None of that stuff here, no sireee Bob!

Okay here it is, I have taken this ancient rumor and squeezed The Truth out of it. And it turns out the ancient rumor is True. This is from US Customs & Border Protection, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security, which is the new agency which makes sure that old 1960s hippie acoustic-guitar folksingers can't set foot in the USA, where they might sing "Peace Train." These ever-alert and diligent bureaucrats forced the airplane with Cat Stevens and his dottir to land in Bangor, Maine, and then shoved them on the next eastbounder and sent them back to England because he was deemed to represent a threat to national security. (For the last 20-odd years he has been a Muslim and goes by a new name, Yusef Islam. He spends his wealth on medical care for Asian kids wounded in various wars.)

Anyway:

Absinthe (Alcohol)

The importation of Absinthe and any other liquors or liqueurs that contain Artemisia absinthium is prohibited.

Artemisia absinthium is one of several common plants and shrubs which contain thujone, the Fun Molecule of the swell, nifty, dandy Euro-beverage absinthe. Before Europeanaissies brewed up this swell drink in the 19th Century (French soldiers brought it back from North Africa, I guess it's a gift from the Foreign Legion), an extract of the plant called Wormwood was traditionally used to cure intestinal worms.

And it works! What happens is, you drink the stuff, and the thujone stuns the primitive nervous systems of the worms, and they relax their grip on the inside wall of your intestines, and then you evacuate them the next time you are sitting down reading the next chapter of "du Côte de Chez Swann." (Did I spell that right?)

I wish I'd taken photos of our Swell Absinthe Party, especially the part when one guest set the coffee table on fire.