoughts into a tape recorder, he comes up with some good lines and regains his will to write. Unfortunately, his host's pet dog, an Old English sheepdog named Reuben, comes bounding into the room, causing Gowan to lose his balance before he can undo the noose, turning the aborted suicide into accidental asphyxiation. The film's title comprises Gowan's final words, an unsuccessful attempt to halt the dog.

Critical reception
John Simon of the National Review called Reuben, Reuben "dreadful".

Reuben, Reuben holds a 100% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on seven reviews.

title: Reuben, Reuben


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Talk:Reuben, Reuben

Untitled
Can somebody help me with the plot of this movie? -- Zoe

This film title appears intended to allude to the old children's song of the same title, which has no Wikipedia article. Since there's no such article, a dismbiguation tag at the top seems not the most felicitous course of action—maybe even proscribed by style/policy manuals, etc. I haven't seen the film, so I don't know how one would mention that in the article. Michael Hardy (talk) 20:11, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

I wonder...
How many other movies with a performance that garnered a best actor nomination have never been released on DVD? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.132.254.140 (talk) 02:42, 13 May 2012 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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Talk:Consul

Duplication
Why are there two duplicate articles - Roman Consul and Consul - they should be merged! Mgoodyear (talk) 01:32, 19 September 2008 (UTC)

== Putting a list of all of the Roman Consuls at the end of this article is a Bad Idea. This list must needs be placed in its own article. I've been meaning to do this, but with lack of time (I've been caught up in a nasty fight over another website I contribute to) & my desired goal of having a complete list from 508 BC to at least AD 500 requires a lot more research than I am able to do right now, both have kept me from providing the necessary article. So I've reverted to an older article.

However, the content in the Consul list here needs preserving, so I'm leaving this article complete until I can migrate enough of the content to allow me to delete this redundant 80% -- & make a far shorter article. The problem here is not a need for more material: it's that we have a valuable contribution that needs some migration into a more wieldly format. Please bear with me while I make this happen. -- llywrch 03:01 Jan 13, 2003 (UTC)

Because the complete consul list would be extrememly long (Wikipedia sends up a warning whenever an article is over 32Kb), I've split the list into three parts -- Republican, Early Imperial & Late Imperial. I hope I've split the list in the right places & did not introduce too many errors in the compilation. -- llywrch 00:48 Mar 24, 2003 (UTC)

(Copied from my talk page:)

 * For everybody's info -- The best source (and most authoritative still) for who Romans are and what offices they held is the Prosopographia Imperii Romani (ed. Mommsen et al. IIRC). This should really be the final arbiter, unless there is a more recent and well-argued scholarly source. JHK 17:27 7 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Patricians and plebeians
Reading through Encyclopaedia Britannica's article on Ancient Rome (2003 edition), the authors question the traditional notion of the early Republic's political history as being a gradual struggle for the plebeians to attain equality with the patricians. Specifically to this article, it mentions that about 30 per cent of the consuls prior to 366BC had plebeian names.

Unfortunately the article isn't annotated so I can't tell exactly what their source is; but the most likely sources from the bibliography for the early Republic would appear to be
 * E. Stuart Staveley, "Forschungsbericht: The Constitution of the Roman Republic 1940-1954", Historia, 5:74-122 (1956)
 * E. Stuart Staveley, "The Nature and Aims of the Patriciate", Historia, 32:24-57 (1983)
 * Kurt A. Raaflaub (ed.), Social Struggles in Archaic Rome: New Perspectives on the Conflict of the Orders (1986)
 * Richard E. Mitchell, Patricians and Plebeians: The Origin of the Roman State (1990)

Anyone have any perspective on this, or know scholarship's current opinion on the traditional story of class struggle?Binabik80 02:14, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * Try plebs and Conflict of the Orders. Mitchell's book is pretty much current, growing out of the conference proceedings mentioned at "Conflict". Tim Cornell's book on early Rome is good too, didn't get much chance to sift it into WP before it had to go back to the library, need to get it out again. Stan 13:19, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

 * Okay then, I'm going to add a note to that effect in the article.Binabik80 15:04, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Modern consuls?
I came to this page (the article about Consuls) from a link in an article about someone who served in the diplomatic office of consul in modern times. I'm stunned to see that modern consuls are not even mentioned.

Most countries have appointed consuls in other countries, primarily in port cities and capitals. Their main job is to assist citizens of the appointing country with bureaucratic or commercial difficulties. Formerly, the consuls were also responsible for sending detailed reports on conditions, hence providing a kind of intelligence or news service.

In the early days, sometimes consuls had different titles: some of the 18th and 19th century U.S. Consuls were titled as "Commercial Agent" or "Agent for Commerce and Seamen" (reference to the typical duty of rescuing wayward sailors in foreign lands). The title "Commercial Agent" was used for U.S. Consuls in France at the time that "Consul" was the title of French leaders.

Very often consuls were not citizens of the countries that appointed them; indeed, especially in remote and isolated places, or in times of war or crisis, one person might serve as consul for several countries.

The U.S. has three levels of consul titles: Consul General, Consul, and Vice Consul, depending on the importance of the post. Starting in the 20th century, commonly, more than one Consul or Vice Consul might be appointed to a given city.

The Consular Service merged with the diplomatic functions of the U.S. State Department in 1924, and so most or all U.S. Consuls are career foreign service officers. Previously, there were many political appointees. There was also an odd tendency to appoint famous writers, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne (U.S. Consul in Liverpool, 1853-57) or James Fenimore Cooper (U.S. Consul in Lyon, 1826-28).

Some countries appoint "Honorary Consuls", but I don't know much about this practice. Kestenbaum 19:56, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

 * Actually they are mentioned in the disambiguation notice at the top of the article, pointing to consulate general for article on the modern diplomatic concept of the consulate. It's unfortunate that whoever inserted the link into the article from which you came didn't check to see where it leads; it would be a good idea to go back and disambiguate it for them.  Binabik80 22:51, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

I read...
I read about Roman consuls in the middle ages, circa 1000.--Nixer 12:47, 1 October 2006 (UTC) =='''

If there were Roman consuls in the Middle Ages, could it be that the idea and title of the consuls of the French Republic derives from contemporary models (or from the Holy Roman Empire?) rather than from ancient Rome? Shulgi (talk) 01:07, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

San Marino
Does the office of the two Captains-Regent as heads of state/government in San Marino derive from the Roman consulate? Shulgi (talk) 01:07, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Consul (representative) which might affect this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you.--Neo-Jay (talk) 17:15, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

"Cosol" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Cosol. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 November 13 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. signed,Rosguill talk 18:35, 13 November 2020 (UTC)

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F. Murray Abraham

F. Murray Abraham (born Murray Abraham; October 24, 1939) is an American actor. Known for his roles on stage and screen, he has received an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award as well as nominations for a BAFTA Award, four Emmy Awards, and a Grammy Award. He came to prominence for his portrayal of Antonio Salieri in the drama film Amadeus (1984) for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor.

Abraham made his Broadway debut in the 1968 play The Man in the Glass Booth. He received the Obie Award for Outstanding Performance for his roles in Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya (1984) and William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice (2011). He returned to Broadway in the revival of Terrence McNally's comedy It's Only a Play (2014), receiving a Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play nomination.

He has appeared in many roles, both leading and supporting, in films such as All the President's Men (1976), Scarface (1983), The Name of the Rose (1986), Last Action Hero (1993), Mighty Aphrodite (1995), Dillinger and Capone (1995), Star Trek: Insurrection (1998), Finding Forrester (2000), Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), Isle of Dogs (2018) and How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019).

He was a regular cast member on the Showtime drama series Homeland (2012–2018), which earned him two nominations for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series. He also starred in Mythic Quest (2020–2021), Moon Knight (2022) and The White Lotus (2022), with the latter earning him a nominations for the Golden Globe Award and the Primetime Emmy Award.

Early life and education
Abraham was born Murray Abraham on October 24, 1939, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Fahrid "Fred" Abraham, an automotive mechanic and his wife Josephine (née Stello; April 15, 1915 – March 10, 2012), Murray has described himself as an Italian American and Syrian American.

His father emigrated with his family from Muqlus, Ottoman Syria, a small village in the Valley of the Christians, at age five due to the famine of Mount Lebanon; his paternal grandfather was a priest in the Greek Orthodox Church of Antioch. His mother, one of 14 children, was Italian American and the daughter of an Italian immigrant who worked in the coal mines of Western Pennsylvania. He had two younger brothers, Robert and Jack, who were killed in separate car accidents.

Abraham was raised in El Paso, Texas. Murray and his two younger brothers were altar boys in the St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church in El Paso. He attended Vilas Grammar School, and graduated from El Paso High School in 1958. He was a gang member during his teenage years. In El Paso, Abraham worked in the Farah Clothing factory owned by a Lebanese family before launching a career in acting. He attended Texas Western College (later named University of Texas at El Paso), where he was given the best actor award by Alpha Psi Omega for his portrayal of the Indian Nocona in Comanche Eagle during the 1959–60 season. He attended the University of Texas at Austin, then studied acting under Uta Hagen at HB Studio in New York City. He began his acting career on the stage, debuting in a Los Angeles production of Ray Bradbury's The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit.

Abraham added "F." to his stage name in honor of his father Fahrid. He has stated that "Murray Abraham just doesn't seem to say anything. It just is another name, so I thought I'd frame it".

1971–1978: Early roles
Abraham made his screen debut as an usher in the George C. Scott comedy They Might Be Giants (1971). He can be seen as one of the undercover police officers along with Al Pacino in Sidney Lumet's Serpico (1973) and in television roles including the bad guy in one fourth-season episode of Kojak ("The Godson"). His early film roles include small parts as a cabdriver in the theatrical version of Neil Simon's The Prisoner of Second Avenue (1975), a mechanic in the theatrical version of Simon's The Sunshine Boys (1975). He also played a police officer in the Alan J. Pakula Watergate film All the President's Men (1976), and acted in the comedy films The Ritz (1976) opposite Rita Moreno and The Big Fix (1978) alongside Richard Dreyfuss.

By the mid-1970s, he also had steady employment doing commercials and voice-overs. Most notably, he played "the leaf", one of four costumed characters, in television and print commercials for Fruit of the Loom underwear. In 1978, he gave up this work. Frustrated with the lack of substantial roles, he said: "No one was taking my acting seriously. I figured if I didn't do it, then I'd have no right to the dreams I've always had." His wife, Kate Hannan, went to work as an assistant and Abraham became a "house husband". As he described it: "I cooked and cleaned and took care of the kids. It was very rough on my macho idea of life. But it was the best thing that ever happened to me."

1983–1986: Breakthrough and acclaim
Abraham gained greater prominence when he appeared as drug dealer Omar Suárez in the gangster film Scarface (1983). Then, in 1984, he played envious composer Antonio Salieri in the Academy Award for Best Picture-winning Amadeus (1984), directed by Miloš Forman. Abraham won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role, an award for which his co-star in the film Tom Hulce, playing Mozart, had also been nominated. He also won a Golden Globe Award, among other awards and his role in the film remains his most famous.

Abraham's relatively low-profile film career subsequent to his Academy Award win has been considered an example of the "Oscar jinx." According to film critic Leonard Maltin, professional failure following an early success is referred to in Hollywood circles as the "F. Murray Abraham syndrome." Abraham rejected this notion and told Maltin, "The Oscar is the single most important event of my career. I have dined with kings, shared equal billing with my idols, lectured at Harvard and Columbia. If this is a jinx, I'll take two." In the same interview, Abraham said, "Even though I won the Oscar, I can still take the subway in New York, and nobody recognizes me. Some actors might find that disconcerting, but I find it refreshing."

Abraham also joined The Mirror Theater Ltd's Mirror Repertory Company in 1984. He joined MRC the week after winning his Oscar for Best Actor for his work in Amadeus because he wanted to work with MRC Artist-in-Residence Geraldine Page (to whom he would eventually present her own Academy Award the following year) and would star opposite her in MRC's The Madwoman of Chaillot.

Since Amadeus, he mainly focused on classical theater and has starred in many Shakespearean productions such as Othello and Richard III. He was highlighted in many other plays by the likes of Samuel Beckett and Gilbert and Sullivan and played the lead in Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya (for which he received an Obie Award). His next film role was in The Name of the Rose (1986), in which he played Bernardo Gui, nemesis to Sean Connery's William of Baskerville. In its DVD commentary, the director of the film, Jean-Jacques Annaud, described Abraham as an "egomaniac" on the set, who considered himself more important than Sean Connery because Connery did not have an Oscar. Despite the on-set tensions, the film was a critical and commercial success.

1989–1998: Established actor
After the release of The Name of the Rose, Abraham tired of appearing as villains and wanted to return to his background in comedy. From May 10 through July 14, 1991, Abraham portrayed King Lear in American Repertory Theater's (A.R.T.) production of King Lear, directed by Adrian Hall, Cambridge, MA. In 1994, Abraham portrayed Roy Cohn in the first Broadway production of Tony Kushner's Angels in America at the Walter Kerr Theater, replacing Ron Leibman in the role.

Over the next decade or so, Abraham had fewer prominent roles, but he did have substantial supporting roles in Peter Yates' An Innocent Man (1989), Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite (1995), Ahdar Ru'afo in Star Trek: Insurrection (1998) and Gus Van Sant's Finding Forrester (2000), where he again played the nemesis to Connery. He had a significant role in Brian De Palma's adaptation of The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990), but chose not to be credited due to a contract dispute. He continued his association with classical music by narrating the plot summaries of the operas of Wagner's Ring Cycle in the 1990 PBS broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera, to the largest viewing audience of the Ring Cycle in history, conducted by James Levine.

In the 1997/98 Broadway season, he starred in the new chamber musical Triumph of Love opposite Betty Buckley, based on Marivaux's classic comedy. The production did not find a large audience, running 85 performances after its pre-opening preview period. He has also taught theater at Brooklyn College.

2000–present: Career resurgence
A 2009 guest appearance on Saving Grace began a new phase of Abraham's career, wherein he has become gradually more prolific onscreen. Further guest appearances include roles on Law & Order: Criminal Intent, Louie and Curb Your Enthusiasm as well as a recurring role on The Good Wife between 2011 and 2014. Additionally, Abraham was the primary narrator for the PBS series Nature between 2007 and 2010, narrating 32 episodes (plus one more in 2013). Abraham's most notable television role came about through Showtime's drama series Homeland, in which he portrayed black ops specialist Dar Adal. This role resulted in his first Emmy Award nomination in 2015, followed by a second in 2018.

Abraham has focused on stage work throughout his career, giving notable performances as Pozzo in Mike Nichols's production of Waiting for Godot, Malvolio in Twelfth Night for the New York Shakespeare Festival and Shylock in The Merchant of Venice for the Off-Broadway Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA) in March 2007, which was performed at the Duke Theater in New York and also at the Swan Theater, part of the Royal Shakespeare Company. He reprised this role in February 2011, when he replaced Al Pacino in the Public Theater's production.

In the 2010s, he featured prominently in two widely acclaimed films: first as folk music impresario Bud Grossman in the Coen brothers' drama Inside Llewyn Davis (2013), then as the mysterious Mr. Moustafa in Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). He was nominated along with the ensemble for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture for the later. That same year he returned to Broadway portraying Ira Drew in the revival of Terrence McNally's comedic play It's Only a Play. Abraham starred alongside Nathan Lane, Matthew Broderick, Stockard Channing, and Rupert Grint. For his performance he earned a nomination for the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play. In 2016, he played the title role in Classic Stage Company's production of Nathan the Wise.

He reunited with Wes Anderson voicing a role in stop-motion animated film Isle of Dogs (2018), voiced Grimmel in DreamWorks' How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (2019), and played Tony in the Disney+ 2019 live-action Lady and the Tramp. From 2020 to 2021 he acted in the Apple TV+ comedy series Mythic Quest. In 2022 he was fired after being accused of inappropriate behavior while on set. In a response statement, Abraham apologized and stated that he never intended "to offend anyone, I told jokes, nothing more, that upset some of my colleagues and as a result lost a great job with wonderful people." In February 2022, it was revealed that Abraham would be voicing Khonshu in the superhero limited series Moon Knight, set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. He starred in the 2022 film adaptation of The Magic Flute based on the opera of the same name. That same year he played Dr. Carl Withers in the Netflix series Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities (2022). In 2023 he portrayed Judge John Sirica in the HBO political drama limited series White House Plumbers.

Murray acted in the HBO series The White Lotus: Sicily (2022) playing the elderly and gregarious grandfather Bert Di Grasso, earning nominations for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film and the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series. Also in 2023 he acted in the film Mother, Couch alongside Ewan McGregor, Taylor Russell, and Ellen Burstyn. The film is premiered at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. In 2024 it was announced that Abraham would return to the stage as David Siegel in the Stephen Schwartz musical The Queen of Versailles starring Kristin Chenoweth at the Emerson Colonial Theatre in Boston.

Marriage
Abraham was married to Kate Hannan for 60 years (1962–2022) until her death on November 19, 2022. At that time, they had two children and one grandchild.

In 1993, while filming the movie Surviving the Game in rural Washington state, Abraham was involved in a car crash in which another driver was killed, while Abraham was injured. In January 2010, Abraham scuffled with a thief in the dressing room area during a public rehearsal at the Classic Stage Company in New York City.

Religious beliefs
Abraham has spoken about his faith: "I've attended many churches. I grew up as an Orthodox Christian and I was an altar boy. I love the Society of Friends, the Quakers. I attended their meetings for almost fifteen years. I'm now [in 2008] attending the First Presbyterian Church of New York because they're such a generous, terrific church with outreach. They reach out to old people, to homeless, to A.A., to cross-dressers: it's truly a church of the teachings of Christ. Religion is essential to my life."

Acting credits and accolades
Abraham received an Academy Award and Golden Globe Award for his performance in Amadeus (1984). He also received a British Academy Film Award nomination for his performance. He has also received a Grammy Award and two Primetime Emmy Award nominations. He has earned three Screen Actors Guild Award nominations with the ensemble casts of Homeland and The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014). He has earned two Obie Awards for his work in theater for his performances in Uncle Vanya (1984) and The Merchant of Venice (2011).

In July 2004, during a ceremony in Rome, he was awarded the "Premio per gli Italiani nel Mondo". This is a prize distributed by the Marzio Tremaglia foundation and the Italian government to Italian emigrants and their descendants who have distinguished themselves abroad. In 2009, he was recognized by the Alumni Association of the City College of New York with John H. Finley Award in recognition of exemplary dedicated service to the City of New York. In 2010, Abraham was the recipient of The Gielgud Award (Theater) for that year. In 2015, Abraham was an inductee to the American Theater Hall of Fame. He also has an honorary doctorate from Rider University in Lawrenceville, New Jersey.

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Prime Minister of Northern Ireland

The prime minister of Northern Ireland was the head of the Government of Northern Ireland between 1921 and 1972. No such office was provided for in the Government of Ireland Act 1920; however, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, as with governors-general in other Westminster systems such as in Canada, chose to appoint someone to head the executive even though no such post existed in statute law. The office-holder assumed the title prime minister to draw parallels with the prime minister of the United Kingdom. On the advice of the new prime minister, the lord lieutenant then created the Department of the Prime Minister. The office of Prime Minister of Northern Ireland was suspended in 1972 and then abolished in 1973, along with the contemporary government, when direct rule of Northern Ireland was transferred to London.

The Government of Ireland Act provided for the appointment of the executive committee of the Privy Council of Northern Ireland by the governor. No parliamentary vote was required. Nor, theoretically, was the executive committee and its prime minister responsible to the House of Commons of Northern Ireland. In reality the governor chose the leader of the party with a majority in the House to form a government. On each occasion this was the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party; such was the UUP's electoral dominance using both a simple plurality and for the first two elections, a proportional electoral system. All prime ministers of Northern Ireland were members of the Orange Order.

The prime minister's residence from 1920 until 1922 was Cabin Hill, later to become the junior school for Campbell College. After 1922 Stormont Castle was used, though some prime ministers chose to live in Stormont House, the unused residence of the Speaker of the House of Commons of Northern Ireland.

The new offices of first minister and deputy first minister were created by the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. In contrast with the Westminster-style system of the earlier Stormont government, the new Northern Ireland Executive operates on the principles of consociational democracy.

In 1974, Brian Faulkner was chosen to lead the Northern Ireland Executive not as Prime Minister of Northern Ireland but as Chief Executive of Northern Ireland.

Parliamentary Secretary, Department of the Prime Minister

 * 1921–1929 The 12th Viscount Massereene
 * 1929–1930 The 6th Viscount Bangor
 * 1930–1941 Senator John Andrew Long
 * 1941–1948 Sir Joseph Davison
 * 1948–1960 Senator William Moore Wallis Clark
 * 1960–1970 Senator Daniel McGladdery
 * 1970–1972 Captain John Brooke, M.P.

Additional Parliamentary Secretary, Department of the Prime Minister

 * 1969 Bob Simpson

title: Prime Minister of Northern Ireland


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Starman (film)

Starman is a 1984 American science fiction romance drama film directed by John Carpenter that tells the story of a non-corporeal alien who has come to Earth and cloned a human body (portrayed by Jeff Bridges) in response to the invitation found on the gold phonograph record installed on the Voyager 2 space probe. The original screenplay was written by Bruce A. Evans and Raynold Gideon, with Dean Riesner making uncredited re-writes.

The film received positive reviews but faltered in its initial box office debut. Bridges was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role. It inspired the short-lived Starman television series in 1986.

Plot

 * "Starman is a love story. It's It Happened One Night.— John Carpenter

The Voyager 2 space probe, launched in 1977, carries a gold phonographic disc with a message of peace, inviting alien civilizations to visit Earth. The probe is intercepted by an alien planet, which then sends a small scout vessel to establish first contact with Earth. Instead of greeting the alien craft, the U.S. government shoots it down. Crashing in Chequamegon Bay, Wisconsin, the lone alien occupant, looking like a floating ball of glowing energy, finds the home of recently widowed Jenny Hayden. The alien uses a lock of hair from her deceased husband, Scott, to clone a body for himself as Jenny watches in terror. The alien "Starman" has seven small silver spheres with him which provide energy to perform miraculous feats. He uses the first to send a message to his people stating that Earth is hostile and his spacecraft has been destroyed. He arranges to rendezvous with them in three days' time. He then uses the second sphere in self-defense and the third to create a holographic map of the United States, coercing Jenny into taking him to the rendezvous in Arizona.

Initially hostile to and frightened of him, Jenny attempts to escape. Having a very basic understanding of the English language from the Voyager 2 disk, the Starman learns to communicate with Jenny and assures her that he means no harm. He explains that if he does not reach the rendezvous point, Arizona's Barringer Crater, in three days, he will die. Sympathetic but still wary, Jenny teaches him how to drive a car and use credit cards, so he can continue the journey alone. When he resurrects a dead deer, she is deeply moved and decides to stay with him. The authorities pursue the pair across the country. A police officer shoots and critically wounds Jenny. To escape, the Starman crashes their car into a gas tanker and uses another sphere to protect them from the explosion. They take refuge in a mobile home that is being towed. He uses another silver sphere to heal Jenny. After being assured that Jenny will recover, he proceeds to hitchhike toward Arizona without her, but Jenny manages to catch up to him while he and his driver are stopped at a roadblock. Reunited, they hitchhike together, resuming their journey towards the crater.

Later, while stowing away on a railroad boxcar, an intimate relationship ensues. The Starman tells Jenny, "I gave you a baby tonight." Jenny explains that she is infertile and cannot have children, but he assures her that she is pregnant. He explains that Scott is the posthumous father, as Starman used Scott's DNA to clone himself. As a child also of Starman, their son will possess all the Starman's knowledge and will grow up to be a teacher. Starman offers to stop the pregnancy if she wishes, but Jenny joyfully embraces him, accepting the gift. They accidentally travel too far on the train and arrive in Las Vegas. Jenny loses her wallet. The Starman uses one of their last quarters in a slot machine, which he manipulates to win the $500,000 jackpot. They buy a Cadillac to complete their journey to Arizona.

National Security Agency director George Fox learns that the Starman's flight trajectory, prior to being shot down, was to the Barringer Crater and arranges to have the Army capture the Starman, dead or alive. SETI scientist Mark Shermin, another government official involved in the case, criticizes Fox's heavy-handed approach and reminds him that the Starman was invited to Earth. Appalled to learn that Fox is planning to vivisect the alien, Shermin then resolves to help the Starman escape rather than let Fox capture him.

Jenny and the slowly dying Starman reach the crater as Army helicopters pursue them. Just as they are surrounded, a large, spherical spaceship appears and descends into the crater. Light surrounds the couple and the Starman is fully healed immediately. As he prepares to leave, he tells Jenny he will never see her again. Jenny asks him to take her with him, but he says she would die on his world. He then gives her his last silver sphere, telling her that their son will know what to do with it. Jenny watches as the ship departs.

Production
Starman spent five years in development at Columbia. The original script by Bruce A. Evans and Raynold Gideon was purchased by the studio at the urging of executive producer Michael Douglas, shortly before it optioned Steven Spielberg's Night Skies. Screenwriter Dean Riesner came onto the project in late 1981 after director Mark Rydell left the project due to artistic differences with Douglas. Riesner worked on seven rewrites of Starman with six different directors, but did not receive screen credit because, according to him, "the Writers Guild, in their infinite wisdom, decided I didn't contribute 50 percent of the screenplay." Other uncredited writers who worked on the script were Edward Zwick and Diane Thomas. Columbia abandoned Night Skies, with a similar plot to Starman, on the grounds that it is a more Disney-like story aimed at children, whereas Starman was for a more mature audience. Night Skies was eventually retitled E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, which became the highest-grossing film of its time, upon which Riesner commented, "Goes to show how wrong you can be in this business."

According to Riesner, producers at Columbia were concerned at the initial box office returns for E.T., because Starman (while Riesner was working its second rewrite) was too similar. Adrian Lyne had briefly worked on the project before departing to direct Flashdance for Paramount. He was replaced by John Badham, who then left to direct WarGames as soon as he saw E.T., and concurred that the two projects were too similar. Riesner was charged with keeping Starman essentially the same while making it distinct from E.T, and would work with three subsequent directors: Tony Scott, Peter Hyams, and John Carpenter. Whereas Scott was more interested in style than narrative drive and wanted to cast Philip Anglim, and Hyams pushed for a more conventional science fiction approach, Carpenter, who was eager to shed his image as a maker of exploitative thrillers, wished to emphasize the cross-country rapport that develops between the two leads, as in The Defiant Ones, The 39 Steps, and It Happened One Night over special effects. Riesner dropped the "heavy political implications" from the script to comply with this.

Parts of the film were shot in Tennessee, Iowa, Arizona, Nevada, and Monument Valley, Utah.

Box office
Starman grossed $2.9 million in its opening weekend, debuting at number 6. It was released the same week as David Lynch's film Dune and one week after the release of Peter Hyams's film 2010: The Year We Make Contact. The film grossed a total of $28.7 million from its domestic run.

Critical response
The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of 86% based on 35 reviews, with an average rating of 6.9/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "What initially begins as sci-fi transforms into a surprisingly sweet, offbeat drama, courtesy of John Carpenter's careful direction." The aggregator Metacritic gives the film a score of 71 out of 100, based on seven critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".

Roger Ebert gave the film three stars out of four and wrote "Starman contains the potential to be a very silly movie, but the two actors have so much sympathy for their characters that the movie, advertised as space fiction, turns into one of 1984's more touching love stories." In a highly positive review praising the film along with its actors and director, Janet Maslin stated "If Starman doesn't make a major difference in Jeff Bridges's career, Mr. Bridges is operating in the wrong galaxy." Duane Byrge wrote for The Hollywood Reporter that the film had "an amusing and appealing storyline" and a "winning performance" by Jeff Bridges, describing it as "an often on-target look at current American culture". However, he found the script "one-dimensional in certain plotting aspects, especially in regard to the single-minded military forces", but praised it for "an uplifting and humane message" and Carpenter for "fluid storytelling", and commended the "evocative score and the special visual effects" as "first-rate".

Mark Harrison wrote for Den of Geek that it was "a classic sci-fi date movie" and "not only an outlier in [Carpenter's] body of work but also an inarguable product of his direction". According to Harrison, Carpenter had taken "a potential E.T. knock-off and turned it into a modern spin on a more classical Hollywood genre", and praised it for a "canny reversal of gender roles" where "Bridges is the naïve ingenue who knows nothing about the world (or our world, anyway) and Allen is the more cynical character who is pulled into a cross-country adventure with him." He added "the film really lives or dies on the chemistry of the leads. Fortunately, Bridges and Allen are both on spectacular form here", believing that Karen Allen's portrayal "might be her best ever performance." He concluded that "Starman is a bittersweet, genre-bending date movie that really ought to be celebrated as one of the more lovable entries in the John Carpenter canon."

Alan Jones awarded it four stars out of five for Radio Times, arguing that "John Carpenter's religious sci-fi parable has as much heart and emotion as it does special effects, and gives Oscar-nominated Jeff Bridges a real chance to stretch his acting talent." He described it as "funny, suspenseful and moving" and concluded that "this engaging space odyssey is one of Carpenter's best efforts." Halliwell's Film Guide was less positive, describing it as a "derivative but eccentric science-fiction fantasy with lapses of narrative and a general attempt to make the love story predominant over the hardware". The review by Time Out called it "a rather lame sci-fi love story" which "lacks the drive, energy and surprise which one associates with Carpenter." It continued "The best special effects are in the first five minutes. Thereafter, it's all rather predictable. The normally excellent Bridges shuffles his way through a robotic performance as though he's just been unplugged, and the film's (very) basic gag – his naïve response to what he experiences – wears thin pretty quick." Colin Greenland reviewed Starman for Imagine magazine, and stated that it "starts well, with engaging performances from Karen Allen as the woman trying not to go crazy and Jeff Bridges as the man in the borrowed body. But then director John Carpenter changes his mind, and turns it into an irritatingly soft-headed love story. What a waste of a promising idea."

Awards and honors
Jeff Bridges was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor, making Starman the only film by John Carpenter to receive an Academy Award nomination. Bridges was also nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Drama and was awarded the Saturn Award for Best Actor. Karen Allen also received a nod for Best Actress from the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films. The film itself was nominated Best Science Fiction Film. Jack Nitzsche received a Golden Globe nomination for his score.

The film was nominated for, but does not appear on the following lists:
 * 2002: AFI's 100 Years...100 Passions – Nominated
 * 2008: AFI's 10 Top 10: Nominated Science Fiction Film

Soundtrack
The soundtrack to Starman was released on December 14, 1984. The album also contains a rendition of "All I Have to Do Is Dream" performed by stars Jeff Bridges and Karen Allen.

Home media
The film was released on Blu-ray on August 11, 2009. A collector's edition reissue would later be released on December 18, 2018 by Shout Factory.

Remake
In April 2016, The Hollywood Reporter reported that Shawn Levy would direct and produce a remake written by Arash Amel. Michael Douglas, who was a producer of the original, was also on board to produce, while Dan Cohen and Robert Mitas were executive producing, and Matt Milam and Adam North were overseeing the project for Columbia. In 2021, Levy declared the remake to be improbable, as he could not find a good draft that was worthy of adaptation.

In popular culture
The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra covered "Starman Leaves (End Title)" for their 2005 cover compilation album, The Science Fiction Album. The 2010 single "Symphonies" by Dan Black, and its remix featuring Kid Cudi, sampled CoPPO's cover of the song. At the end of the music video the lead character is beamed away by a bright circular spaceship, similar to the manner in which the Starman from the film departs Earth. The music video itself contains scenes which pay homage to several Jeff Bridges films, including Tron and King Kong.

title: Starman (film)


text: Talk:Political culture of Canada

title: Talk:Political culture of Canada


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Under the Volcano

Under the Volcano is a novel by English writer Malcolm Lowry (1909–1957) published in 1947. The novel tells the story of Geoffrey Firmin, an alcoholic British consul in the Mexican city of Quauhnahuac, on the Day of the Dead in November 1938. The book takes its name from the two volcanoes, Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl, that overshadow Quauhnahuac and the characters. Under the Volcano was Lowry's second and last complete novel.

The novel was adapted for radio on Studio One in 1947 but had gone out of print by the time Lowry died in 1957. In 1984, it served as the basis of a film of the same name that restored its popularity. In 1998, Modern Library ranked Under the Volcano at number 11 on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. It was included also in Le Mondes 100 Books of the Century, Times All-Time 100 Novels, and Anthony Burgess' Ninety-Nine Novels: The Best in English Since 1939.

Genesis and publication history
Lowry had already published one novel, Ultramarine (1933), by the time he was working on Under the Volcano, and in 1936 wrote a short story called "Under the Volcano" containing the kernel of the future novel. That story was not published until the 1960s; passages of it are found also in the account of Sigbjorn Wilderness, found in Dark as the Grave Wherein my Friend Is Laid, edited by Margerie Bonner (Lowry's second wife) and published in 1968. It contains what Conrad Aiken would later call "the horse theme," so important in Under the Volcano. The story includes the horse branded with the number seven, the dying Indian encountered while on a bus trip, the pelado who steals the Indian's money to pay his bus fare, and the inability of the spectator (Wilderness in the short story, the Consul in the novel) to act. All this ended up in the novel's eighth chapter.

The first version of the novel was developed while Lowry lived in Mexico, frequently drunk and out of control while his first marriage was breaking up. In 1940, Lowry hired an agent, Harold Matson, to find a publisher for the manuscript but found nothing but rejection—this manuscript is referred to by scholars as the 1940 version, and differs in details of various significance from the published version. Between 1940 and 1944, Lowry revised the novel (with significant editorial assistance from Margerie Bonner), a process which occupied him completely: during those years Lowry, who had been wont to work on many projects at the same time, worked on nothing but the manuscript, a process documented exhaustively by Frederick Asals. One of the most significant changes involved Yvonne's character: In earlier versions she was the Consul's daughter, but, by 1940, she was his unfaithful wife. In that version (and a 1941 revision), chapter 11 ended with her and Hugh making love.

In 1944, the manuscript was nearly lost in a fire at the Lowrys' cabin in Dollarton, British Columbia. Margerie Bonner rescued the unfinished novel, but all of Lowry's other works in progress were lost in the blaze. The burned manuscript was called In Ballast to the White Sea, and would have been the third book in a trilogy made up of Under the Volcano, an expanded version of Lunar Caustic, and In Ballast. Like Dante's Divine Comedy, these were to be infernal, purgatorial, and paradisal, respectively. Asals notes that the important 1944 revision evidences Lowry and Bonner paying extraordinary attention to references to fire in the novel, especially in Yvonne's dream before her death.

The novel was finished in 1945 and immediately sent to different publishers. In late winter, while travelling in Mexico, Lowry learned the novel had been accepted by two publishing companies: Reynal & Hitchcock in the United States and Jonathan Cape in the United Kingdom. Following critical reports from two readers, Cape had reservations about publishing and wrote to Lowry on 29 November 1945 asking him to make drastic revisions, though he added that if Lowry didn't make the revisions "it does not necessarily mean I would say no". Lowry's lengthy reply, dated 2 January 1946, was a passionate defence of the book in which he sensed he had created a work of lasting greatness: "Whether it sells or not seems to me either way a risk. But there is something about the destiny of the creation of the book that seems to tell me it just might go on selling a very long time." The letter includes a detailed summary of the book's key themes and how the author intended each of the 12 chapters to work; in the end, Cape published the novel without further revision.

Under the Volcano and Ultramarine were both out of print by the time Lowry died of alcoholism (and possibly sleeping pills) in 1957, but the novel has since made a comeback. In 1998, it was rated as number 11 on the list of the 100 best novels of the 20th century compiled by the Modern Library. TIME included the novel in its list of "100 best English-language novels from 1923 to the present," calling it a "vertiginous picture of self-destruction, seen through the eyes of a man still lucid enough to report to us all the harrowing particulars."

Structure and plot
The book consists of twelve chapters, the first of which introduces the narrative proper and which is set exactly a year after the events. The following eleven chapters happen in a single day and follow the Consul chronologically, starting early on the morning of the Day of the Dead with the return of his wife, Yvonne, who left him the year before, to his violent death at the end of the day. In contrast with the omniscient narrative mode of the 1940 version, the published novel "focus[es] each chapter through the mind of one central figure, no two sequential chapters employing the same character's consciousness".

The number of chapters was important numerologically, as Lowry explained in a letter to Jonathan Cape: there are twelve hours in a day (and most of the novel happens in a single day), twelve months in a year (one year elapses between chapter 1 and the end of chapter 12). Besides, the number 12 is of symbolic importance in the Kabbalah which, according to Lowry, represents "man's spiritual aspirations". Finally, "I have to have my 12", Lowry says, since he hears in it "a clock slowly striking midnight for Faust".

Chapter 1
In the first chapter, set on 2 November 1939, Jacques Laruelle and Dr. Vigil drink anisette at the Hotel Casino de la Selva, on a hill above Quauhnahuac (an approximation of the Nahuatl name of Cuernavaca), and reminisce on the Consul's presence, exactly a year ago. His alcoholism is discussed and his unhappy marriage; that his wife came back to him is remarked upon as particularly striking. Their conversation over (they are to meet later again that night at a party), Laruelle walks down from the hotel into town through the ruins of a palace of Archduke Maximilian. Along the way he remembers spending a season with the Consul: Laruelle's family and the Consul's adopted family (the Taskersons, consisting of a poetic-minded patriarch and a set of hard-drinking sons) rented adjoining summer homes on the English Channel. Afterward Laruelle spent some time with the Taskersons in England but the friendship soon petered out.

Laruelle is scheduled to leave Quauhnahuac the next day, but has not yet packed and does not want to go home, spending his time instead at the Cervecería XX, a bar connected to the local cinema, run by Sr. Bustamente. At that bar, he is given a book he had borrowed a year and a half before from the Consul—an anthology of Elizabethan plays he had meant to use for a film on the Faustus myth. Playing a variation on Sortes virgilianae, his eyes fall on the closing words of the chorus in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, "Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight...", then finds a desperate letter by the Consul to Yvonne, a final plea for her to return, interspersed with descriptions of alcoholic stupor and delirium tremens. Laruelle burns the letter. A bell outside sounds dolente, delor symbolising the closing of the chapter.

Chapter 2
Chapter 2 finds the Consul sitting at the bar of the Bella Vista hotel in Quauhnahuac at 7:00am on 2 November 1938, drinking whisky the morning after the Red Cross ball, when Yvonne enters. The Consul has not been home yet and isn't wearing any socks (as is explained later, his alcoholism is so advanced he cannot put them on). Yvonne has returned to try and save their marriage, but the Consul appears stuck in the past and begins to talk about his visit to Oaxaca, where he went on a drinking binge after Yvonne left. In interior monologue Yvonne wonders if the Consul will be able to return from "this stupid darkness". The chapter had opened with an exclamation about a child's corpse being transported by train; the Consul explains that in such cases in Mexico the dead child always needs to be accompanied by an adult, leading to a reference to William Blackstone, "the man who went to live among the Indians", a reference the Consul will repeat later on in the day.

Yvonne and the Consul leave the hotel and walk through town, along the Palace of Cortés, Cuernavaca; they stop at a printer's shop window, their attention drawn by a photograph of a boulder split in two by the elements, an image Yvonne immediately recognises as emblematic of her marriage. On the way to their house in the Calle Nicaragua they stop at Jacques Laruelle's "bizarre" house, with the inscription No se puede vivir sin amar ("one cannot live without loving") on the wall, and Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl come into view. The Consul tells Yvonne that Hugh is staying with him as well and is expected back from a trip this very day. As they enter the garden of their house a pariah dog follows them in.

Chapter 3
Yvonne inspects the garden, which has fallen into chaos while she was away, and the Consul is making an attempt to keep up the appearance that he is dealing with his drinking problem. Throughout the chapter, hallucinations, memories, and imaginary conversations interrupt his train of thought, and he hears voices that alternately tell him all is lost and that there is still hope. Dr. Vigil had prescribed him a strychnine concoction which the Consul sips from continuously, all the while trying to resist the temptation to drink whisky. While Yvonne is in the bathroom, however, he leaves the house to visit a cantina but falls facedown in the street, passed out, and is almost run over by an English driver in an MG Magna who offers him Burke's whisky from a flask. While unconscious, memories of Hugh return to him, particularly his having forced Yvonne on him. Back at the house, he enters Yvonne's bedroom but their conversation is halted, in part by the temptation of the bottle of Johnnie Walker he knows is on the patio and in part by hallucinations. An unsuccessful attempt at making love to her establishes his impotence and his despair; afterward, while Yvonne is crying in her room, he murmurs "I love you" to his bottle of whisky and falls asleep.

Chapter 4
Much of the chapter takes Hugh's point of view. Hugh arrives at his brother's home and it's understood that he's not wearing any of his own clothes. Because his clothes have been impounded, he wears his brother's jacket, shirt, and bag. He stores his news dispatch in his brother's jacket. References to the Battle of the Ebro are found throughout the chapter, as are mentions of Hugh's friend Juan Cerillo, a Mexican who was in Spain with Hugh. Hugh sees Yvonne at the Consul's home; it's obvious that she has some hold on his heart. In fact, an affair between the two is alluded to in the chapter. While the Consul is sleeping, Hugh and Yvonne rent horses and ride through the countryside, stopping at a brewery and then at the country estate of Archduke Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, haunted by the memory of Maximilian and his consort Carlota, and of the Consul and Yvonne in happier times.

Chapter 5
While Hugh and Yvonne are out, the Consul endures a "horripilating" hangover. The chapter begins with a vision of a man suffering unquenchable thirst; while the Consul inspects his garden (the Garden of Eden is referenced throughout, and a snake crosses his path) he finds a bottle of tequila he had hidden, and sees a newly placed sign: LE GUSTA ESTE JARDIN? QUE ES SUYO? EVITE QUE SUS HIJOS LO DESTRUYAN! He mistranslates this as "You like this garden? Why is it yours? We evict those who destroy!" As he is getting more drunk he has visions of the Farolito, a bar in Parian. He engages his American neighbour, Mr. Quincey, in conversation. Quincey obviously disdains the drunk Consul, who speaks of the Garden of Eden and proposes that perhaps Adam's punishment was to continue to live in the Garden of Eden, alone, "cut off from God". Vigil (also hungover from the Red Cross ball) visits Quincey; he carries a newspaper with headlines of the Battle of the Ebro and the sickness of Pope Pius XI. He then visits the Consul, telling him to stay away from mescal and tequila. Hugh and Yvonne return, and the Consul wakes up from a black-out in the bathroom, slowly remembering the strained conversation during which it is decided that rather than accept Vigil's offer of a day trip to Guanajuato they will go to Tomalin, near Parian.

Chapter 6
Hugh ruminates upon his career as sailor, journalist, and musician, while smoking a cigar. He imagines himself to be a traitor to his "journalist friends", somehow responsible for the Ebro, and comparable to Adolf Hitler as "another frustrated artist" and anti-semite. It is revealed that Hugh's signing aboard the S.S. Philoctetes was intended as a publicity stunt to promote his songs, which are to be printed by a Jewish publisher named Bolowski. Doubting his choice, Hugh attempts to escape his journey to sea but is thwarted by the Consul, who wires words of support for Hugh's choice to their aunt. Hugh remembers his time aboard the Philoctetes and, later, the Oedipus Tyrannus, revealing his naivete and bigotry. Back in England, Hugh finds that Bolowski has made "No effort [...] to distribute [Hugh's songs]". It is further revealed that Hugh cuckolds Bolowski, who raises charges of plagiarism against Hugh. Later, Bolowski drops the charges. Once again in the present, Hugh shaves the Consul, who is suffering from delirium tremens. The two men discuss literature and the occult; their discussion is intermingled with Hugh's ongoing inner monologue. At the end of the chapter, Hugh, Yvonne, the Consul, and Laruelle make their way to Laruelle's home. On the way, the Consul receives a postcard from Yvonne, which she wrote the year before, days after she left him, and which has travelled around the world before reaching Quauhnahuac.

Chapter 7
The four arrive at Jacques Laruelle's home, which features two towers that the Consul compares to both Gothic battlements and the camouflaged smokestacks of the Samaritan. Hugh, Yvonne, and the Consul go upstairs, where the Consul simultaneously struggles to resist drinking and look for his copy of Eight Famous Elizabethan Plays. Yvonne wants to leave from the start, and she soon suggests going to the fiesta before they board the bus to Tomalin. The Consul stays behind as Hugh and Yvonne leave; once the two are gone, Laruelle rounds on him for coming only to drink. The Consul can no longer resist, and does so while Laruelle changes into his tennis clothes for a match with Vigil. They accompany each other down to the fiesta, where the Consul gets himself drunk at a cafe called the Paris while Laruelle tries to lecture him on his drinking. At the fiesta, more mention is made of the Pope's illness and the Battle of the Ebro. Eventually Laruelle leaves, although the Consul is not sure when; he ends up lecturing himself on his drinking problem. Now wandering around to avoid Hugh and Yvonne, he finds an unoccupied ride called the Infernal Machine and is pressured by a gang of children to take the ride. He loses all of his possessions on the ride, which the children gather and return to him. The Consul still has more time to waste, so he stumbles into the Terminal Cantina El Bosque, wherein he chats with the proprietor, Senora Gregorio, and has at least two more drinks. The pariah dog follows him inside but is scared off when he rises. Finally, he walks back outside to find Vigil, Quincey, and Bustamente walking together—they do not notice him—just as the bus to Tomalin pulls into the station.

Chapter 8
The Consul, Hugh, and Yvonne travel to Tomalin by bus. A number of allusions and symbols are repeated: Las Manos de Orlac, the battle of the Ebro, cigarettes, the Good Samaritan, the number seven, et cetera. Along the way, Hugh notices a dead dog at the bottom of the barranca. During the trip, a pelado on the bus is noted, and Hugh and the Consul debate the meaning of the epithet. Hugh believes the term to mean "a shoeless illiterate" but the Consul corrects him, claiming that pelados are "indeed 'peeled ones,' the stripped, but also those who did not have to be rich to prey on the really poor". Further along, Hugh spots a man by the road, seemingly asleep. The bus stops and the man is found to be an Indian dying with his hat covering his face. No one helps the man due to a law that makes any such samaritan liable for "accessory after the fact". However, the pelado removes the Indian's hat, revealing a head wound and bloodied money. Nearby, Hugh and the Consul spot the recurring horse: "branded number seven". Leaving the peasant to his fate, the passengers reboard the bus. The Consul directs Hugh to look at the pelado, who is now clutching the "bloodstained pile of silver pesos and centavos": the pelado has pilfered the Indian's money, and has used it to pay his fare. The Consul, Hugh, and Yvonne take a pinch of habanero, and the bus rattles on toward Tomalin, where it arrives at the end of the chapter.

Chapter 9
The Consul, Hugh, and Yvonne arrive at Arena Tomalin and take in a bullfight. The narrative references Munro Leaf's Ferdinand the Bull, as the bull does not care to participate in the occasion for much of the event. This chapter offers Yvonne's point of view, including her memories of the Indian that had been injured and the emotion that she feels when reflecting on the volcano, Popocatepetl. As the chapter continues, she reminisces about her childhood and early adulthood in multiple instances; for example, when she claimed to see her father come toward her in a hallucination, when she thinks about her mother’s death around the time of World War I, and when she discusses her life as an actress in Hollywood. Also, Yvonne dreams of the future she could have had, and would still like to have, with the Consul. Yvonne’s futuristic dreams included living with the Consul in solidarity and peace with nature. During the bullfight, Hugh decides to jump in and ride the bull while the Consul and Yvonne profess their love for each other in the crowd.

Chapter 10
Told from the Consul's perspective, Chapter 10 opens with Geoffrey having drinks at the Salon Ofelia. He sits at the bar contemplating varieties of liquor while listening to Hugh and Yvonne banter as they swim nearby. They dress in separate changing rooms as the Consul continues to listen to their playful repartee, and they soon join him for dinner. Various landmarks, including the San Francisco Convent, the City Parish and the Tlaxcala Royal Chapel and Sanctuary, are mentioned as the Consul reads a tourist information booklet and remembers places he and Yvonne visited in happier times of their past. The Consul leaves early after arguing politics with Hugh and lashing out against Hugh and Yvonne's concerns about his drinking.

Chapter 11
Hugh and Yvonne leave Salon Ofelia in search of the Consul. They walk in the shadow of the two volcanoes, Popocatepetl and Ixtaccihuatl, and come to a point where they must choose one of two paths. Told from Yvonne's perspective, they choose the main path, which they believe the Consul would have taken, since it passes by two cantinas on the way to Parian. Their progress is hindered by a growing thunderstorm and there are numerous references to constellations, such as Orion and the Pleiades. Yvonne is trampled by the horse with the number 7 branded on its leg and imagines seeing her dream house in Canada burn down as she dies.

Chapter 12
The final chapter of Under the Volcano, told again from the Consul's point of view. He is in the main barroom of the Farolito, which is located at the foot of and seemingly under the volcano Popocatepetl. He does not realise that Hugh and Yvonne are looking for him. Diosdado, also called The Elephant, hands the Consul a stack of letters he has had, which were written by Yvonne and sent to the Consul throughout the past year. The Consul gets into a disagreement with the local police chiefs. They push him outside of the bar and out of the light, where they shoot the Consul and throw him off the edge of the ravine that the Farolito is built atop of. The shot startles a horse which runs off.

Main characters

 * Geoffrey Firmin is the alcoholic Consul living in Quauhnahuac. The Consul was born in India, and his mother died when he was young. His father remarried but walked away from his wife, his son Geoffrey, and his newly-born son Hugh, disappearing into the Himalayas. The stepmother dies soon afterward, and the Firmin boys are sent to England and taken in by the Taskersons. A naval officer during World War I, he was court-martialed and subsequently decorated for his actions aboard a submarine destroyer disguised as a merchant vessel (the captured German officers disappeared and were allegedly burned alive in the boiler). His appointment to the consular service is a kind of lateral promotion to get him out of the headlines, and he ends up with the sinecure of a consular position in a Mexican town with no British interests. By the novel's start he is actually an ex-consul: he resigned the service at the time when the UK and Mexico broke up diplomatic relationships in the aftermath of President Lázaro Cárdenas's 1938 nationalisation of the country's oil reserves. He wants to write a book on comparative mythology, but his alcoholism dominates all areas of his life.
 * Yvonne Constable is a former actress, born in Hawaii, who at age 14 began a brief career in the movies, which she abandoned and never picked up again. She has returned to Mexico, after a long absence in the United States, to rekindle her marriage to the Consul. She was married before and had a child, which died young; she may have had affairs with Hugh Firmin and Jacques Laruelle.
 * Hugh Firmin who had interrupted his career as a singer-songwriter in England for a year at sea, is Geoffrey's half-brother and a child-prodigy like Yvonne. After returning to England, he falls in with the political left and supports the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War. He visits Mexico to report on fascist activity for the London Globe, and is to leave the next day, to board a ship bringing ammunition to the Spanish government forces. There are frequent allusions in later chapters to an earlier affair between Hugh and Yvonne.
 * Jacques Laruelle (usually referred to as "M. Laruelle"), a French film director and childhood friend of the Consul. Born in the Moselle area, he grew up in Paris and became acquainted with the Consul during the summer of 1911 in the beach resort of Courseulles-sur-Mer, on the Channel. Independently of the Consul he has also moved to Quauhnahuac, and like Hugh has an affair with Yvonne. He is 42 when the novel starts and is preparing to leave Mexico.

Secondary characters

 * Dr. Arturo Díaz Vigil, a local physician, friend of the Consul and Laruelle.
 * Sr. Bustamente, owner of the local cinema.
 * Señora Gregorio, owner of the Terminal Cantina El Bosque, a bar in Quauhnahuac.
 * The Taskersons, the Consul's adoptive family; the patriarch, a poet named Abraham Taskerson, took Geoffrey in as a fifteen-year-old brooding poet. The entire family, including the mother and at least six sons, drinks hard and takes long walks in the countryside around their home, across the River Mersey and with a view of the Welsh mountains.
 * Juan Cerillo, a Mexican national who was in Spain with Hugh and is now an agent for a cooperative holding made possible by the nationalisations of president Lázaro Cárdenas: he transports money between rural cooperatives and farmers and the national Credit Bank (much like the murdered Indian in Chapter VII). Cerillo is modelled on a real-life friend of Lowry's, Juan Fernando Márquez, whom he befriended during his 1936–1938 stay in Mexico and who also appears in Dark as the Grave Wherein my Friend is Laid.

Symbolism and allusion
Under the Volcano is particularly rich in symbolism; references and allusions to other writers and literary works abound. The influence of Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus runs throughout the novel, and references to Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal, William Shakespeare's tragedies, and Dante's Divine Comedy enrich the novel's meaning.

Marlowe and Doctor Faustus
Critics have remarked that Marlowe's version of the Faustus myth is "Lowry's single most important source for Under the Volcano". Lowry alludes to Goethe's Faust as well and uses a quote for one of his three epigraphs but Marlowe's dominates, with the Consul being suggested as a Faustian black magician by Hugh. The Consul "often associates himself with Faustus as a suffering soul who cannot ask for salvation, or who even runs toward hell", and parodies Marlowe's line about Helen of Troy ("was this the face that launched a thousand ships, / and burnt the topless towers of Illium?" ) when looking at a fighting cock in a bar, "Was this the face that launched five hundred ships, and betrayed Christ into being in the Western Hemisphere?"

A literary game based on the Sortes virgilianae—a form of divination by bibliomancy in which advice or predictions of the future are sought by randomly selecting a passage from Virgil's Aeneid, but with Shakespeare replacing Virgil—is an important theme. The Consul (who "had delighted in the absurd game" ) refers to the game in chapter 7 using Jean Cocteau's The Infernal Machine. Exactly a year later Laruelle plays it again, this time with the Consul's copy of Eight Famous Elizabethan Plays. After two lines and then another from Doctor Faustus and a passage from Thomas Dekker's The Shoemaker's Holiday, the book opens on the last page of Doctor Faustus, and the four lines Laruelle reads are particularly appropriate to the Consul: "Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight, ... Faustus is gone: regard his hellish fall."

Others
Many of the individual symbols in the novel relate to each other and to Lowry's literary models. The Consul's wild and overgrown garden, which stands for his life, alludes to the Garden of Eden; the barranca symbolises and becomes his tomb. Throughout the novel the number 7 appears—branded on the horse which is encountered in many of the chapters, and often as time: Laruelle's Day of the Dead, in the first chapter, ends at 7 PM; Yvonne returns to the Consul at 7 AM and the day that takes up chapters 2 through 12 ends at 7 PM; at the novel's close, the clock strikes seven times and a cock appears to confirm the Indian belief that "a cock crowing seven times announces death", while the clock also announces the opening of the seventh seal.

Literary significance and critical reception
An early review of the book, by R. W. Flint in The Kenyon Review, called it "one of the most readable novels to appear since the war" but ultimately criticised it severely for its "second-handedness", saying that Lowry "lacks the confidence of the innovator".

Poet and novelist Charles Bukowski said that, when he read Lowry's novel, "I yawned myself to shit". He criticised it for lack of "pace, quickness, life, sunlight, juice and flavour in his lines."

Michael Hofmann, who would edit the collection of posthumous work of Lowry's The Voyage That Never Ends, wrote, "Under the Volcano eats light like a black hole. It is a work of such gravity and connectedness and spectroscopic richness that it is more world than product. It is absolute mass, agglomeration of consciousness and experience and terrific personal grace. It has planetary swagger."

In The New York Review of Books, critic Michael Wood wrote, "Under the Volcano is a great book about missing grandeur, about the specialised tragedy that lies in the unavailability of the tragedy you want."

Chris Power, writing in The Guardian, said: "I came to the book knowing only its reputation as a masterpiece of English modernism. I left thinking it one of the greatest novels of the 20th century... Lowry is closer to Melville and Conrad than Joyce, but he creates his corner of Mexico in a manner similar to the Dublin of Ulysses: not by describing it so much as by building an alternate reality from language."

Novelist Elizabeth Lowry (no relation), writing in the London Review of Books, described it as a "black masterpiece about the horrors of alcoholic disintegration."

Reviewing Gordon Bowker's biography of Lowry, The New York Times commented on Volcano 's legacy: "Under the Volcano is too famous to be just a cult object, but more than most great novels it is revisited year after year by a few zealous defenders, who place Lowry high up in the modernist pantheon, while the rest of the world is only barely aware of his masterpiece as an exotic and harrowing read."

Modern Library's 100 Best Novels of English novels in the 20th century lists the book at position 11. It was ranked number 99 on Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century.

In other media
John Huston directed the 1984 film adaptation, with Albert Finney, Jacqueline Bisset, Anthony Andrews and Katy Jurado. It received Academy Award nominations for Best Actor in a Leading Role (Albert Finney) and Best Music, Original Score.

Volcano: An Inquiry Into the Life and Death of Malcolm Lowry (1976) is a National Film Board of Canada documentary produced by Donald Brittain and Robert A. Duncan and directed by Brittain and John Kramer. It opens with the inquest into Lowry's "death by misadventure," and then moves back in time to trace the writer's life. Selections from Lowry's novel are read by Richard Burton amid images shot in Mexico, the United States, Canada and England.

The novel was the inspiration for the 1971 song "The Consul At Sunset" by Jack Bruce and Pete Brown, as well as the 1987 song "Back Room of the Bar" by The Young Fresh Fellows.

The book was featured in episode 5 of For All Mankind.

title: Under the Volcano


text:
King cobra

The king cobra (Ophiophagus hannah) is a venomous snake endemic to Asia. The sole member of the genus Ophiophagus, it is not taxonomically a true cobra, despite its common name and some resemblance. With an average length of 3.18 to 4 m and a record length of 5.85 m, it is the world's longest venomous snake. The species has diversified colouration across habitats, from black with white stripes to unbroken brownish grey. The king cobra is widely distributed albeit not commonly seen, with a range spanning from the Indian Subcontinent through Southeastern Asia to Southern China. It preys chiefly on other snakes, including those of its own kind. This is the only ophidian that constructs an above-ground nest for its eggs, which are purposefully and meticulously gathered and protected by the female throughout the incubation period.

The threat display of this elapid includes spreading its neck-flap, raising its head upright, making eye contact, puffing, hissing and occasionally charging. Given the size of the snake, it is capable of striking at a considerable range and height, sometimes sustaining a bite. Envenomation from this species is medically significant and may result in a rapid fatality unless antivenom is administered in time. Despite the species' fearsome reputation, aggression toward humans usually only arises from an individual inadvertently exposing itself or being cornered.

Threatened by habitat destruction, it has been listed as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List since 2010. Regarded as the national reptile of India, it has an eminent position in the mythology and folk traditions of India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Myanmar.

Taxonomy
The king cobra is also referred to by the common name "hamadryad", especially in older literature. Hamadryas hannah was the scientific name used by Danish naturalist Theodore Edward Cantor in 1836 who described four king cobra specimens, three captured in the Sundarbans and one in the vicinity of Kolkata. Naja bungarus was proposed by Hermann Schlegel in 1837 who described a king cobra zoological specimen from Java. In 1838, Cantor proposed the name Hamadryas ophiophagus for the king cobra and explained that it has dental features intermediate between the genera Naja and Bungarus. Naia vittata proposed by Walter Elliot in 1840 was a king cobra caught offshore near Chennai that was floating in a basket. Hamadryas elaps proposed by Albert Günther in 1858 were king cobra specimens from the Philippines and Borneo. Günther considered both N. bungarus and N. vittata a variety of H. elaps. The genus Ophiophagus was proposed by Günther in 1864. The name is derived from its propensity to eat snakes.

Naja ingens proposed by Alexander Willem Michiel van Hasselt in 1882 was a king cobra captured near Tebing Tinggi in northern Sumatra.

Ophiophagus hannah was accepted as the valid name for the king cobra by Charles Mitchill Bogert in 1945 who argued that it differs significantly from Naja species. A genetic analysis using cytochrome b, and a multigene analysis showed that the king cobra was an early offshoot of a genetic lineage giving rise to the mambas, rather than the Naja cobras.

A phylogenetic analysis of mitochondrial DNA showed that specimens from Surattani and Nakhon Si Thammarat Provinces in southern Thailand form a deeply divergent clade from those from northern Thailand, which grouped with specimens from Myanmar and Guangdong in southern China.

Description
The king cobra's skin is olive green with black and white bands on the trunk that converge to the head. The head is covered by 15 drab coloured and black edged shields. The muzzle is rounded, and the tongue black. It has two fangs and 3–5 maxillar teeth in the upper jaw, and two rows of teeth in the lower jaw. The nostrils are between two shields. The large eyes have a golden iris and round pupils. Its hood is oval shaped and covered with olive green smooth scales and two black spots between the two lowest scales. Its cylindrical tail is yellowish green above and marked with black. It has a pair of large occipital scales on top of the head, 17 to 19 rows of smooth oblique scales on the neck, and 15 rows on the body. Juveniles are black with chevron shaped white, yellow or buff bars that point towards the head. Adult king cobras are 3.18 to 4 m long. The longest known individual measured 5.85 m. Ventral scales are uniformly oval shaped. Dorsal scales are placed in an oblique arrangement.

The king cobra is sexually dimorphic, with males being larger and paler in particular during the breeding season. Males captured in Kerala measured up to 3.75 m and weighed up to 10 kg. Females captured had a maximum length of 2.75 m and a weight of 5 kg. The largest known king cobra was 18 ft long and captured in Thailand. It differs from other cobra species by size and hood. It is larger, has a narrower and longer stripe on the neck.

Distribution and habitat
The king cobra has a wide distribution in South and Southeast Asia. It occurs up to an elevation of 2000 m from the Terai in India and southern Nepal to the Brahmaputra River basin in Bhutan and northeast India, Bangladesh and to Myanmar, southern China, Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines.

In northern India, it has been recorded in Garhwal and Kumaon, and in the Shivalik and terai regions of Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh. In northeast India, the king cobra has been recorded in northern West Bengal, Sikkim, Assam, Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Manipur and Mizoram. In the Eastern Ghats, it occurs from Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh to coastal Odisha, and also in Bihar and southern West Bengal, especially the Sundarbans. In the Western Ghats, it was recorded in Kerala, Karnataka and Maharashtra, and also in Gujarat. It also occurs on Baratang Island in the Great Andaman chain.

Behaviour and ecology
Like other snakes, a king cobra receives chemical information via its forked tongue, which picks up scent particles and transfers them to a sensory receptor (Jacobson's organ) located in the roof of its mouth. When it detects the scent of prey, it flicks its tongue to gauge the prey's location, with the twin forks of the tongue acting in stereo. It senses earth-borne vibration and detects moving prey almost 100 m away.

Following envenomation, it swallows its prey whole. Because of its flexible jaws, it can swallow prey much larger than its head. It is considered diurnal because it hunts during the day, but has also been seen at night, rarely.

Diet
The king cobra is an apex predator and dominant over all other snakes except large pythons. Its diet consists primarily of other snakes and lizards, including Indian cobra, banded krait, rat snake, pythons, green whip snake, keelback, banded wolf snake and Blyth's reticulated snake. It also hunts Malabar pit viper and hump-nosed pit viper by following their odour trails. In Singapore, one was observed swallowing a clouded monitor. When food is scarce, it also feeds on other small vertebrates, such as birds, and lizards. In some cases, the cobra constricts its prey using its muscular body, though this is uncommon. After a large meal, it lives for many months without another one because of its slow metabolic rate.

Defence
The king cobra is not considered aggressive. It usually avoids humans and slinks off when disturbed, but is known to aggressively defend incubating eggs and attack intruders rapidly. When alarmed, it raises the front part of its body, extends the hood, shows the fangs and hisses loudly. Wild king cobras encountered in Singapore appeared to be placid, but reared up and struck in self defense when cornered.

The king cobra can be easily irritated by closely approaching objects or sudden movements. When raising its body, the king cobra can still move forward to strike with a long distance, and people may misjudge the safe zone. It can deliver multiple bites in a single attack.

Growling hiss
The hiss of the king cobra is a much lower pitch than many other snakes and many people thus liken its call to a "growl" rather than a hiss. While the hisses of most snakes are of a broad-frequency span ranging from roughly 3,000 to 13,000 Hz with a dominant frequency near 7,500 Hz, king cobra growls consist solely of frequencies below 2,500 Hz, with a dominant frequency near 600 Hz, a much lower-sounding frequency closer to that of a human voice. Comparative anatomical morphometric analysis has led to a discovery of tracheal diverticula that function as low-frequency resonating chambers in king cobra and its prey, the rat snake, both of which can make similar growls.

Reproduction
The female is gravid for 50 to 59 days. The king cobra is the only snake that builds a nest using dry leaf litter, starting from late March to late May. Most nests are located at the base of trees, are up to 55 cm high in the centre and 140 cm wide at the base. They consist of several layers and have mostly one chamber, into which the female lays eggs. Clutch size ranges from 7 to 43 eggs, with 6 to 38 eggs hatching after incubation periods of 66 to 105 days. Temperature inside nests is not steady but varies depending on elevation from 13.5 to 37.4 °C. Females stay by their nests between two and 77 days. Hatchlings are between 37.5 and 58.5 cm long and weigh 9 to 38 g.

The venom of hatchlings is as potent as that of the adults. They may be brightly marked, but these colours often fade as they mature. They are alert and nervous, being highly aggressive if disturbed.

The average lifespan of a wild king cobra is about 20 years.

King cobra was shown to be capable of facultative parthenogenesis. The parthenogenetic mechanism appears to be a variation of meiosis referred to as terminal fusion automixis in which there is fusion of the meiotic products formed at the anaphase II stage of meiosis.

Composition
Venom of the king cobra, produced by the postorbital venom glands, consists primarily of three-finger toxins (3FTx) and snake venom metalloproteinases (SVMPs).

Of all the 3FTx, alpha-neurotoxins are the predominant and most lethal components when cytotoxins and beta-cardiotoxins also exhibit toxicological activities. It is reported that cytotoxicity of its venom varies significantly, depending upon the age and locality of an individual. Clinical cardiotoxicity is not widely observed, nor is nephrotoxicity present among patients bitten by this species, presumably due to the low abundance of the toxins.

SVMPs are the second most protein family isolated from the king cobra's venom, accounting from 11.9% to 24.4% of total venom proteins. The abundance is much higher than that of most cobras which is usually less than 1%. This protein family includes principal toxins responsible for vasculature damage and interference with haemostasis, contributing to bleeding and coagulopathy caused by envenomation of vipers. While there are such haemorrhagins isolated from the king cobra's venom, they only induce species-sensitive haemorrhagic and lethal activities on rabbits and hares, but with minimal effects on mice. Clinical pathophysiology of the king cobra's SVMPs has yet to be well studied, although its substantial quantity suggests involvement in tissue damage and necrosis as a result of inflammatory and proteolytic activities, which are instrumental for foraging and digestive purposes.

Ohanin, a minor vespryn protein component specific to this species, causes hypolocomotion and hyperalgesia in experimental mice. It is believed that it contributes to neurotoxicity on the central nervous system of the victim.

Clinical management
A king cobra's bite, and subsequent envenomation, is an immediate medical emergency in humans or domesticated animals, as, if not treated as soon as possible, death can occur in as little as 30 minutes. Local symptoms include dusky discolouration of skin, edema and pain; in severe cases, swelling extends proximally, with necrosis and tissue sloughing that may require amputation. Onset of general symptoms follows while the venom is targeting the victim's central nervous system, resulting in blurred vision, vertigo, drowsiness, and eventual paralysis. If not treated promptly, it may progress to cardiovascular collapse and, subsequently, coma. Death soon follows due to respiratory failure, among other simultaneous and varied system and organ failures.

Polyvalent antivenom of equine origin is produced by Haffkine Institute and King Institute of Preventive Medicine and Research in India. A polyvalent antivenom produced by the Thai Red Cross Society can effectively neutralise venom of the king cobra. In India and Thailand, a concoction (or liquid blend) of turmeric (Curcuma longa) and other potent, medically relevant herbs reportedly creates a strong resilience against the venom of the king cobra when ingested. Proper and immediate treatments are critical to avoid death. Successful precedents include a client who recovered and was discharged in 10 days after being treated by accurate antivenom and inpatient care.

It can deliver up to 420 mg venom in dry weight (400–600 mg overall) per bite, with a toxicity in mice of 1.28 mg/kg through intravenous injection, 1.5 to 1.7 mg/kg through subcutaneous injection, and 1.644 mg/kg through intraperitoneal injection. For research purposes, up to 1 g of venom was obtained through milking.

Threats
In Southeast Asia, the king cobra is threatened foremost by habitat destruction owing to deforestation and expansion of agricultural land. It is also threatened by poaching for its meat, skin and for use in traditional Chinese medicine.

Conservation
The king cobra is listed in CITES Appendix II. It is protected in China and Vietnam. In India, it is placed under Schedule II of Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. Killing a king cobra is punished with imprisonment of up to six years. In the Philippines, king cobras (locally known as banakon) are included under the list of threatened species in the country. It is protected under the Wildlife Resources Conservation and Protection Act (Republic Act No. 9147), which criminalises the killing, trade, and consumption of threatened species with certain exceptions (like indigenous subsistence hunting or immediate threats to human life), with a maximum penalty of two years imprisonment and a fine of ₱20,000.

Cultural significance
The king cobra has an eminent position in the mythology and folklore of India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Myanmar. A ritual in Myanmar involves a king cobra and a female snake charmer. The charmer is a priestess who is usually tattooed with three pictograms and kisses the snake on the top of its head at the end of the ritual. Members of the Pakokku clan tattoo themselves with ink mixed with cobra venom on their upper bodies in a weekly inoculation that they believe would protect them from the snake, though no scientific evidence supports this.

It is regarded as the national reptile of India.

title: King cobra


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Talk:Gordon Campbell

No Contest to All Charges
The issue of whether Campbell pled guilty to drunk driving is subtle but politically significant. He did not plead guilty. Rather, he entered a plea, valid in Hawaii but not British Columbia, of "nolo contendre" or "no contest", which accepts the penalty without admitting guilt. This probably makes sense in terms of the precedent he made for other government officials, and for him personally in a legal sense. But at the time, there was more than a little criticism for not admitting guilt, while apologizing anyway.

Religion Catholic?
on the list of polition's religion he is a apperently a Catholic is this true?

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 19:28, 19 February 2023 (UTC)
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title: Talk:Gordon Campbell