The other day, I got the urge to play The Sims, not The Sims 4 or 3 or even 2, but the original Sims, released back on February 4, 2000. So I booted up my desktop computer, which runs Ubuntu, and went through the whole tedious trying-to-install-an-ancient-game-on-Linux process, which involves several hours of looking for a cracked, zipped copy of the original game files on sketchy pirating sites, running those files through some supposedly user-friendly program called Lutris, and then failing miserably multiple times in a row until I just gave up, at which point I purchased the new Legacy Collection rerelease on Steam for like $15, which, to my surprise, runs perfectly on Linux. And thus far, after a few hours of play under my belt, I still don't know what the point of this game actually is, but for some reason, I'm enjoying it.

But seriously, what's the point? Is it to build the most lavish home you can possibly dream up? Is it to live vicariously through some digital representation of yourself? Is it some sort of therapy for clinical control freaks? Or is it a dark wish-fulfillment simulator that allows you to create virtual voodoo dolls of all your most hated enemies so that you can systematically ruin their lives and/or just outright kill them by deleting the doors in the kitchen and putting a bunch of microwaves and toasters and stuff in there, thus triggering an inescapable electrical fire? Or maybe it’s some sort of weird digital voyeurism, like I’m supposed to be getting off to these 2D-sprite people, who are serious levels of uncanny valley, while they go to the bathroom and make “woo hoo,” which is what they call “fucking” in their native language, which is called Simlish? Or maybe it’s all of the above? Maybe The Sims is whatever you want it to be, maybe that’s the beauty of The Sims, I don’t know.

Regardless of all that, there’s something about The Sims’ janky isometric blockiness and nightmarish character models that evokes a sort of compulsive yearning for the very early 2000s, back when I was like 10 and living in an apartment complex every other month with my mom and stepdad, and there was this one kid who lived nearby named Chris, who was blonde and kind of chubby and had a lot of freckles and also had a Dell something-or-other in his living room, right by the entrance of the cramped rectangular kitchen, which was the same kitchen in my apartment, because every apartment had the same floor plan. He, Chris, would sit there and play The Sims for hours, even when I came over, and I would pull up an uncomfortable wooden chair behind him and crane my neck to watch him play, but only for a few minutes at a time, because The Sims is very much not a multiplayer game, meaning it is quite boring to watch someone else play, because it’s pretty much just watching someone watch someone else go about their very boring and mundane lives, virtually. So, of course, I would lose interest pretty fast and get the hell out of there, primarily because of Chris’ refusal to let me play, because he was actually a pretty unpleasant kid, for a variety of reasons that I won't get into here, but one of those reasons was because he didn't bathe, and another was the fact that he would often just throw shit at you, and one time he went to my birthday party at the local game store and hogged all the games I wanted to play, which, considering it was my birthday party, seemed pretty assholish, even for a ten-year-old kid. So, yeah, that was the extent of my experience with The Sims back then, even though I did have SimCity and SimPark and SimAnt and a bunch of other Sims games loaded up on my Mac at home, which was one of those translucent blue ones that everyone pines over these days, I just didn’t have The Sims on it, because, to be honest, back then I didn’t really understand the point of The Sims, and obviously I still don’t understand the point even now, yet here I am, twenty-five years later, playing The Sims.

And considering a Sim is like a little story, almost like a little diary of code in a way, I figured I would write about the little Sim guy I created, which I very creatively modeled after myself and named Forrest Unknown, or FU for short. And I tried my best to make him look like me, but the Sim-face selection, while being quite vast, is actually incredibly goofy and limiting, so I picked the dark-haired male with the mullet and the bags under his eyes, because I’m sure that I looked like that at one point in my life, especially when I was drinking and smoking all the time, and I made him wear a baggy dark sweater and cargo pants, because that’s kind of my thing, especially in the colder months. Then I created FU’s personality, which is through a point-based selection system wherein you get a limited number of points to assign to five different core personality traits. Neat, outgoing, active, playful, and nice. So of course I maxed out “neat,” because I’m actually a very neat person, in fact I think the only thing ever to give me a panic attack in life was this one time when I was rooming with some friends and one of their dogs tore through the trash and got soggy wrappers, half-eaten food, and garbage juice all over the apartment. I also maxed out “active,” because I work out like five times a day, not because of health or anything like that but because my diet sucks and I want to be thin and attractive despite that. And I also put a few points into “playful” because, when I'm in the right mood, I really know how to have a good time. I really do. And probably needless to say, but I left “nice” and “outgoing” totally devoid of points because, well, I’m not very nice most of the time, especially in my thoughts, which is just a constant stream of name-calling, judgement, and faux superiority, and I’m not very outgoing either, seeing as I have like a total of two actual friends, both of whom I’ve known since childhood, both of whom also think I’m not very nice or outgoing. And, tangentially related, I just can’t seem to make new friends, no matter how hard I try, and believe me, I’ve tried. There was this one guy at the playground I tried to make friends with one time, we talked about writing and our kids and I even gave him my phone number, but afterwards he totally ghosted me, because I think his wife, who was also there at the playground, got a weird vibe off me or something and decided I was bad news, like maybe she thought I was a low-key psychopath or whatever, which is the only thing I can think of that makes any sense, because the guy and I actually got along quite well, and we were actually in the same line of work, too, so we had a decent amount of stuff in common, although he was quite outgoing, whereas I’m quite reserved and full of glares and scowls, so I probably come off as somewhat mysterious because of that, which, when you’re in your thirties, more so comes off as just plain creepy, especially to those of the opposite sex, which is something FU and I need to work on, I guess.

Needless to say, FU started his life with $30,000 and a bad attitude, which is only a small leg-up from how I started my life, I guess, although I did have loving parents, and FU, as far as I can tell, has none. Zero parents. He just sort of popped into existence somehow. He also doesn’t have a wife, kids, or any pets, because I figured I’d just start with FU and go from there, let him live his life, give him a few happy bachelor years, allow him to build up some nostalgic alone time wherein he can actually focus on the stuff he enjoys, which I think, based on the few things he’s shown interest in thus far, are watching television for hours and playing computer games and subsisting entirely on bags of chips that he keeps in the refrigerator for some reason. Maybe down the road he’ll come across someone who loves him for who he truly is, despite all his flaws, of which he has many, as I’ve made sure of that just by basing him on myself, which, in hindsight, was probably a poor decision, because I’m realizing now that I’ve probably doomed poor Forrest Unknown to a miserable, loveless life, one in which he will likely end up in a shotgun-esque relationship devoid of any emotion besides boredom, frustration, and sexual angst, and he’ll probably work a soulless nine-to-five until he’s seventy, at which point he’ll retire with barely anything to show for it except a high-interest mortgage, some serious wrinkles, and broken dreams by the truckloads, and perhaps he’ll be divorced, too, with like two kids, and those kids might just be the only reason he doesn’t delete all the doors in his kitchen and place a bunch of microwaves and toasters and stuff in there to “accidentally” trigger an inescapable electrical fire which conforms to all the cause-of-death clauses outlined in his last will and testament which legally affords his entire estate to his beloved children in very plainly written no-nonsense English.

And before we go any further, I realize that the lines between myself and FU are starting to blur here, but, unless otherwise stated, I am specifically talking about FU here, not myself, unless stated otherwise. That is the god’s honest truth. I am fine, really, don’t worry about me, worry about FU, and maybe send him your thoughts and prayers or whatever, too, because he needs them, he really does.

Anyway, Forrest Unknown, at the immaculate conception of his birth, immediately put a down payment of $15,000 on a small, two-bedroom house, then proceeded to spend most of the remainder of his cash on the important stuff, like a nice Y2K-era boob-tube television set, a big wooden desk, and a personal computer to place upon that desk, all of which he set up in his living room, partitioned off by an oriental screen and a blue two-seater couch, then, after purchasing those vital necessities, he bought himself a king-size bed for his bedroom, some posters and paintings for decoration, a bookshelf, and a few toasters and microwaves for the kitchen. Then some pencil-mustached guy in a suit named Mortimer showed up at the door, so FU went out to meet him, which resulted in the two men hurling insults at each other in what sounded like salvia-divinorum-induced babbling or those religious nuts you see on late night television. Then a black cat named Callie showed up and somehow pushed open the front door and now just stays in the house like she owns the place. Then FU spent a good two hours vegged out on the couch watching television, then he spent another two hours playing computer games, at which point he was very hungry, so he went into the kitchen and pulled out a bag of chips from the refrigerator, which cost him $5 for some reason, because I guess refrigerators in The Sims also double as check-out kiosks or something. Then he went outside to grab the newspaper, which had been thrown in the street for some reason, then, while standing in the middle of the road, he checked the classifieds and, by doing that, somehow immediately got hired as a journalist at the local paper, and now a car will be picking him up at 3 AM tomorrow morning to take him to his first day of work, so I guess FU was eager to get into the job market as soon as possible, which, to be frank, isn’t like me at all, but at least he decided to become a writer instead of some hypocritical self-hating salesman, so in a way I’m actually kind of proud of him.

Perhaps there’s a bright future ahead for little FU after all? 

I guess only time will tell.

When the power goes out, all the children come out to play, and the world as we know it comes to an end.

The other day, there was this big electrical storm. The sun was setting, and there were these huge gray clouds in the sky, flickering purple and blue every so often, and everything was sickly yellow and weird, and there was no rain whatsoever, just a faint chill and an otherworldly whistle on the wind.

I was sitting on my couch, watching Little Bear with my son, when suddenly there was this loud crack and everything went dark and quiet. “What happen? Where Little Bear?” So I got up, fetched the battery-powered lanterns, then hung them in key spots around the house, which created this little maze of soft white light, little patches of darkness all over the place, making certain parts of the home effectively off-limits and spooky. Then I pulled out some blocks and started building stuff, hoping to keep my son distracted, but he kept saying, “Where Little Bear? Where Little Bear?” and I kept responding, “The power’s out, the power’s out, just give it a few minutes, just give it a few minutes.”

But a few minutes turned into an hour, and my son grew restless, so he walked to the front door and kept saying, “Outside, outside,” so I figured what the hell, fetched a lantern, and we went outside, into the darkness of suburbia, the flickering purple and blue, and I started thinking to myself, damn, there’s more electricity up there in the clouds than down here on my block, and then I noticed just how surreal a suburb can seem when all the streetlamps are dead and all the windows have lost their shine. It was spooky almost, but it was also kinda exciting, in a way. I had grown so used to seeing the world through artificial light that, when it disappeared, it felt like I was in an entirely new world, uncharted territory, a world without screens and beams and weird invisible waves, totally free from the clutches of major utility providers, and the stars, in the break of the clouds, my god, the stars.

From the moment I stepped outside, it was as if I had some sort of high-powered cochlear implant, I could hear far-off chatter and distant laughter as if it were happening right next to me, and as my eyes adjusted to the dark, I could see little shadows moving in the distance, some with little lights trailing behind them, creating afterimages of a surreal and beautiful nature, which turned out to be children playing in the roads, themselves surrounded by all sorts of people, hanging out, drinking, talking to each other by the mailboxes, just riding out the power outage. One dude way down the block even started shooting off fireworks, leftovers from July 4th, and each boom lit up the whole neighborhood like a Christmas tree, which excited my son to no end, so we ventured down the street some, toward the epicenter of the explosions, and that’s when we came across a large group of people all congregated around this one hairy shirtless dude shooting off fireworks, and then my son found some kids to play with, so he started running around like a madman, cheering and laughing, just having a blast, while literal blasts were going off, periodically lighting up his huge smile with every color of the rainbow, and I could hear all the people around me, no malice in their hearts, talking about their day and what they had made for dinner that night and what they had been doing just minutes before the outage, and there I was, just standing there, gunpowder wafting through my nostrils, looking around, kinda dumbfounded, thinking to myself,

Where the fuck did all these people come from?