Daily archives: April 2, 2010

The Master Fiction Plot

This entry was posted in Facts and Fictions writing on by

Specifically for pulp fiction. Formulated by Lester Dent, creator of Doc Savage.

Framed over this typewriter, on a bulkhead of my schooner now anchored off a bay in the Caribbean while we attempt to raise a Spanish treasure, is an object which tends to make the convictions mentioned appear to be facts—or an unexpected hallucination.

The object on the bulkhead is a formula, a master plot, for any 6000-word pulp story. It has worked on adventure, detective, western and war-air. It tells exactly where to put everything. It shows definitely just what must happen in each successive thousand words.

No yarn written to the formula has yet failed to sell.

via Pulp 2.0

The CIA and UFOs

This entry was posted in Las Vegas UFO on by

Because of the tense Cold War situation and increased Soviet capabilities, the CIA Study Group saw serious national security concerns in the flying saucer situation. The group believed that the Soviets could use UFO reports to touch off mass hysteria and panic in the United States. The group also believed that the Soviets might use UFO sightings to overload the US air warning system so that it could not distinguish real targets from phantom UFOs. H. Marshall Chadwell, Assistant Director of OSI, added that he considered the problem of such importance “that it should be brought to the attention of the National Security Council, in order that a communitywide coordinated effort towards it solution may be initiated.”

via Respectful Insolence, who was mostly linking to this piece about Area 51 veterans. The veterans’ group is called Roadrunners Internationale (be warned, embedded music on the page) and they meet up in Vegas to reminisce about Blackbirds and the like.

Old school rallying footage

This entry was posted in Rally on by

via Jalopnik

Nothing like a bit of classic footage of Escorts, Quattros and the rest on a Bank Holiday. This reminds me of the times we’d go to watch a stage of the RAC rally in the forests beside Bassenthwaite. We always seemed to pick the same spot. It gave us a great view of an uphill hairpin. We never got to see anyone being quite as loony as this lot, but it was good.

Legend has it that, long before we moved in, the RAC one year passed along the road beside my parents house. One car missed the 90 degree bend at the end of the drive and demolished the gate. I want this to be a true story and, given the number of normal drivers every year who do the same thing less specatcularly, it’s entirely plausible.