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.