Many years ago I was a manager of a large petrol station. I had a standard employment contract, but we also had additions specific to our station regarding discounts and freebies etc. One of the clauses was that petrol was not to be discounted, and we were to pay the full pump fee, just like a regular customer.

As often happens, petrol prices fluctuate, and we had to adjust the prices on the computer which controlled the prices on the pumps every few days, a few cents up or down.

Our computer system was very old, as were our pumps. It could sometimes take up to 15 minutes for the pumps to display the new prices.

This meant we had to close the station during the update. One day I was on the forecourt while the prices were updating, so picked up a pump to check if the update was complete.

I immediately ran to my car and pulled it up to a pump to fill my tank.

It turned out that when the update was, well, updating, the prices on the pumps defaulted to 5 cents per litre. I filled my tank for $6. It should have been more than $100 Once the tank was empty, I tried again, and it still worked. The time after that I tried the premium performance petrol. Same price.

I didn’t spend more than $100 IN TOTAL in the rest of my time there after that.

Before anyone suggests I was stealing or defrauding the company – I wasn’t doing either. My contract specifically stated I had to pay the price displayed on the pump, and that is exactly what I was doing. My loophole was knowing when the price would be lower and taking advantage of that.

Two nights ago SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK attended the Brisbane concert of ahead-of their-time-but-now- cult-retro-band DEVO (formed in 1973) I’ve been seeing a few live acts recently, I know right?

Me and 1200 other fans grooved along (may as well go retro in the description stakes as well) to every catchy-song-moment of this show. Highlight? Probably the song THAT’S GOOD (originally released 1982). For a bit of fun, here’s a kids version of this song performed by DEVO tribute band DEVO 2.0. They were a thing for a couple of years around the mid 2000’s.

READ IT HERE

Gary Numan has sold over 10 million records. His career began in the 1970’s when he was frontman of the new wave band TUBEWAY ARMY. His 19th studio solo album INTRUDER was released in 2021, the same year he published his second autobiography.

In this excerpt, Gary recalls the time he had a UFO encounter…

“It was during the DANCE sessions that I saw something else very strange.

It was the early hours of the morning, and I was on my way home from the studio with my new girlfriend at the time.

Things were very quiet, and we seemed to be the only car on the road.

As our small road crossed over a motorway, I saw what I can only describe as a huge light coming out of the clouds, shaped like an upside-down pyramid, with the pointy end just touching the surface of the road.

The cloud was low and the light seemed to be coming through it from above. It was a perfect square shape, like the base of a pyramid but only the edges.

I stopped the car, got out, expecting to hear the noise of a helicopter, but there was nothing.

No noise at all.

I found that very unnerving and was about to get back into the car and drive off when the light vanished.

But we’d watched it for a while, both before we stopped and after. It was definitely there, but I have no idea what it could have been.” p118

There’s always time for one last song (a gentle tune from Gary’s 1980 album TELEKON) from the…

This newly released novel has been getting a lot of buzz recently. When Athena dies in a freak accident, June steals her unpublished manuscript and publishes it as her own, under the ambiguous name JUNIPER SONG. What happens next is everyone else’s fault.

READ IT HERE

Last year, a flotilla of joy hoisted it’s mast for shipwreck enthusiasts worldwide.

Not ONE but TWO long-sought-after maritime discoveries were unearthed within weeks of each other.

Irish explorer Ernest Shackleton’s (1874 – 1922) ship ENDURANCE was discovered 3 km beneath the Southern Ocean in Antarctica.

In the same month of February, British Sea Captain James Cook’s (he’s the guy Aussie school kids back in the 70’s were taught ‘discovered’ Australia) ship ENDEAVOUR was positively identified in the Atlantic Ocean near Rhode Island (U.S.) at a depth of just 14 meters.

I love a good shipwreck story. The one I’m about to share with you is as ‘curious’ as any.

Five years ago, the world’s oldest ‘intact’ shipwreck was discovered 2 km beneath the waves of the Black Sea of the Atlantic Ocean near Bulgaria.

By ‘intact’ what is meant is more or less the whole ship was still present. By comparison, only 15% of the ENDEAVOUR was still remaining when that discovery was made in 2022.

The famous DOKUS SHIPWRECK, the world’s oldest (dated 2700–2200 BC), had even less. Nothing from the original sea-going vessel remained apart from hundreds of clay pots and urns.

A team of researchers found the 23 meter long Ancient Greek ship, named Odysseus, while surveying 2000sq km of seabed. A small piece of wood was taken for tests and carbon dated to 400BC, making it the oldest intact shipwreck known to mankind.

Its original shape had not been destroyed despite thousands of years at the bottom of the sea, with a mast, rudder and rowing benches still clearly visible. The shipwreck is well preserved because below a certain depth there is no oxygen in the water in the Black Sea.

The Black Sea Maritime Archaeology Project spent three years combing the depths of the Black Sea using remote-controlled deepwater camera systems. Their exploration unearthed more than 60 shipwrecks.

PART 1 HERE ME HEARTIES

PART 2 HERE ME HEARTIES

PART 3 HERE ME HEARTIES

To check out HAPPY DAYS go clickety click HERE.

Things went off with a hot bang two nights ago at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium.

Eighties rockers Motley Crue (U.S) and Def Leppard (U.K) lit a fuse that burned industrial- strength-loud and off-the-grid bright for three straight hours.

SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK was ringside. Here’s eight highlights…

Motley Crue’s frontman is the one-and-only renegade VINCE NEIL. I knew his singing voice very well but had never heard his speaking voice.

These days Vince isn’t someone you’d ordinarily describe as CUTE. Back in the 80’s – 40 kg lighter – different story (in the opinion of female fans). But his speaking voice? It’s gentle, soft, cartoonish and, maybe best described as – wait for it – Daffy Duck-ish. CUTE ? Probably that too.

RICK ALLEN has been DEF LEPPARD‘S drummer since 1978. In 1985 he lost his left arm in a car crash. How he re-taught himself to play one-handed and continue to serve as the mega-group’s sticks man is easily one of rock music’s most inspirational stories.

Naturally SWS had seen all the song videos over the years featuring Allen. Live on-stage however, was a whole ‘nother level of breathtaking.

WILD SIDE, the song MOTLEY CRUE opened with, pretty much summed up the band’s mind-hemorrhaging and all-round five star dynamite performance on the night.

This 1987 video for the song is, I reckon, (now) hilarious. I say hilarious because in it drummer Tommy Lee is eerily without a single tattoo and lead-singer Vince Neil looks, well… not like the Vince Neil we have today. Still, it gives some vibe of the glittering mayhem that went down on Wednesday night.

Every man, woman and child (there were a few of those there as well) at the concert on Wednesday night was waiting for this song. When it came, it shook the rafters and didn’t disappoint. Stadium rock at its nut-cracking finest.

Motely Crue’s cover of the Beatles classic HELTER SKELTER was pretty special. Their version of the Beastie Boys FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT wasn’t bad either.

Looking but NOT buying at concert ‘Merch’ tents is always a self-belief pleasure for me. $65 t-shirts I can get on-line for $15 is not my idea of a wise-spend. Learnt that from my wife, btw.

Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee gave added meaning to the term FLASH MOB when he grabbed the mike and encouraged the females in the audience to flash their breasts. Three did. The four-story high video screens on each end of the stage shared the moment with, well… everyone.

For two bands whose heyday was way back in the eighties, the silver-fox brigade was more than well represented in the audience. Incredibly, there were also almost just as many people in their twenties.

In the seats immediately behind me were three teenage girls. I’d put each of their ages at no more than 15. To give a mental picture, the trio resembled a cross somewhere between the 1960’s-like innocence of image A and the slightly harder-edged sass of image B.

The three left halfway through the second act (Def Leppard) I’m guessing ’cause they had to front up at school the next morning. SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK’S #1 thrill of the entire night was hearing these girls sing along – word ultra-perfectly – to EVERY SINGLE SONG Motley Crue played.

By some other-worldly means I still can’t completely account for, these eye-liner heavy pubescent teens had somehow committed to memory every syllable of every word of every lyric of every song this four-decades old band performed for 70 continuous minutes. It was so freakin’ time-defying awesome.

So who was better? While DEF LEPPARD were amazing, nothing could compete on the night with the raw animal energy of MOTLEY CRUE. They owned the stadium and were nothing short of ferocious.

On a slightly different musical note…It may be old news by now, but last week fans of THE BEATLES got what they’d waited for for such a long time – a new song!

How exactly was it done? Let’s just say it had something to do with AI machine learning plus the combined talents of Paul McCartney and filmmaker Peter ‘King Kong’ Jackson. For the full story, go HERE.

To check out HAPPY DAYS go clickety click HERE.

History is about special moments in time. Like these moments…

Speaking of history, I’ve been waiting for this one to come around now for quite a while. Something like, oh I don’t know… the last 40 years or so?

READ IT HERE

SCENIC WRITER’S SHACK linked up earlier this year with QUORA to bring you interesting answers to fascinating questions.

QUORA describes itself as “an on-line platform to ask questions and connect with people who contribute unique insights and quality answers.” It’s visited by 300 million people per month.

Here’s a topic I came across recently…

Homeless people commonly sleep on hard concrete sidewalks when there are grassy areas everywhere because they don’t want to get bit up by an array of bugs, ants, ticks, spiders, mice, rats, raccoons, squirrels, or similar, or risk having a snake encounter.

They also don’t want to risk sprinkler systems, fertilizer toxins, dog and cat urine, not to mention feces.

Who could ever have guessed that concrete could be so much better than grass?

Being a KISS fan comes with certain obligations. One of them was posting this recent five-star song mash-up by a guy by the name of Bill McClintock (school teacher is his day job) who specializes in producing some of the absolute best song-blends on the internet. This one was released a few months back and deservedly has clocked over a million views.

It magically combines two songs, both originally released in 1979. The first is KISS’S “I WAS MADE FOR LOVING YOU”. The second is EARTH WIND & FIRE’S “BOOGIE WONDERLAND”. See what you think. For me, this mash-up is so perfect and so mesmerizing.

Ready for your weekly HAPPY DAYS hit? Then click HERE.

This week’s menu features a children’s short story.

I wrote it a few days back for a competition. 500 words was the maximum length. You had to include something that changes color. I chose a person’s face.

Hope you like it.

“Precious Menace to Torn Pocket. Do you read me? “

“I be readin’ you loud and clear boss.”

“You are go for entry Torn Pocket. I say again – you are go for entry.”

“Just a second.  My shoelace has come undone.”

“Say again. You cut off. What’s not done?

“My shoelace. It’s come undone. Only take a minute.”

Mikala could feel the first pangs of annoyance rise up through her throat and begin to turn her face red. The freckle-faced schoolgirl, who packed a manipulative tool kit few would have imagined someone so young might be capable of, shifted her uncomfortable position on the second top concrete step outside Mr Fleckenstein’s 1st story classroom and squeezed the handset with added pressure.

“Listen to me cough drop. I haven’t spent two weeks planning this whole operation for you to foul it up now. Climb the stairs, look for the bag and place the note inside. Now!”

From her concealed position behind the playground bush closest to the junior school bubblers, Ruby reminded herself that making good on her pledge to accept and carry out this entry-grade prank would be looked on favorably from higher-ups within the organization known as The Silk Spiders.

Agent Mikayla was, after all, a low-level operative, barely above herself in ranking and importance. No one must have an inkling of her real ambitions. She would bypass the temper and stumble on.

“Roger that.”

Performing a hurried point-to-point scan for teachers while at the same time inserting the periwinkle-blue mini walkie-talkie deep inside her dress pocket, Ruby circled the garden bed of dirt and weeds and headed straight up the first flight of stairs at the other end of the balcony from where Mikayla was positioned.

It was at that moment her eyes began to glaze over and an expression other than boredom first began to take hold.  The mischievous set-up note, fraudulently proclaiming undying love that had taken several days of practice to impersonate class captain Sarah Hornbuckle’s artful handwriting was ready.

It was her job to place it unseen in the outer pocket of blonde-haired Huey Waks’s school bag.

But which bag was it?

She’d been told his was navy blue with white trim and a miniature school crest label on the side. It was always placed at the end of the bag-rack on the middle wooden rung.

Yet in the midst of what was undeniably her very first ‘hot zone’, and her heart fully in car-alarm mode, the riddle now before her was this: three identical looking bags each staring back at her like innocent triplets laying in their crib.

Amid the sudden chime of the school bell and with no time left to ponder, Ruby quickly shoved the note inside the middle bag’s outer pocket and as calmly as she could, retreated back down the stairs. On cue, her walkie-talkie squawked to life.

“How’d you go sweetcakes?”

“Middling to good” Ruby shot back, the hint of a smile spreading across her unflushed face.

Ready for your weekly HAPPY DAYS hit? You are? Then click HERE

When the swarm of literally tens of thousands of films nesting inside a dedicated movie buff’s head reaches critical mass and the buzz becomes too busy to ignore, there’s but one thing to do – compile a top 100 list.

This ‘hive’ has been organized according to time period – nominating ten loved films from each of the decades from the 1940’s through to the 2010’s.

That will total eighty films. Twenty selections have been included each for the 1970’s and 80’s – ‘my‘ decades – rounding out the list to 100 TITLES.

The ‘noughties’ saw the long-predicted breakthrough of China as an economic behemoth. The internet continued to grow, with the establishment of FACEBOOK (2004), UTUBE (2005) and TWITTER (2006).

The WAR ON TERROR and WAR IN AFGHANISTAN began after the SEPTEMBER 11 ATTACKS in 2001. The INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT was formed in 2002.

In 2003, a United States-led coalition invaded Iraq and the IRAQ WAR led to the end of Saddam Hussein’s rule as Iraqi President in Iraq. 

Climate change and global warming became common concerns in the 2000s. Prediction tools made significant progress during the decade.

Video game consoles released in this decade included the PLAYSTATION 2, the XBOX, the GAMECUBE, the Wii, PLAYSTATION 3 and the XBOX 360. 

In 2003 in the world of science, the HUMAN GENOME PROJECT was completed, with 99% of the human genome sequenced to 99.99% accuracy.

In 2005, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY and IBM established THE GENOGRAPHIC PROJECT which aims to trace the ancestry of every living human down to a single male ancestor.

BILLBOARD magazine named EMINEM as the male artist of the decade and BEYONCE as the female artist of the decade, with NICKELBACK as the band of the decade.

Approximately 1.35 billion people were born throughout the 2000’s, while 550 million people died.

‘Best Picture’ winners for the 2000’s were –

And so to my TOP TEN favorite movies of the decade…

READ IT HERE

I’ve never been what you’d call a gamer.

That is unless you count the arcade era of the late 70’s-early 80’s.

When it came to SPACE INVADERS and GALAGA, for a time I had what you could call hampster-wheel endurance and maybe even something coming close to ‘erratic brilliance’. Yeah. What a laugh.

But there was one game – one ‘phenomena’ would be a better description – that so completely rocked my world in the early 2000’s, it took me a number of years to emerge from the iron grip of it’s lit-up, action-fueled adrenaline buzz.

That game was GOLDENEYE 007.

And now a look-back documentary titled GOLDENERA has been made that celebrates the game’s frontier-changing influence and legacy.

I watched this documentary back in July on-board a plane to South Korea. Strapped to my seat, I was in every sense of the word a captive audience.

For a narrative-led first person shooter game that would go on to define a generation and was innovative in so many ways – from it’s story-telling, visuals and sound to it’s weapons, stealth, and AI and even right down to the background wall textures in many scenes – turns out it was the very first project after graduating University for a bunch of young British programmers and designers.

Work on GOLDENEYE 007  began in January 1995.

The creative team visited the studio sets of the Pierce Brosnan film GOLDENEYE several times to seek inspiration. The 1995 Robert DeNiro movie HEAT (love that film!) has also been cited as a visual influence.

The young and inexperienced team of designers and techs worked 100 hour weeks, pouring everything they had into creating a first person shooter game unlike any other before it. Their efforts would pay off way beyond how any of them dared dream.

The film GOLDEN EYE was the fourth highest worldwide grossing film of 1995. It didn’t take long, two years later, for GOLDEN EYE the game to surpass the movie’s takings.

Made by RARE STUDIOS, the game cost $2 million to make and has grossed over $250 million worldwide since, with more than 8 million copies sold.

A great documentary on an amazing unutterably glorious video game.

Ready for your HAPPY DAYS hit? Then go clickety click HERE.

“He’s finally been recognized as an important and influential figure. His importance lies in his ability to slap an earth-quaking hook on top of glacial synths and therefore join the dots between KRAFTWERK, BOWIE and BRIAN ENO on one side and the rise of synth-pop, techno and industrial music on the other.” The Sunday Times

This time around we’re going all supernatural. Gary shares the time he encountered a ghost on the subway.

“Ghost stories are two a penny, and I have no doubt that mine is no more believable to most people than others are to me. I really don’t care. I have no interest in whether it’s believed or not. I know what happened. I have a witness who saw exactly the same thing and our conviction has never wavered.

I made regular trips into London, usually with Gary Robson, to hang out in music shops mostly, look at gear, buy tickets for shows, that sort of thing. On one trip we had a scare that has stayed with us our entire lives.

We always travelled on the Underground, as we were still too young to drive – a bus to Hounslow and the Piccadilly line train from there to London. As a rule, the front and rear carriages of those trains tended to have fewer people on them, so that’s where we’d aim for.

One day we’d done just that, so as we got off at Piccadilly and started to make our way up to the street exit, we were two of the last in that stream of passengers. As usual, we were excited and chatting to each other intently about teenager things, not really taking much notice of the other people around us, just following the people ahead.

I was aware of a group of girls behind us, who seemed to be the last off the train – the bulk of the passengers were up ahead, and there was an old man directly in front of us. Everything was normal. There was nothing at all to indicate something strange was about to happen: no creeping coldness; no hairs standing up on the back of your neck. Nothing.

As we reached the top of the long escalator the old man in front, who I was vaguely aware was dressed with more than a hint of the 1940’s about him, including a hat, turned left. Garry and I turned left, still thinking we were following the flow of passengers from our train. But no.

Within a few feet, ten at the most, we came hard up against a wall. No way through, no old man. For a moment I was startled, and my attention was now fully on what had happened to that man. I turned to Gary and said, “Were you following the old man in the grey coat?” “Yes”, he said. “Where did he go?”

In the few seconds it had taken us to turn, stop and talk, the group of girls behind us had gotten off the escalator, turned right and were now out of sight, and we were suddenly alone and terrified. Without a word we ran and didn’t stop running until we burst out of the station into the daylight and noise of Piccadilly Circus.

Gary has used the image of the ‘subway man’ as the basis for his ‘look‘ on a number of album covers.

Before we leave off, there’s always time for a song (this one with full orchestra accompaniment) from the not so…

READ IT HERE

Gary Numan is old school. No arguments there. It won’t do any harm to mention then an update from another member of that fraternity – THE ROLLING STONES.

Kind of old news now I know, but next month Mick and the boys release their first studio album HACKNEY DIAMONDS in 18 years. That’s one year short of the time local team the BRISBANE BRONCOS have gone without a premiership (with a chance to end that drought on Sunday).

The 12 song album apparently includes the talents of Lady Ga Ga, Elton John, Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney amonsgt others. Good luck fellas!

In case you missed it….

Any time a world record that’s stood for six years gets not just beaten but destroyed, well… it’s kind of a big deal. Ethiopian Tigst Assefa shaved more than two minutes off the previous world record for the Women’s marathon a few days back.

Human achievement – in ANY field – is worth celebrating, I reckon. Double fist pumps all round for Tigst !