GRAB A STACK OF ROCK With Mike and the Mad Metal Man
🅻🅸🆅🅴 Episode – Special Morning Broadcast!
Episode 148: Science Fiction, UFOS and the Paranormal with author Violeta M Bagia
Please welcome our newest guest! From Australia, it’s author Violeta M Bagia of Melbourne, who has written a number of science fiction books including her Hart of Darkness series and more. She is a UFO and paranormal buff and it is our pleasure to host her this morning on Grab A Stack of Rock!
This is a show we have been wanting to do for several years, but circumstances never lined up until now. The goal was always to do a show about ghosts, UFOs and the unexplained, at the cottage, before it’s light. We’ve finally found the right guest, and the right time! For her it’s evening in Australia, but for us, the world is yet to wake up. We will be live at 6AM sharp, which is 8PM Melbourne time. We’ve seen and heard some weird stuff in the woods at night. Now it’s time to share that special hour with the world.
On the schedule for this morning’s show: The books of Violeta, Area 51, ghost sightings, Bob Lazar and Majestic 12, UFO sightings and much, much more.
This will be a show not to miss. We still have a live episode of 50 Years of Iron Maiden for evening viewers! Please check it out, and join us live if you’re able!
Click above for the link to the show!
Friday May 22 at 6:00 AM EST, 8:00 PM Melbourne. Enjoy on YouTubeor Facebook.
RECORD STORE TALES #1243: Checking Things Off the List: Creative Works in Early 2026
I have been relatively silent in Spring 2026. Like many of us in these uncertain times, I have been paralyzed when trying to think of the future. This is rare for me. In the past, when I have found myself unable or unwilling to create, I tended to throw the towel in and cry “I quit”! Then more sober minds gently remind me that talking about music is something I’m pretty good at. They tell me it’s OK to take a break without nuking everything. So, this time I haven’t freaked out. I’ve just created at my own pace, and focused what juice I do have on videos. Videos are a different creative process and it feels more immediate to me at the moment.
Every year, twice a year, I try to do something “new” creatively. This could be writing, cooking, or video making. I can rarely plan ahead or field creative suggestions. Something new always comes along. It just happens organically every summer. Some future summer, I swear, I will take up meat smoking at the cottage, but not this year. This year, a new investment has been made and new equipment acquired in another direction.
Drones came into my life in 2024 when I accumulated enough Amazon points through my work to buy one. I chose the Potensic Atom SE, a great drone for beginners but not with the 4k 3-axis camera that a better drone carries. It was not until I tried both that I appreciated what the better camera can do. In 2025, I had a misadventure with the Ruko company and not one but two of their drones. While I loved their 4k camera with brushless 3-axis gimble, I didn’t enjoy that their drones are prone to crashing. My more primitive Potensic didn’t seem to have that weakness. If only it took better pictures, I mused.
Welcome to 2026, my new Potensic 4k drone with brushless 3-axis gimble. I upgraded. My parents enjoy my photos and want to see what I can do with a better camera. They made it happen. You can really see the difference. You’ll see how the horizon is always perfectly level. That’s the 3-axis gimble. Thank you mom and dad!
New thing #1 in 2026: New improved drone. Check ✔
Music: “SMC” by Def Leppard
Music: “Mighty Morris Ten” by Episode Six, featuring Ian Gillan and Roger Glover of Deep Purple
My summer creative goals are usually cottage goals. The drones are a perfect example. You could not ask for a better camera in the most perfect setting. I’m all about “set” and “setting”, as they say in psychology. Mindset, and physical setting. The cottage is the setting that gives me the best conduit to my creative side. I used to do a lot of animation videos from the lake, and I’d like to return to that. Since those days, live streaming from the lake is a creative highpoint. I started in 2020 using a primitive phone and Facebook Live, and they got better year after year, with 2026 being hopefully one of the best.
Because I love the night up at the cottage, and also because strange things have been seen and heard there, I have always wanted to live stream from the spooky dark. The ideal topic would be UFOs and the paranormal, I reasoned. I put the idea on the shelf as one that I hadn’t fully formed. Something to do someday, sometime, if the right circumstances came to be.
In 2025, while in a hospital emergency ward waiting to be seen for a rib injury, I spent my idle time reading the dystopian science fiction of Australian author Violeta M. Bagia. I remember complimenting the book and comparing it positively to Firefly in tone. Since that time I’ve learned that Bagia is not only a Blaze Bayley & Wolfsbane fan, but a UFO and paranormal enthusiast. Due to her location in Australia, her best time happened to fall at 6 AM EST, while the cottage in the woods is just waking up from the pitch black dark. It became obvious that I had my special guest and my setting for the UFOs and Paranormal episode. Please welcome to Grab A Stack of Rock on Friday May 22 at 6:00 AM EST: Violeta M. Bagia!
New thing #2 in 2026: Finally doing the UFO and Paranormal episode from the cottage. Check ✔
Coming May 22: Sci-fi, UFOs and the Paranormal with author Violeta M Bagia
But that’s not all. Harrison and I still have 50 Years of Iron Maiden to wrap up, and we’re so close! We are ready to cover The Book of Souls: Live Chapter, and as usual we do live albums as live episodes. Not wanting to delay 50 Years of Iron Maiden another week, I decided to do two shows in one day, at two extremes of the day: sunrise and sunset! This isn’t a goal I knew I had, but I’m excited to do it.
New thing #3 in 2026: Sunrise and Sunset Hour Shows in One Day. Check ✔
Two Live Show Announcement for May 22 2026
I have a long long weekend coming. Feeling the strain, we’ll be taking some extra time at the lake that weekend which will give me plenty of time to prepare and do two really good shows. That always makes me happy.
It’s already late May. That is rather late in the year for my creative side to start percolating, but start it has.
The big plastic bin of garbage lay before me, to take out as I go. We had a bathroom pipe break the day before, so in the plastic bin was not just your average garbage, but also an impressively rusted bathroom drain pipe. I tucked my two cell phones (work and personal) into my shirt pocket as I always did, and picked the plastic bin up with the legs. Navigating the simple act of taking out an awkward bin of garbage is tricky at age 53. Carrying the brunt of the weight against my chest, I walked the garbage out to the dumpster.
I opened the lid a crack, struggled a bit, and heaved the trash into the dumpster. Job done, and off to work.
I’m a nervous nelly and I’m always checking my pockets. Right front pants; keys. Left front pants; wallet. Front right shirt…front right shirt.
Shit.
My phones. Both of them. Gone.
I ran back to the dumpster and opened the lid in the pitch black. Fortunately, one of my phones was lit up. They must have fallen in with the garbage, when I dumped the contents of the plastic bin into the dumpster.
I’ve never gone dumpster diving in my life. I have zero experience in this. Well, I was about to get my wings. I calculated the risk as I lifted myself up. I got my right leg up.
“This is easy,” I actually thought to myself. “I wonder if they design these things so you can get in if you have to.”
I lifted my whole body over the edge, and lost control of the situation quickly. I tipped over to the left and landed with a mighty crash on my left side.
“Fuck!” I might have shouted. I don’t remember. That’s when the adrenaline kicked in. Even though I could not see, one lit-up phone led to another, and I retrieved both. Nothing gets the adrenaline flowing like being stuck in a dumpster, and so I somehow lifted myself back up and out. I landed on both feet this time. I truly do not know how I did it, but as soon as I hit the ground, I began slowly walking it off and focusing on breathing. It only occurred to me later what would have happened if I landed on something sharp.
I was convinced that nothing was broken, so I got in the car and went to work. When I got there, I felt the adrenaline wearing off and more pain settling in. I tried to move a box of documents to be shredded and couldn’t even budge it. That’s when I changed my mind and decided to go to the hospital.
According to my notes, I was admitted right around 7:30 and discharged at 1:00; not a bad turnaround.
The nurses and attendants with all very helpful and sympathetic. They helped me out of my chair when I needed a lift. Between all the nurses and doctors, I think I told my story five times. Each time, it was hard not to laugh at the stupidity. That’s when I realized how much it hurt to laugh. It was a fairly easy wait. I bought with me a book, which was noted by the triage nurse. “Oh, I see you brought a book, smart!” I mumbled something about thinking ahead, but what came out was more or less gibberish. The book I had with me was, of course, dystopian fiction: 2546: Harbinger of The Equinox by Australian writer Violeta M Bagia. I ripped through the first 60 pages before I was let go.
X-rays were thorough. Nothing broken. It’s not as simple as that though, as this is an injury that can get worse if not cared for.
They gave me three yellow pills and three white pills. I could definitely feel their effects as breathing became easier. Getting up? Not so easy. Still working on that. It requires a system of sequential movements that I haven’t quite mastered yet.
I got myself home. My mom bought me a sandwich. It was the first food I’d had all day.
I can’t see any marks on my body, but I sure bet that will change in the coming days.
Having sat long enough, now I move to go lay down a while. Wish me luck. I’m sure this isn’t the end of this story.
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