Back in the days when I had a job in Houston that paid me almost enough to live on, I would treat myself to sushi on Fridays at a nearby restaurant named Tokyohana. Well, when I say “sushi”, I pretty much stuck to the exact same order every time: vegetable tempura, Nigiri sake [fresh raw salmon], and an icy glass of Chardonnay.

The first few times I tried to eat Nigiri I thought I was going to choke on the ridiculously large-sized ball of rice that made me look and feel like a demented chipmunk. It only took me half a dozen tries to realise that as a grown-up I could choose to cut away half of the rice ball and then struggle to keep the fish on top of the remaining rice while I dipped it into my self-mixed wasabi/soy sauce without it falling off my chopsticks and making me look like an Amateur White Girl. This may also have been the period in which I learned to use run-on sentences.

At the time, the restaurant was participating in a rewards programme whereby you accumulated points each time you dined there and once you reached a minimum number of points you were able to redeem them for a complimentary meal. It actually worked out very well for me.

Unfortunately, there is not a Tokyohana in Boise and thus I had to send an email requesting removal from their subscription list. Thus ensued a hilarious exchange of emails with the programme’s representative . . .

From: danjeruskurves@___
To: MemberCare@___
Subject: Remove
Please remove my email address from your subscription list as I no longer live in Texas.

From: MemberCare@___
To: danjeruskurves@___
Your information has been removed. We wish you well in your new surroundings.

From: danjeruskurves@___
To: MemberCare@___
Thank you … I certainly miss Tokyohana! Do you think you could open one in Boise, Idaho just for me? :-)

From: MemberCare@___
To: danjeruskurves@___
Entrees and drinks would be very expensive.

From: danjeruskurves@___
To: MemberCare@___
Good point … but I could probably persuade my dates to pay! [I know, I'm going to go to Hell for that joke]

From: MemberCare@___
To: danjeruskurves@___
Let us know if you can get that kind of long term payment commitment and we’ll discuss your new personal chef and bartender.

From: danjeruskurves@___
To: MemberCare@___
bwahahaha!!! I love your sense of humour, will you move here too and be my new best friend forever? We can have pillow fights and make fun of the ugly kids.

From: MemberCare@___
To: danjeruskurves@___
You go from Houston and now live in Boise and you’re gonna make fun of “ugly kids”??????

From: danjeruskurves@___
To: MemberCare@___
Well . . . yeah, but, see I’m FROM England and I moved from there to Los Angeles. So I have British snobbery bred into my genes, and having lived in Plastic City for a while before moving to Idaho, back to L.A., to Austin, to Houston, back to Idaho, I am now qualified to be quietly judgmental about everybody and everything.

From: MemberCare@___
To: danjeruskurves@___
You may indeed be qualified, perhaps even at an expert level, but we here at this desk are not licensed to provide the type of assistance you may need after making those types of moves. Have you considered an area of the country like Napa Valley, Louisville, Nashville, St. Louis or Wisconsin where drinking is a preferred method of dealing with these types of issues?

From: danjeruskurves@___
To: MemberCare@___
Speaking as somebody who is suffering immensely from the after-effects of drinking not one, but three, Citrus Vodka cocktails last night — dreadful stuff, by the way, tastes like I would imagine bleach would taste, so heaven knows WHY I imbibed three of the wretched drinks, oh wait, I remember, I was bored and I PAID for the bottle of poison even though I’m now contemplating using the rest of the bottle to clean the patio . . . I’m sorry, what was the question?

From: MemberCare@___
To: danjeruskurves@___
Mix it with cranberry or grapefruit – very good.

From: danjeruskurves@___
To: MemberCare@___
Wouldn’t that make it almost borderline sort-of involuntarily healthy?

From: MemberCare@___
To: danjeruskurves@___
Everyone needs a reason and since you chose to take a perfectly purified and filtered starch such as corn or potato and add a fruit to it anyway – let’s go all the way for totally justified medicinal inebriation!

From: danjeruskurves@___
To: MemberCare@___
Another way to go about healthy inebriation is not to mix alcohol with stereotypes. For example, if you are Irish then you should drink rum and if you are a pirate you should drink whiskey.

From: MemberCare@___
To: danjeruskurves@___
Pity those Irish Pirates.

From: danjeruskurves@___
To: MemberCare@___
Funny you should say that . . . I met an Irishman [actually from Ireland, not just an American who likes to claim ancient heritage] at a Pirate Pub about a week ago. Shockingly, he is a heavy drinker [I know!].

From: MemberCare@___
To: danjeruskurves@___
Still baffled I am – A Brit telling a story of an Irishman at a Pirate Pub in land locked Boise – and here’s I am just trying to get a handle on the current economic situation – A drink, I need I think.

From: danjeruskurves@___
To: MemberCare@___
Wait, how did I manage to NOT respond to this comedic gold? Could it be the confusing Yoda-esque tone?

From: MemberCare@___
To: danjeruskurves@___
Be, it could!

From: danjeruskurves@___
To: MemberCare@___
I am so using this as material for my website! Don’t worry, I’ll delete your full email address … :-)

From: MemberCare@___
To: danjeruskurves@___
We be proud!

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Just a reminder, my lovelies — if you leave a comment that includes a smiley, you have to put a hyphen in the middle, like so: :-D

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 at 2:17 pm and is filed under Humour. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.