Just an old sweet song keeps Portland on my mind. #RCTID

You are my sheep, I shall not let ye wander lest your eternal soul be getting tainted.  Aye, I be Father Moai of the Moai Away Team and I come to you with open arms and love in my heart.

Before I can get to the business of saving souls I need to have my morning coffee so I’ll talk at you later. Peace!

This is the Cap’n speaking.  Rumors of my demise are rampant but clearly untrue.  I suspect the Moai Red Shirts have been sowing seeds of discontent in my absence but I am here today to inform you good jolum, I mean peoplem that Cap’n Moai is back on duty and ready to enforce discipline throughout the ranks of the Moai Away Team.

And a word to the wise, don’t pour lighter fluid onto flaming charcoal.  It can hurt.

Some might call it a ritual but for members of the Moai Away Team it’s just the way we start our day.  Coffee that is.  Nectar of the Moai.  As they say, we like our coffee like we like our “blank”, strong and black.  It reminds me of the time we were hanging out in that little coffee house in Portland and this chick rolled up on us and had the nerve to ask if we supported fair trade coffee.  Seriously?  You can’t come at a Moai Red Shirt with that kind of shit.  We live and breathe human rights and such but fair trade coffee?  Bitch was advised to take her propaganda shit to some other table before she felt the back of a hand across her face.  Word to the wise, don’t fuck with a Moai Red Shirt when he is having his coffee.

Moai Red Shirt here and beside me is my good friend and spiritual advisor Father Moai.  Today I was going to discuss the pros and cons of banking deregulation but then I realized that most of you wouldn’t be interested and to be honest, I know nothing of the subject.  Instead I will relate to you how Father Moai came to serve on the Moai Away Team.

One evening in his laboratory; the sun had set, and the moon was just rising from the sea; he had not sufficient light for his employment, and I remained idle, in a pause of consideration of whether he should leave my labour for the night or hasten its conclusion by an unremitting attention to it. As he sat, a train of reflection occurred to him which led him to consider the effects of what he was now doing. Three years before, he was engaged in the same manner and had created a fiend whose unparalleled barbarity had desolated his heart and filled it forever with the bitterest remorse. He was now about to form another being of whose dispositions I was alike ignorant; she might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate and delight, for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness. He had sworn to quit the neighborhood of man and hide himself in deserts, but she had not; and she, who in all probability was to become a thinking and reasoning animal, might refuse to comply with a compact made before her creation. They might even hate each other; the creature who already lived loathed his own deformity, and might he not conceive a greater abhorrence for it when it came before his eyes in the female form?

And with that, Father Moai packed his bags and headed to the Moai Academy where he turned his life around, found God and served the Moai Away Team ever since.

Accept the warm embrace of Father Moai my brothers and sisters. Let me into your hearts and underpants for I am the true messenger of the one. Do not go gentle into that good night without having me beside you. One night in Bangkok? Forget about it, you need one night in Father Moai!

I can still remember Chef telling me to never get out of the boat and even today those words ring as true as the day he said them.

The Moai Away Team has been a part of every major historical event in the last two thousand years and a Moai Red Shirt has been there to witness history as it unfolds.  One of these events was the release of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.  The pain, the pain of watching the wooden acting of the entire cast and hoping that Jake Lloyd wouldn’t return in Episode II but then realizing that Hayden Christensen was even worse!  Perhaps the only thing worse than watching the entire Episode I-III trilogy would be having a healthy molar drilled out without the use of anesthesia.

This being a WordPress site I found an instance of the dirty old ”eval(base64_decode” code-injection sitting on the 404.php page of a theme I had downloaded a while back.  With the help of the Moai Away Team and many hours of frustration I have once again cleaned and secured the site.

Maybe it was all a dream.  It seems so long ago yet the images are crystal clear in my mind.  A warm summer evening in the city, the sound of traffic and people walking along a brightly lit street.  Was it June?  I can’t remember.  As a Moai Red Shirt I have been to many places and seen many things but nothing stands out like this memory.  It couldn’t have been more than two blocks from the train station but it might as well have been twenty.  I am rambling.  More to the point I am lacking for words to complete this post.  I will not resort to a cheap copy and paste job just because I am drawing a blank.  To be honest, I knew exactly what I was going to say and then I received this fucked up email that I totally disagree with but what can you do?

The only true confession I am capable of making today is the fact that I got nothing for you.  Zip.  Zero.  Blank.  I crapped out but tomorrow is another day.  Stay frosty comrades and fight the good fight.  This is Moai Red Shirt, signing off…

There was this one time at band camp.  Wait, that’s not right.  You’ll have to forgive this Moai Red Shirt as I had a long night and I probably shouldn’t be communicating with the outside world but if the Moai Away Team has taught me anything its that you should always follow through with your commitments.

And with that being said I will now tell you about the time that I found myself on the train facing a man with no shirt on who kept begging me to take his picture.  Seriously, I had no idea who this guy was but he would not take no for an answer.  So I took his photo and pretended to write down his email address because he wanted me to send him a copy.  I still have the photograph but I never did send him a copy because on that particular day I was being an insincere asshole.  It happens.  I often wonder what became of that man, besides being locked up in the county jail I’m sure.