Stuck In Traffic Issue 36

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Stuck In Traffic

 · 26 Apr 2019

  

 
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                              Stuck In Traffic 
            "Current Events, Cultural Phenomena, True Stories" 
                         Issue #36 - December, 2000 

         Contents:  

         Cultural Phenomena: 
         A Guide To Manual Vote Counting  

         Cultural Phenomena: 
         Movie Review: Bedazzled  

         Cultural Phenomena: 
         Movie Review: The Grinch  

         True Story: 
         Tractor Hackers  
  
  
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                 Cultural Phenomena 
A Guide To Manual Vote Counting 

Don’t ask me how I came into possession of this document….. 

Dear Election Worker,  

On behalf of All American across the country, we Thank You for  
volunteering to help in the manual recount of ballots in your  
county.  We know that this is going to be a difficult and tedious  
task for you over the next few days.  Many of you would probably  
prefer to spend this time of Thanksgiving with your friends and  
family.  Truly, we appreciate your sacrifice.   

We are sure you are aware of the importance of this recount, the  
Presidency of the United States will, quite literally, be passing  
through your hands over the next few days.  We know that spending  
long hours at a tedious task can be tiring and frustrating.  There's  
sure to be confusion among you about how to count the votes.  To  
help you make these very difficult decisions, we offer these  
guidelines to help you make sure that the will of the people is  
accurately and fairly expressed.   

         * Voters have been confused by the layout of the ballot in  
         some counties.  As you have seen on CNN, voters that cast  
         their ballots for Buchanan actually intended to vote for  
         Gore.  Therefore any ballots you see that have been cast  
         for both Buchanan and Gore should be counted for Gore.   
         After all, CNN has not shown any Buchanan supporters who  
         have claimed to accidentally voted for Gore, have they?   

         * No major news network has interviewed any Buchanan  
         supporters in the counties where manual recounts are being  
         done.  Therefore you can assume that there are no Buchanan  
         supporters in counties were manual recounts are underway.   
         Any ballots that were cast for Buchanan alone were cast  
         accidentally by Gore supporters who were confused by the  
         ballot.  These ballots should be counted as votes cast for  
         Gore.   

         * While it is true that persons convicted of a felony lose  
         their right to vote in elections, one must also take into  
         consideration those who have been wrongfully convicted.  As  
         you know, Florida's current governor is not only a  
         Republican, he has close familial ties with George W.   
         Bush.  One can safely assume that Democrats currently  
         incarcerated in Florida are political prisoners, not felons  
         and their votes for Gore should be counted.   

         * There has been much confusion on how many corners of the  
         chads on the Gore row must be detached before they can be  
         counted as a Gore vote.  While the rule for the initial  
         re-count required that at least 2 corners of the chad be  
         detached, the new rule is that only one chad must be  
         detached.  Making any sort of mark on the ballot would  
         indicate a vote for Gore.  As you know, many Gore voters  
         were confused by the ballot.  So even if the chads on other  
         candidate's rows are cleanly separated, a partially  
         detached chad on the Gore row would indicate a confused  
         Gore supporter, not a supporter for another candidate.   

         * As you know, Gore offered a much larger increase in  
         social security spending for the elderly than George Bush.   
         Likewise Gore promised to pay more for prescription drugs  
         than Bush did.  One can safely assume then that the elderly  
         are favoring Gore exclusively.  But many of the elderly, in  
         their prescription drug deprived state do not have the  
         strength to punch their way through the ballot.  Therefore  
         any "pregnant," "dimpled," "lumpy," ballot chads on the  
         Gore row of the ballot , or any Gore chads that look like  
         they exhibit any convex or potentially convex tendencies  
         should be counted for Gore, regardless of whether or not  
         any corners of the chad were actually detached.   

         * Any ballots for George W.  Bush which are detached, but  
         not cleanly detached from the edges of the ballot should be  
         considered invalid votes and not counted.  Any fibers of  
         the chad which remain on the ballot, may reflect a last  
         second change of intent on the part of the voter.  You  
         would not mistakenly count a Bush vote that might have  
         changed his or her mind at the last second.   

         * Any ballots for which the George Bush chad has been  
         detached, but may nonetheless be manually reaffixed to the  
         ballot with adhesive tape, glue, or laminate should be  
         reattached and not counted.  Such reassembly should be done  
         as quietly and discreetly as possible, so as not to disturb  
         the other vote counters in the room.   

         * As you know, Republican voters are only able to force  
         themselves to vote for George Bush under heavy per  
         pressure.  And given the opportunity to vote in private,  
         they would not cast their vote for Bush.  So if no vote  
         counters are observing while you inspect a ballot that has  
         been cast for Bush, please place it on the Gore pile so you  
         can better reflect the voter's private, inner intent.   

         * While it is widely anticipated that absentee ballots will  
         heavily favor George Bush, there is some confusion as to  
         what qualifies as a valid absentee ballot.  The correct  
         interpretation is that no absentee ballots are valid.  How  
         can an absent person vote?  If they aren't there, who's  
         going to make the mark?  A person absent from the ballot  
         can't mark it, and anyone who can mark the ballot is  
         present at the ballot and therefore does not qualify as an  
         "absentee."  

Thank you for your kind attention to these matters.  We appreciate  
your sacrifice, your flexibility, and your creativity as human  
beings.  We're sure you'll use every means possible to ensure the  
end results reflect the will of the right people.   

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                 Cultural Phenomena 
Bedazzled 
** 1/2  

Brendan Fraser plays Elliott, the geeky computer jock with no social  
skills whatsoever and the self-confidence to match.  Elizabeth  
Hurley plays The Devil, who for some reason decides it's time to  
pick on Elliott.  She offers him 7 wishes in exchange for his soul.   

Naturally skeptical, Elliott finally gives into the offer when  
confronted to win the girl of his dreams.  And at this point we slip  
into the that age-old comedy about Men trying to figure out What  
Women Want.  And by the time Elliott loses his soul, we've taken a  
quick trip through all the basic stereotypes of Men and Women,  
poking good natured fun at all our preconceptions.   

Perhaps it's not done with quite the style and panache as the 1967  
version of Bedazzled.  But it's a fun movie.  Just don't expect to  
many surprises along the way.   

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                 Cultural Phenomena 
The Grinch 
*** 1/2 

It seems that for people of my generation, those of us who are too  
young to be Baby Boomers and yet too old to be Gen X'ers, the whole  
notion of a Currier and Ives Christmas has been replaced with a new  
set of cultural icons.  For us, Thanksgiving is not complete with  
out watching "It's a Wonsderful Life" and Christmas isn't complete  
without watching "A Charlie Brown Christmsas" and, of course, "The  
Grinch Who Stole Christmas."  

I was a little worried when I heard that there was going to be a  
movie version of this classic animated feature.  Too often, such  
efforts get the visuals correct but inject their own message into  
the movie that wasn't there in the original.  I needn't have  
worried, Director Ron Howard stayed true to the spirit of the story  
and managed to recreate Who-ville so accurately it was scary.   

What's amazing to me is that the script writers worked in several of  
the classic scenes from the animated feature into the movie script.   
But the real marvel is Jim Carrey's ability to recreate the  
mannerisms of the cartoon Grinch.  The man is truly amazing.   

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                         True Story 
Tractor Hackers 

Finally, this year, as the North Carolina State Fair opened for the  
first time in the new millennium, I gave myself the pleasure of  
attending the annual Tractor Pull competition.  I had been promising  
myself I would go for three or four years, but the other Fair events  
usually took up all my time.   

I’m a big fan of the State Fair.  Farmers and Ranchers from all over  
the state gather at the fair grounds in Raleigh to display their  
livestock, their produce, and their skills at various agricultural  
tasks.  It’s loads of fun.  In one building at the fair grounds,  
they have displays of produce.  Cabbages, tomatoes, squash, corn,  
okra, melons, and that specialty of North Carolina, sweet potatoes!   
The pumpkin exhibit was especially impressive, displaying an award  
winning 780 pound pumpkin, grown by a kid in his back yard.  As you  
walk around, people are offering you free samples of their food and  
produce.  Free peanuts, free pickles, free hush puppies, free  
Brunswick Stew.  It was a cornucopia of free food.   

The livestock exhibits, though a bit smelly, are fun too.  Cows,  
bulls, horses, goats all being judged by whatever criteria one  
judges these creatures by.  Some had blue ribbons, some had red,  
some had no ribbons at all.  To tell the truth, they all looked  
pretty much the same to me.  But as I always say, “where else are  
you going to get an opportunity to pet a goat?”  

This year, I didn’t ride the Ferris Wheel, the Roller Coasters, or  
any of the other carnival rides.  I wanted to go to the Tractor Pull  
instead.  But I did take time to browse through the many food  
stands.  There are some foods that, as far as I know, are only  
available at The State Fair.  For example, I have never seen roasted  
corn offered at a restaurant.  I have never seen funnel cakes sold  
anywhere else.  Fried candy bars (honest, I’m not making this up)  
can be found no where else.  My sins of gluttony were indulged at  
the Greek Gyro food stand and the Hot Wisconsin Fried cheese stand.   
Gyros, compared to the rest of the food at the State Fair, could  
arguably be said to be semi-healthy.  But the sharp Wisconsin  
cheddar cheese, rolled in corn meal, deep fried, and then dipped in  
sour cream and jalapenos can, in no way whatsoever, be considered  
the least bit healthy.  But it was delicious!  Score one for the  
libertines.   

Pleasantly stuffed with junk food, my friend Lee and I headed for  
the Tractor Pull arena.  It was packed.  Who would have had any idea  
this could be so popular?  The arena was an oval shaped dirt track,  
similar to a horse race track, but I think it was a little smaller.   
In the infield of the track, all the tractor pull contestants had  
their trucks and campers and their make-shift garages set up.  Even  
though it was dark, you could tell there was constant activity in  
the infield as people worked on their trucks up until the very last  
minute.   

The stands were filled to capacity with spectators.  I was  
pleasantly surprised at how well integrated the crowd was.  The  
stereotype for these sorts of events would dictate that it be an  
all-white event, the assumption being that blacks and minorities are  
not welcome at such things.  But, I’m pleased to say that in North  
Carolina at least, the stereotype is wrong.  Whites, blacks,  
Hispanics, and Oriental people mixed and mingled politely.  On the  
whole, the crowd was well mannered.   

Gap Kids were no where to be found.  The brand names on clothing  
tended to be car and truck companies, not fashion labels.  It’s a  
bit shocking, actually, to see such flagrant disregard for fashion  
mandates.  It’s also extremely cool in a non-hip sort of way.  Which  
is not to say that people were shabbily dressed.  I saw plenty of  
well dressed ladies sporting heels, painted finger nails and make  
up.  More than a few guys had shown up in their best western boots,  
buckles, and shirts.  But mostly people were just being themselves  
not putting on appearances.   

Before the competition could get started, of course, we paid our  
respects to Our Country and Our Veterans.  And I don’t mean a  
half-hearted rendition of the Star Spangled Banner.  A local junior  
ROTC squad marched in the American Flag and the North Carolina flag,  
while “I’m proud to be an American” played over the speakers.  Then  
we had both the Pledge of Allegiance and the Star Spangled Banner.   
Everyone participated, except perhaps those who had not quite yet  
learned enough English.  I was a good sight to see.   

After that, we could get down to the business of the night, the  
Tractor Pull!  The tractor pull competition rules are established by  
the National Tractor Pull Association.  Like everyone else in the  
New Millennium, they have a web site which explains it all.  Check  
out http://www.tpull.com/.  I had never been to a tractor pull  
before, so I didn’t quite know what to expect, and I never quite  
picked up on all the rules.  But I understood enough to follow  
along.   

It’s not a race.  They don’t use the entire oval of the track.  They  
just use the straight way in front of the stands.  They divide it up  
into two lanes and alternate the tractor pulls between the two  
lanes.  While a truck is making a pull in one lane, the other lane  
is being readied for the next tractor.   

The competition is not, as I had thought, about how much weight a  
tractor can pull, but which truck among the contestants can pull the  
same amount of weight the farthest.  There are several classes of  
“Tractors” too.  One class of tractor actually looks like a tractor,  
but the other classes of “tractors” are really heavily modified  
pick-up trucks.  As I understand the event, the pickups are divided  
into two-wheel drive trucks and 4 wheel drive trucks.   

It is unclear to me if any of the tractor drivers get corporate  
sponsorships or not.  One thing’s for sure, they plaster company  
logos all over the trucks.  They all sport nifty paint jobs.  To  
call these machine’s “tractors” requires a significant stretch of  
the imagination.  I’m sure that none of these machines has ever  
spent a day in an actual field pulling farm equipment.  These are  
machines designed from the ground up to haul tremendously heavy  
loads.   

The other interesting thing about the competition is that they don’t  
just dump all the weight on at once.  They add it on at a steady  
fixed rate once the truck has started.  After I thought about it,  
this makes sense.  If you put all that weight on at once, then  
either the truck can pull it or it can’t.  But if you add the weight  
at a fixed rate as the truck moves down the track, then you get to  
see the truck actually moving.  And you get to see the tires dig  
their way into the dirt as the load gets heavier and heavier.  You  
get to see the tractor slow down little by little as it tries its  
best to make it to the end of the 300 foot track.  It’s much more  
photogenic that way.   

So each truck takes its turn at the end of the track and pulls to  
the end of the track until it stops.  Then a laser aligned device  
tells the judges exactly how far the tractor pulled its load.   

Unlike many competitions, where the race starts out the same for all  
the contestants and the finisher ends in a blaze of glory, tractor  
pulls work the other way around.  There is a big difference in the  
way the various trucks make it off the starting line.  And you can  
tell right away whether the current truck has a prayer of making it  
to the end of the track or not.  But all the trucks end up the same,  
a dead stand still.   

Also unlike many other forms of sport, it’s vitally important that  
the tractor driver know when to stop.  Obviously the driver wants to  
take the truck as far as it will go.  But on the other hand, there’s  
a real risk of destroying your engine and transmission if you don’t  
stop at the right time.  So tractor drivers have to balance the  
competitive spirit against sensibility or they will ruin their  
investment.  I saw several trucks that night which had to be towed  
off the track because their engine had been ruined.   

As each tractor takes its turn, the host of the event would tell you  
the name of the driver, where he was from, and a little bit about  
their truck pulling history.  He would also tell you a little bit  
about the truck, how it was constructed, what made it different from  
the other trucks.  All of this would have been very interesting, but  
the roar of the truck motors tended to drown it all out.   

Like NASCAR racing events, there is tremendous car brand loyalty  
among the spectators and the hosts know how to use this to get the  
crowd excited.  The spectators might not know the driver of a  
particular driver, but if the tractor was of a brand they supported,  
they would yell for the driver like crazy.  In addition to the three  
car companies.  (Ford, Chevy, Dodge) John Deer and International  
Harvester were represented at the Tractor Pull.  As far as this  
crowd is concerned, no other motor companies exist.   

I did not keep count, but I bet there were about one hundred pull  
attempts that night.  And they burn a lot of fuel to go just a  
couple of hundred feet.  Soon the entire arena was filled with a  
hazy smoke that slowly drifted up into the clear October sky,  
dimming the full moon that happened to be shining that night.  I  
have never seen such volumes of thick black smoke spew from any sort  
of engine that quickly.  It gave you a good sense of just how much  
horse power was being produced in those engines.   

It’s almost as much fun to watch the drivers work on their machines  
as it is to watch the actual pull.  These are not machines you can  
go out to your local truck dealer an buy.  These machines are as  
unique as the individual that built them.  They are also as  
temperamental as person who made them.  Rarely did a tractor pull up  
to the starting line and not need some last minute adjustments under  
the hood.  When you think about it, this makes sense.  Some skill is  
needed to drive the tractor down the track.  You have to know how to  
rev up the power so your truck doesn’t flip over, you have to keep  
the truck going straight under the heavy load.  But the real skill  
needed for a tractor pull is not the driving skill but the skill at  
putting the thing together.  In order to successfully pull that  
amount of weight down a track, you need an extremely powerful  
engine, which can consume fuel and air at a much higher rate that  
normal machinery, and you have to have a transmission and suspension  
that is not going to buckle under that much torque.   

I thought I had nothing in common with these people.  I thought that  
I was in an alien culture.  I would not have imagined that I could  
sympathize so strongly with the tractor pullers.  As a software  
engineer by trade, I spend my days thinking about abstract concepts  
like “protocols,” “data models” and “object oriented designs” But as  
I watched tractor driver diving under the hoods of their tractors  
just before their pull it occurred to me that these men are true  
craftsman.  And I would even hazard a comparison between tractor  
drivers and software hackers.   

Tractor drivers build unique machines, pushing the limits of their  
craft in odd, interesting directions.  No two tractors are the same,  
yet they are all designed for the same purpose.  In a similar way,  
software hackers artisans of their craft, often inventing  
innovative, if odd, ways of solving the same problems.  Every  
software hacker has his or her own style that’s evident in every  
line of code they write.  Teams of programmers can often look at  
some code and tell you which team member wrote it, based on the  
coding style.   

The one big difference between software hackers and these tractor  
drivers is that the tractor drivers drew a crowd.  People paid money  
to see these guys display their wares and the results of their  
labor.  As the smoke drifted across the pale moon, I realized that  
my hand was instinctively grabbing at a monkey wrench that wasn’t  
there.   

 
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                 About Stuck In Traffic 

Stuck In Traffic is a monthly magazine dedicated to evaluating  
current events, examining cultural phenomena, and sharing true  
stories.   

                      Why "Stuck In Traffic"? 

Because getting stuck in traffic is good for you.  It's an  
opportunity to think, ponder, and reflect on all things, from the  
personal to the global.  As Robert Pirsig wrote in Zen and the Art  
of Motorcycle Maintenance,  

         "Let's consider a reevaluation of the situation in  
         which we assume that the stuckness now occurring,  
         the zero of consciousness, isn't the worst of all  
         possible situations, but the best possible  
         situation you could be in.  After all, it's exactly  
         this stuckness that Zen Buddhists go to so much  
         trouble to induce...."  

                   Contact Information 

All queries, submissions, subscription requests, comments, and  
hate-mail should be sent to Calvin Powers via E-mail  
(powers@attglibal.net). 

                     Copyright Notice  

Stuck In Traffic is published and copyrighted by Calvin Powers  
who reserves all rights.  Individual articles are copyrighted by  
their respective authors.  Unsigned articles are authored by Calvin  
Powers.   

                           Availability 

The Web based version of Stuck In Traffic can be found at  
http://www.StuckInTraffic.com/  

To subscribe to the free e-mail edition of Stuck In Traffic, go to  
http://www.onelist.com/community/StuckInTraffic  

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electronic privacy and security.  See  
http://www.eff.org/goldkey.html  

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