Riddle Me This. . .

Lately, I've begun reading books again, which is a favorite activity of mine. I go through spells and absences when I don't read for many months, but I've made a minor goal of at least keeping one book handy at a minimum. Typically, I have two or more going at the same time.

Here is a list of books that I have read over the last couple of months:

The Masked Rider by Neil Peart
Ghost Rider by Neil Peart
Traveling Music by Neil Peart
Roadshow by Neil Peart

Yes, I'm a Neil Peart fan. Sue me. He is a fabulous writer and his non-fiction stories of his life and times are gripping, entertaining and contain many emotional moments of laughter, tears, good times and bad. Read his books.

Enter the Past Tense by Roland Haas, a true story of a CIA agent and all that CIA secret agent stuff like cute puppy dogs and sweet cotton candy. Ah, no. HALO jumps into West Germany, slicing the necks of bad guys, you know, that kind of CIA secret agent stuff. A good read.

Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose. Need I say more? I was 3/4's of the way through this book until I met an Army MP Friday afternoon on the plane to Houston who had just returned from a one year deployment in Iraq. I thanked him for his service, welcomed him home, and gave him the book as he needed something to read all the way to Oregon. God Bless our troops and this still great country that they defend.

Homer's Odyssey by Gwen Cooper is a gooey, sappy story of love and dedication between a woman and her blind cat. Fascinating story on animal behavior and yes, I got teary-eyed a couple of times.

Island in the Stream and For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway. Well, what can you say about Hemingway, other than, he's Hemingway and his books are great! From these two I'd have a hard time making a choice of favorites. Next up are The Old Man and the Sea and To Have and Have Not. I read The Old Man and the Sea many, many moons ago as required high school reading and I enjoyed the story then, but I feel now as a grown man I would most certainly enjoy and understand the true meaning more profoundly, as I can now look past the words to grasp the greater meaning. If there is one. Hell, maybe it's just a great fishing story, nothing more nothing less.

And lastly, two books that I started some months ago and recently picked back up, The Naked and The Dead by Norman Mailer and American Lion (Andrew Jackson) by Jon Meacham.

Believe it or not, I wrote all of this so I could blast off on the Food and Drug Administration.

Hemingway was a great lover of food and drink and probably some other illicit items, but he and his contemporaries railed against the almighty forces of life in a much different time, when the world was younger and positively freer than today. And one of the great escapes for them, in Hemingway's heyday, was absinthe.

Absinthe was banned in the United States in 1915 and only recently was re-legalized by the U.S. government. Of course, there are many a fable and myth about absinthe. Hallucinations, mass murder sprees, you name it and they've tried to pin it upon the beverage. Evil stuff I'm telling you. Reminds me of the usual argument about gun violence. Forget that people kill other people with guns. Too complicated. Guns kill people. So does absinthe with that logic.

Well, here is where the irony comes in. It turns out, after significant scientific research was performed, these old recipe absinthes have far less thujone, the psychoactive substance found in wormwood, than originally suspected, or advertised, for that matter. However, that does not stop the federal government from closely regulating the contents of modern absinthe. The liquor must actually be tested and determined to be "thujone-free", which is a content of 10 ppm or less. Negligible amounts by any standard.

But on the other hand, go to a health nut store and you can purchase of a bottle of sage oil, which has been deemed by the FDA to be "safe", although it can contain a thujone content of nearly 50%. Go figure.

Anyway, we had some absinthe over the weekend, a brand called Lucid, and I must admit that I found it to be delightfully refreshing. I didn't get too carried away, as I didn't want to wake Sunday feeling like I wrestled a bus filled with angry hermaphroditic Dave Matthews fans. The flavor is licorice heavy, but offset by the sugar cube that is melted through a slotted spoon using chilled water. This traditional method dilutes the high alcohol content of the spirit and smooths out the sharp edge of the flavors.

We had a running joke around the Saturday night drinking table about "moments of clarity" after Beatrice fumbled some words after her second draw from the drink. "Hey, how's that moment of clarity working out for you?"

In the end, I guess there was a mild feeling of heightened awareness, possibly a clarity of the mind, but I also felt a bit tired 45 minutes or so later. I have read that this stimulant/depressive effect is common because of the proprietary herb blend used by each distillery. Either way, it was a nice departure from hammering down a bottle of Jägermeister and a 12-pack of Heineken Light on my birthday.

Verdict: I didn't feel like Hemingway, nor did I feel the urge to slice of any facial appurtenances like van Gogh, but the buzz was nice and the initial numbing of the tongue was kinda neat too. I remand absinthe to my own custody for further review, which I will do with eagerness.