Subj:   The ring of truth
Date:   Tue, Sep 5, 1995 9:15 PM PDT
From:  hsapiens@clark.net
To: psychospy@aol.com

In volume 29 of the "Rat," you write:

>Bob Lazar recounts a similar curiosity [in a transcript on WWW]:  
>He says that on the wall of the "S-4" laboratory where he worked 
>was a commercial-type poster with a photo of a saucer in flight 
>and the inscription, "THEY'RE HERE!"  This is the kind of odd 
>human detail that makes the Lazar story strike us as more real, 
>precisely because it seems out of place.  Such a poster could 
>serve no government need, and including it in the story does not 
>advance the needs of a liar either.  No such detail would appear 
>in a secret base created by Hollywood or in the fevered 
>imaginations of a conspiracy buff; those sources would give us 
>only stainless steel walls and workers marching like automatons.

Oh, please...

What makes a work of fiction *compelling* is inclusion of just the
sort of detail you refer to.  Many Hollywood movies (and any
decent novel) will make a point of showing (or mentioning) these
little details in the interest of character development, scene
painting, or just plain good humor.

In the film "Three Days of the Condor," for example, there is
a unisex water closet at the CIA bureau where the title character
works.  This WC has a spinner-style sign on the door with photos
of the various staff members so that one can indicate which of
the staff has gone to the loo.

In the film "The Abyss," clinging via suction-cupped feet to one of the 
convex viewports of the deep-sea drilling rig is a "Garfield" doll.

"ET" hides in plain sight among the stuffed animals in a kid's closet.

The list could go on and on and on and on.

If you want a tall tale to sound like the God's Honest Truth, it
behooves you to include enough of these little details for your
story to acquire the ring of truth.  This is what distinguishes
a good story teller from a bad one.  This is how the "They're Here" 
poster you refer to above serves the needs of the "liar."  It sounds 
like "real life" and it's a very old trick.

Lazar and Jarod may or may not be lying.  Their stories are intriguing
but dropping an occasional human interest tidbit in them should not
be allowed to substitute for verifiable facts.  You are smarter than
that, Glenn!

Please do keep up the good work with the "Rat."  I would say that I
do derive significant pleasure from it so I'll post my $5 soon.  If
you don't receive it within a couple of weeks, you have my full
permission to hound me unmercifully via e-mail.

Also, please consider this letter to be an application to be one of your 
assistants in Web site creation/maintenance.  I speak HTML (if you want 
to call it a "language" -- I suppose it is to C what Esperanto is to 
Hungarian) and have access to a 24-bit scanner and nice graphics software.
(I can do neat sound stuff, too.)  If I can help, please drop me a line.  

 --
|                       $                   | 
|---. ,---. ,---. ,---. . ,---. ,---. ,---. | "Most people would sooner die
|   | `---. ,---| |   | | |---' |   | `---. |  than think; in fact, they do."
`   ' `---' `---^ |---' ` `---' `   ' `---' |           -- Bertrand Russell
                  |      hsapiens@clark.net |