I had a day off last week, so I thought this: take some clutter down to the dump; plan a future Rodent thing; tinker with some music I'm working on; do a bit to my novel; go for a swim; maybe a bit of time with The Sims 2…
Guess which one I did first? Guess which ended up devouring all the others like a big, fat, life-leeching monster whose roar is an unholy hybrid of the wails of all those important people you really ought to be paying attention to?
Play games in your pants on your fuck-off huge TV and keep the ladies waiting.
A few years back, I had a fling with the original Sims . But my PC wasn't quite up to doing what I was supposed to be doing with it. So I spunked away far too much time holing up a scruffy guy with a no-moustache beard in a single, featureless room with only a wall telephone for company.
As he stood there (no chairs) and stared out at me, waving desperately, sobbing, sleeping on the floor, occasionally contributing to an ever-spreading puddle of piss, and phoning out for pizza, I felt that something wasn't quite right.
So, I stuck a fence up outside his door. That way, the pizza guy couldn't even get his food to him and he eventually starved.
I dunno. I'm not a sadist. It was kind of a rage against the low-end machine that would splutter and groan like a reluctant bukkake star whenever I tried to add any furniture or features.
“Really? Make-up, you say? How interesting. Can I see your nipples now?”
But now I'm older and a teeny bit richer and I have a posher PC, and I have to tell you that The Sims 2 is absolutely terrifying. Because as I sit there slobber-jawed and stationary, calories creeping over my corpulent frame, I can see that there is another world. A world where ‘I' can live the kind of perky, active, wholesome, hedonistic, fulfilling life that I'm currently not living by sitting here, in my chair, playing the game.
It's as poignant as a blind kid at the Grand Canyon , but also as blissful and compulsive as those childhood days where everything was new and interesting and potentially fun-packed and you were only ever shaken out of the timeslip reverie by a call home for your tea.
I swear, it's a fucking time machine. I've had tea go cold in an instant. I've seen meal-times merge, witnessed a background prime-time TV show do a sort of gloopy segue into the muzak-accompanied ‘Programmes Start At 6AM' notice. I've even looked down at my bath-robe and thought: “Jesus, I'd better get dressed in a minute…” before dimly registering that it's nearly Sunday tea-time and, meanwhile, all my friends and family have been out at the Natural History Museum and had a picnic in the park and collected conkers and run and jumped and laughed and lived – while I HAVE BEEN SITTING HERE STARING AT A SCREEN.
“Ariiiiiise! We have fresh souls for you, oh Lord Choronzon, Demon of Chaos…”
Still, we've had our fun, The Sims 2 and me. Ah, those crazy Sims, with their Muppets Swedish Chef nonsense-babble and their pixellated toilet-doings and their inability to simply step over a plate of half-eaten food.
And even though my PC is perfectly capable of doing all the ‘right' things with the game, I'm still a subversive bastard at heart.
I like inviting someone over and sneaking off to bed while they're in the bog. Then, after watching them eat my breakfast leftovers and fuck about with the stereo for a bit, I like sniggering as they realise that it's 3AM and I went to bed four hours ago and they should probably piss off home.
I like throwing a party and just sitting there, right in the middle of the jiggling and snogging, reading a book about mechanics.
“Lemme see… alt.binaries.truckersarses…”
I like building a stupid great shag-pad stuffed with Dadaist chairs and candles and furry lights and plasma TVs and poncey little sculptures, and then cultivating friendships with three different women before inviting them all over on the same night and serving them some fucking luncheon-meat sandwiches (because I'm too busy playing on my pinball machine to study cooking). I then like to rack ‘em all up in the hot tub and anger-bang the living tits off all three at once.
Yes, yes. You can do this.
Most of all, I like being out at work and watching my house as the phone keeps ringing and ringing. This feels spookily similar to how my own life is being taken over by this delicious, evil little game. I sit there and I STARE AT THE SCREEN - at my house while I'm not even in it. Finally, an answer for those philosopho-motherfuckers: if a ‘phone rings in a room and there's no one there to hear it… yes. Yes, it does make a sound.
“Darling. I'm frightened. That green diamond thing is back again”.
And, oh Christ, that ominous little riff. The one that means I just got a bit older and, as all those needs and ambitions stack up and stagnate, there I am, still, playing darts, alone, at 4am on a Wednesday morning.
I've been in here too long.
I feel unusual.
I think I should go outside…
SICKBOY, October
2004.
Read my excellent Sims 2 Story thing here:
http://thesims2.ea.com/exchange/story_detail.php?asset_id=3005 RODENT CASH RATING -
30 quid from Amazon and great, clanging bollocks to the grasping fuckpigs at GAME who are chucking it out at 39.99. 
“Just one more life. I mean, go”
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