This is The End

Yesterday was the gap between picking in the South and the North (aka here), and today the Bings will begin to roll in. Yesterday we nearly ran out of fruit, but that won't happen again. It'll just keep on coming in untill one day it stops. And the next day we'll finish. But I don't have to worry about that for another three weeks.

Yes, this is the end. Not even close to the end of cherry season, but the end of life as I know it. I'll be in the shed for 17 hours a day. It will pass, though; all cherry seasons end.

The Last Action Hero's Big Gamble

Okay, so I'm the coach of a baseball team that is spending a lot of time in the basement. We have an extremely large fan base who put a lot of money into our mismanaged bureaucratic organization. Because of this erroneous financial management we needed to save some money and cut funding to all parts of the system. The most important organization affected by this is the farm system. This has been a major problem and has left our team struggling to find and develop young talent on our own. In short, every team from A-ball to the pros sucks.

Obviously a cut would only extend our slump, so the owner of the franchise decided to bring more funding into the team by using revenue from his sub par Las Vegas casino.

It would still be too much of a cut, but the owner has projected that more people will go to his casino with more aggressive marketing, raising its revenue.

Do I feel comfortable about this? Don't bet on it. Is it real? No, of course not; baseball is much too competitive for risks like that. But Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn't think it's too risky for California's feeble education system. In his newly proposed budget for the Golden State, the Kindergarten Cop put the handcuffs on funding for students of all ages. But don't worry, we will fund it with more revenue from the state lottery.

(The following is a monologue from the Governator)

Oh, I know da projection is big. We will market the lottery more aggressively and add more fun scratcher games no one can win. You don't believe me?!?! Get Down! More budget cuts coming! Don't believe me? Grab my hand! Follow me into a dependency on the vices of human nature to support the education of young minds? Come on! Get in da chopper! (This is the part where you look at the flaming helicopter with only two and a half rotors left, shake your head and move to Idaho)

That Moustache Feeling

Yep, it's that time again. I'm fitting in more and more around the cherry shed as my upper lip gets fuzzier. Hyrum showed me a clip from when the Tick got a moustache, and this morning before work I watched the entire episode on youtube. Once the Tick has his moustache, he becomes so confident. His words:
"Rugged, self assured, adult- these are the words that describe a man with a moustache. It says to the world that I’m a man of action. Ah, but action tempered with maturity- like a fireman, or somebody’s dad. Most of the world’s leaders have moustaches."

But the moustache isn't always the best thing to have around. His superhero friend Taft told the Tick about some of the downs to having a moustache.
"Sometimes it catches on my sweater, or gets stuck in the zipper of my jacket."
Now, the Tick's moustache was actually a secret government operation from the 70's made to counter the Russian Beard. The moustache flew the coop, though, in search for it's love (which happened to be the Russian Moustache, in the end). Jim Rage began a search for in when it escaped, and it all comes down to the exciting ending I suggest that you watch. Tick's final monolouge puts it all together.

"So the moustache was in love. That’s cool. Love is cool. That moustache was cool. But it didn’t make me cool. Jim should have been cool. He had a cool eye patch, a cool RV, cool gadgets and traveled the world with three vivacious exciting talented beauticians. I may have lost my moustache, but I’ve gained, well...I’ve gained nothing."

Why Am I Back Here?

Every day it seems the expected ending date for cherry season backs up. The 10th. The 15th. The 21st. The 26th. July 1st. I put in 76 hours last week and I've done 41 in the past three days. I look at what I'm doing around the packing shed and wonder to myself why I ever came back. The answer is found in the eyes of the workers.


Last year I gained many friendships with the laborers in the packing shed. All of them are hispanic. Talking to a floor lady, I asked, "How many of these people have papers?" "None of them!" was the answer. I talk to Jaime the mechanics about the struggles of working awful hours and not having time to learn english. I talk to Asucena and Yajira about the expensive price of living and needing to work so much to pay their bills. I talk to Claudia, who tells me how great a job this is compared to McDonalds. It doesn't require education or experience or even that you speak english, you get lots of hours, and you get a couple of months off between cherry and apple seasons.


But I don't talk to them a lot about that. I mostly talk to them about their lives, what they do and what they want to do. Some people would like to do more, but some people are happy there. A lot of them have children that go to school and speak English and are making progress. They love their families. Most of them watch soccer, all of them listen to music and dance and have a good time. They're fun. And they're interested in me, too. Wonderful, simple, humble people. I came to love them last year, and they're the reason I came back.


The full-time production managers and marketing guys are different. When they talk it's always some vulgar, ill-mannered crazy story. They talk about hunting, fishing, drinking, womanizing, criticizing, etc. I'd rather not be there for that. My friends are the Mexicans.


They're why I came back. They make me smile. They're an inspiration to me. They ask me about Courtney and my wedding and how many kids we want to have and what I'm going to do after I graduate. I love speaking Spanish with them, too. They help me learn more, too, and always want to know how I learned it so well and want me to help them learn english. Now the white guys aren't all horrible people- even the worst of them is a good person, but there's a concern for the individual that isn't there with them. The language barrier promotes the Marxist idea that laborers are just an extension of the machine to which they are assigned. People are worth more than that.

The Weblog

I used to have a newsletter that I sent out every week to all my friends and relatives. It included a little about me and a lot about current affairs in news, sports and entertainment. People enjoyed it, it was funny, writing it was the highlight of my week. But as I decided to spend more time with my schoolwork, the newsletter took up too much time, so I had to set aside my newsletter writing until I learned to balance things better.

Time passed and the requirements of education only became more time-consuming. Recently, I have found myself reading weblogs of friends, and have decided that they can be quite entertaining. So I said to myself, "Hey, Keith. You're entertaining. Why not entertain?" So I joined the ranks and created my own weblog.

You may notice that I use the root of the word 'blog'. My public relations professor used it when we had a class discussion on them and I thought it was funny.

The most difficult part so far about the weblog was choosing a title. For me, it had to be music related. Not sports, not politics, but it had to be music. I had many ideas, all of which were taken. It came down to a select few. I really liked "Elementary Penguin Singing Hare Krishna" (from I Am the Walrus), but chose "The Misty Mountain". Misty Mountain Hop by Led Zeppelin seems to be about getting high in a park, then having a run-in with the police and "packing my bags for the misty mountains where the spirits go now/over the hills where the spirits fly". It is a reference to the misty mountains of J.R.R. Tolkien, also known as Hithaelglir. It is where Bilbo found Gollum and got the ring. But for the purpose of naming my weblog, I refer back to track 5 of Led Zeppelin's fourth album, Misty Mountain Hop.

Sometimes we need to go to where everybody knows your name, but sometimes you just need to go over the hills where the spirits fly. When you read my posts on The Misty Mountain, you might have just left a run in with the police or one last dance with Mary Jane, or maybe you're going on the High Pass with dwarves on the Quest of Erebor and get captured by goblins or taking the Redhorn Pass with the Fellowship and turn around because of a blizzard summoned by a Benedict Arnold of a wizard who sold his soul to the evil one. Maybe you'll come away with a precious, and you just can't pass up an opportunity like that.