Put the Lime in the Coconut, Verbena

Most of you will be familiar with Harry Nilsson's song, "Put the Lime in the Coconut", a song that has long perplexed historians. This week I found a new clue thanks to Body & Bath Works, but I'm not sure it didn't obfuscate things even more. BB&W has a soap named "Lime Coconut Verbena". Clearly this is a cleverly coded reference to Harry's Enigma, as serious historians are wont to call the song.

But who or what is Verbena? Several possibilities come to mind.

• Verbena is the girl Harry^[1] wrote the song about. Harry is simply telling a story of something he saw in the islands while living there for tax purposes.
• Verbena is a former lover who drove Harry to drugs. The lyrics make a lot more sense if seen as a product of hallucinogens.
• BB&W has discovered that- as Elton John had Bernie Taupin- Nilsson had a collaborator named Verbena. This begs the question why Harry never wore big glasses^[3], clearly the secret of Elton's success. It also prompts us to wonder at Verbena's first name. My guess is Coconut, certainly a name one might wish to eliminate. Or perhaps her entire name is Lime Coconut Verbena.
• Verbena^[4] is the missing ingredient in a drink many made in hopes it would induce the same sort of hallucinogenic ecstasy that clearly brought about the lyrics of this song.

Some of you may feel I have played fast and loose with what is and isn't known about this song and its creator, but I promise I have used the same rigorous fact checking techniques Congress uses when passing laws and budgets. Assuming you can remember back when Congress actually passed budgets.

Come to think of it, if Verbena was a subtle reference to Congress rather than a woman, suggestion 2 above seems even more likely.

 

NOTES
1 Nilsson, not Potter.^[2]
2 There are no known recordings of Harry Potter singing this song.
3 Clearly Nilsson, as Potter had big glasses.
4 The flower, not the well known woman mentioned above.

All Wisdom Fled

Sharon and I had been married less than a year when my wisdom teeth launched their painful war of secession. Sharon's sister Cynthia hooked us up with "the best oral surgeon in the metro area". We had little to nothing in the way of insurance. We talked with the billing office up front and agreed to pay 1/3 by check on the day of the surgery.

In the chair. "Oooh, those are bad. This will be a challenge!" Not exactly what you want to hear when someone will be excavating in your mouth, but I was in enough pain I would have let the Hatfields and McCoys in if it would have helped.

(Queue sinister music.)

I don't recall a lot after they set me up for anesthesia, but I do recall...

• Waking up with a knee on my chest, a chisel in my mouth, my head jerking with each WHACK of the little hammer. "Unhhh!!!" "He's awake! Turn it up!"
• Waking up with a knee on my chest and my head flailing back and forth while the doctor, pliers firmly on the remains of a tooth, tried to get the stubborn beast out. "Unhhh!!!" "He's awake! Turn it up!"
• Explaining groggily to an uncaring nurse that my wife was out front and would take care of payment.
• Being told I was the patient, and ordered to go pay. Still being in La La Land, who was I to argue?
• Like a cheap maze robot, finding my way to the front desk by leaning on the wall to my right and following it:
  • I would wake every so often somewhere new since my last memory (but still in the Pastel Horror Maze);
  • Occasionally I would be sagging or half way to the floor, and have to argue myself upright and moving again;
  • I remember doing a 180 where two hallways split;
  • I had a hard time following the right hand rule through the bathroom. I'm not sure whether I went around or over the toilet and around or under sink;
  • I paused at the edge of another patient room where God alone knows what was going on, and made a leap of faith that I could cross the doorway rather than enter the room;
  • Apparently I made it.
• When I finally got to the front desk (approximately three weeks later), they tried to insist I pay the entire balance. I kept (when I was conscious) insisting we didn't have that much, that we had an agreement, and that they should find my wife. Eventually someone demanded my checkbook, filled in the amount for a few dollars less than the register balance, and had me sign it. Still in La La Land, who was I to argue?
• The guy who now had no money for gas or groceries, that's who.

Needless to say, once I got over the subsequent infection, dry socket and the other miseries that followed (I was constantly either in pain or medically stoned, so it's all fuzzy) we never dealt with this Best In Area Doctor again. In fact we steered people away from him.

If my wisdom teeth had grown back, I'd have seriously considered the Hatfields and McCoys.

Who Needs Drugs?

On occasion, I'm asked why I don't drink. Once in a while, I get asked whether I do drugs. Although it's typically more like, "Really? You don't do drugs? Then how are you so weird?"

It's simple. My mind naturally produces controlled substances.

The DEA routinely kicks in the door to my skull, runs in wearing black masks and with guns drawn, seizes my brain, takes it to an open field, and burns it. Then they have to collect all the animals that breathed the fumes and sequester them in the hopes they'll return to normal. Apparently a rooster who thinks he can fly an airplane or cow who thinks she can produce technicolor milk (and especially one that does these things) is a threat to national security. Livestock that don't return to normal eventually end up in politics.

Which explains why so many of our federal legislators have absolutely no clue what the Constitution says. They're hallucinating.

So there you have it, straight from the horse's mouth.

And don't forget, horses are livestock, too. If you see one repairing flats off I20 in west Texas, wave. That's Uncle Jerry.