Y’know? I really hate the kind of people that stick their faces in your monitor. There’s a miss in the computer terminal next to me that makes the fucking habit of eavesdropping on my affairs at random times and quite frankly I’m a pube hair away from back-slapping the living turd out of her. We Panamanians (and Latin-Americans, while we’re at it) take down the barriers of personal space pretty quickly but fucking mierda if this ain’t “crossing the line” personified. I’m overlording over here and other people watching severely cramps my style… I don’t know, maybe she thinks candy will magically spawn from the monitor if she stares at it long enough or something; a golden unicorn will come forth from the Internet dimension, stab me in the eye as he tries to unleash his wingspan and make way for Rainbow Brite and her fairy friends so they can hang out with her and talk about moisturizing creams.

“Mine’s ‘Apple Zest’! Which one’s yours?”

“‘Papaya Sensation’! Isn’t it amazing?”

“Oh, God… yes! It opens up my pores like you wouldn’t believe, girlfriend!”

“Let’s buy some bras online!”

“Otay! What about your neighbor lying on the floor? The unicorn feels bad about the eye thing and I think he should go to the doc-”

“Victoria’s Secret underwear!”

“Oh, yippee!”

I hope they get Ebola. I hope a rabid monkey crashes down through the ceiling like a coked-up Jackie Chan and bites them both repeatedly. And then, this pretty lady will float down resting on a pink cloud that smells like peaches and she’ll take me to her enchanted fantasy island just so she can do naughty things to me, concluding my redemption brought forth months ago in a very radical change of events that quite frankly I would welcome very much. I mean, come on… peaches.

Have you ever played “The Sims?” If not, then you’re missing out on one of the best games ever to come out anywhere. For the unitiated, I’ll let my personal Internet lord and savior do the honors to enlighten your way (note: if you get any of these games, get Sims 2). This is taken from the original game’s entry:

The Sims is a strategic life simulation computer game created by game designer Will Wright, published by Maxis, and distributed by Electronic Arts. The game is a simulation of the day-to-day activities of one or more virtual people (dubbed “Sims“) in a suburban household located near SimCity.

First released on February 4, 2000, the base game has sold more than 6.3 million copies, making it the best-selling PC game in history. The franchise has sold over 54 million units worldwide as of February 2005. Since its initial release, seven expansion packs and a sequel, The Sims 2 (with its own expansion packs), have been released. The Sims has won numerous awards including Gamespot’s PC Game of the Year Award for 2000.

Instead of objectives, the player is encouraged to make choices and engage fully in an interactive environment. As such, the game has successfully attracted casual gamers. The only real objective of the game is to organize the Sims’ time to help them reach personal goals.

Sims have a certain amount of free will (if it is enabled in-game), and although the player can instruct them to do something, they may decide that something else needs to be done first, or even outright ignore the player’s commands. The player must make decisions about time spent in personal development, such as exercise, reading, creativity, and logic, by adding activities to the daily agenda of the Sims. Daily maintenance requirements must also be scheduled, such as personal hygiene, eating, and sleeping. If the simulated humans do not perform the proper amount of maintenance, they will sicken and die. Furthermore, Sims need to have fun; if they don’t, the fun level bar eventually lowers and they become depressed, but however depressed they become, they are unable to commit suicide (they are not programmed to do so). They are, however, able to be nasty to other Sim characters by insulting them, slapping them and even attacking them. Financial health is simulated by the need to send the Sims to find jobs, go to work, pay bills, and take advantage of personal development and social contacts to advance in their jobs.

So basically you overlord these digital people’s lives. The game’s addictive like you wouldn’t believe, and it’s the source of some of my fondest gamer milestones; any which way, the point I want to make with this is that the Sims have their own language, called “Simlish;” it sounds like a cross between Japanese, Latin and drunken gibberish that’s hilarious to listen to. As I “researched” for this editorial I read up that some words actually have meaning and implies that it’s all not entirely gibberish but I’ll be damned if it doesn’t sound like it. A couple of months ago, right around my vacations I began having what can only be described as a defragmentation of my time construct, and it has become increasingly worse as the days go by. At first I was freaked out but after a while I kind of like the concept of waking up and thinking it’s Tuesday when it is, in fact, Friday. You know how some days feel a certain way, like “Hmm, this feels like a Thursday” or other pointless diatribe like that? Well, my day-measuring ability has gone outta whack and is out of service for the time-being. But, just like Daredevil (The Man Without Fear, mind you), since that sense is gone my other super powers have been augmented and yesterday I noticed that one of those abilities is the uncanny power of tuning people out. Like any newfound power, I still haven’t mastered it; the thing’s on practically all the time and this is where I wanted to get atwith the whole Simlish thing… dude, everyone sounds very funny to me, now.

So… I started to develop the Sim theory, one that I’m sure many a gamer has thought of and even thought into it much more than I have but what if we’re just part of a digital ant farm in someone’s computer and we’re being ruled over by some avid gamer who’s only slept 3 hours in the past 4 days? The first person who says “God is the one that’s playing, Robert!” gets a prompt punch in the crotch. I was at Unplugged last night after moving the party over there from my apparently-now-usual watering hole and I swear to chicken wings that while I was talking to people I’d see little green plus signs (”+”) above their heads, indicating that I was winning friendship points with them. Add that to the Simlish translation the babblefish that I suspect slipped into my ear has been feeding me all this time and what you get is a very warped sense of reality. There was one exchange in particular that I am 100% certain was the product of the “game’s” player seeing a girl with big tits, selecting my character and furiously clicking at the girl’s big, round jugs so that I walk over to her and start a conversation. Soon enough the same pattern Sims go to when you want them to make out starts like fucking clockwork; of course, the “making out” part of the make-out script never happened but I bet the crew running things in my command center where both scratching their heads and ROFL-ing their asses across the room as they saw what was going on. Gibberish, then hugging. Plus points, plus points. Talk, talk, then more hugging. Plus points are shooting out the girl’s head like they’re fireworks. Talky talkity talk talk, another hug and I suppose the player thought I’d rather be a mufftease because after that I had the inherent desire to get the fuck outta Dodge so soon afterward I went outside, said my goodbyes and bolted in a flash of thunder and lightning.

I’ve found myself in that kind of situation a lot, where we’re just strolling along wherever the cursor wants us to go and doing what’s absolutely necessary for functioning but otherwise just going through the motions of the digital overlord, trying to communicate but somewhat failing to do so. Just like in the game, time seems to pass by 3 times faster while I sleep because I feel like I napped for 45 minutes today when I’ve got at least 4 hours on me. I wake up and time gomes back to normal speed, but my disregard for placing markers on events kind of has that whole concept shot to hell. I’ll give you the most prominent example, one which I realized last night: last time I saw Jane was for Butter’s Beer & Tetas, and that was exactly 9 days ago. A little over a week, no biggie, but the problem with that is that I feel like it’s been more than a month. Time seriously drags now, and it kills me. Now, don’t get your panties in a bunch and rail my ass with what can be implied with that, assholes; the point I’m trying to make is that like in that instance, I’m noticing that it’s happening in various other areas of this randy life of mine in both larger and lesser degrees… it has me a little mindfucked, to tell you the truth. Could it be the holiday blues getting to me in a weird alien-symbiotic amalgam of Negative-Zone-type proportions? Too many comic book references for you there? Yeah… sorry about that.

Another thing I’ve slightly mindfucked by is MySpace. Holy shit. Since I’m pretty much done doing stuff for the rest of the year (all 3 days of it) I took it upon myself to stumble on the digital portal to the 4th ring of hell and browse around… just like that, 4 hours went by as I browsed through profiles; my search string sticked to Panama too, so I’m rather surprised I’ve been able to find distraction for so long. There’s so many people abroad that call Panama their home and a lot of them are hot and apparently friendly! I don’t know why I I don’t invest any time in my MySpace profile, actually. I suppose I’m just turned off by the whole chicness of it, and I say that with a dastardly sarcastic tone since nobody gives a crap anymore like they did in the beginning of the year; still, it’s somewhat fun to browse around and check out profiles, blog posts and pictures. I don’t know. Can’t help but think that a lot of the people who have MySpace pages add a gazillion “friends” just for bragging rights and that’s kind of silly now, ain’t it? Hell, I’d love the prospect of actually meeting the people that want to add me as their friends and the other way around, but I can’t help but feel a little false if I browse and “add to cart” girls left and right just because I want to sleep with them… and seriously, I admit that my penis is doing most of the profile browsing right now for sure. My reasoning of this is because I, as a guy, am just completing my part of the interaction equation men and women write into all the time… let me explain.

I’m browsing profiles and I run into this. I don’t know who she is and I can bet you my balls she’s actually a very nice girl with a proper head above her shoulders. But she’s in a bikini. In a pool. She just wrote down her part of the equation and it’s my duty as a guy to finish said equation by clicking on her profile to access it, check out the pictures and, if I’m so inclined, add her to my on MySpace page. Why? Because the Captain Caveman part of me, one that’s embedded in every able-bodied man, is pushing me to meet her because he wants to get in her pants. If he wants to get in her pants, then by proxy I want to get in her pants as well and that’s how the equation is completed. Quite simple, actually… so, the next time you squeeze those large breasts of yours in the raggity piece of hand towel you call a top, missy, when I blatantly check you out and eat you with my eyes like you’re a chicken wing as you pass right in front of my line of sight don’t you dare look at me like I’m a leper… you should’ve made the conscious desicion that by putting on that top you’d have grown men dry-humping you if given the chance. Deal with it. It’s almost hypocritical how, it being known that women think as much (if not more) about sex as men do and knowing that all we’re really good for is to carry on our species through the generations, girls just go ahead and ruin it for us by leaving the house looking hot as all hell. I love it, don’t get me wrong. The sexier, the better; just don’t expect us to act like rational human beings around you since the Captain Caveman within usually takes over and then we’re met with the conundrum of what came first… you being hot in order to catch my attention or me for letting you know you caught my attention? Wanting to look pretty is one thing, but wanting to look pretty without acknowledging the consequences is an entirely different thing… I’m just trying to get those plus points, y’see. Part of the game we play.

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