Delve Into Lunacy

Unfortunately, I was right about Ivette not flipping on her group and voting out April. It sucks to see Howie go (although him hitting on Julie made it worth it), but at least Janelle won HoH. I was dreading the worst when they showed the competition setup for the first time since Janelle has a history of not being able to pull out a win in competitions that have a lot a questions about what has happened so far. Thankfully, she came through this time.

I’m torn on who she should put up. Without someone flipping on their own group I don’t think she is going to be able to win the game no matter who she ended up in the final two with. That’s unfortunate since she’s easily played a better game than anyone else there. I’m guessing April and Maggie will go on the block and if I was forced to bet on it April will go home unless she wins the veto. As much as I dislike Ivette and don’t want her to even get second place money I think Ivette is probably the best bet for Janelle to take to the final two if she wins the next HoH.

I was looking forward to seeing more of the sequester house again and they didn’t let me down as far as drama goes. As much of a bitch as Ivette is Jennifer somehow tops her. It’s even worse since she’s a complete hypocrite as well. She gets pissed when the other two that are there (who were part of the opposing group) show even the slightest sign of humor in people from Jen’s old team doing poorly, but then when she goes ape-shit because they do well she gets pissed if they don’t share in her joy. Dumbass.

Let’s hope that in the next episode Janelle is able to pull it off. The first part of the final HoH competition is always stamina oriented and she should be able to take that with no problem no matter which one of the other three goes home next. The final part of the challenge has me a little more worried however.

Well, it’s no big shock when I jump the gun on something and I’ve done it yet again. In my previous post “Maxis & The Elderly” I was ranting about Brandi not being allowed to get engaged to Don because she was elderly. It never occurred to me at the time that he might already be engaged to someone and that could have been why it wasn’t letting Brandi propose. My mistake.

Before I go into what all happened since figuring that little tidbit out this situation does shine a bright light on an aspect of the game that I wish would be changed. You can interact with NPCs to a large degree but at no point does it ever really give the player any real details about the person unless you are controlling them. Using this situation as an example, there is no way I could have known Don Lothario was already set up out of the box as being engaged to Cassandra Goth unless I had actually stopped playing Brandi, gone back to the neighborhood and then played Don. Being engaged or even married doesn’t stop a Sim from falling in love again so it’s hard to tell from their interactions alone. The pre-built story for the neighborhood mentions Don and Cassandra being in love but I don’t recall it mentioning them already being engaged.

Another example is in regards to age. Although some teenagers in the game definitely look younger there are others that I’ve ran across that look like adults…Tosha Go for instance. An adult can’t interact with a teenager the same way that they can with another adult, which is understandable, but you can invest a substantial amount of time trying to develop a relationship with a particular Sim only to then find out they are too young. More details about the NPCs need to be made available to the player especially considering not all NPCs from the neighborhood can even be directly played.

Back to the issue with Don and his engagement. Once I realized he was already engaged I needed to come up with a way to break it off, but since I was already in love and living with Brandi this was going to have to be done delicately so Brandi didn’t catch us. I ended up waiting for Brandi and Dora to go to bed and called Cassandra over. Initially, there wasn’t any option to break the engagement so I just queued up about 12 arguments between the two of them thinking I could hurt the relationship enough that the engagement would just fade away. That brought them both out of being in love but they were still best friends and it didn’t really the hurt the relationship much overall so I knew I had to get more drastic and somehow let Cassandra catch Don cheating on her. Of course that would have to happen without Don pissing off whoever he would be cheating with and also not getting caught by Brandi who would be inside the house the whole time.

So the next evening I plopped Brandi down on the couch to study cooking and promptly called up Cassandra and Kaylee and asked them both to come over. They show up at the same time and I greeted Cassandra first and then queued up greeting Kaylee. Cassandra wasn’t going to make this easy so she immediately ran into the house to watch TV and missed the whole kiss greeting Don and Kaylee had. So I called Cassandra over but then Kaylee tried to run off and it was like herding cats trying to get them both there at the same time. It eventually happened and I quickly kiss Kaylee which brings on the slap fest from Cassandra. Again, it hurt the relationship but it didn’t do the trick and they were still best friends and engaged.

At this point I sent Kaylee home since she had served her purpose for the evening and ran back in the house to catch Cassandra. A few more arguments later and thankfully the option to break up finally became available. So Don finally kicked her ass to the curb both figuratively and literally since he asked her to leave right afterward.

Here’s where I discovered another issue with the game. Don is setup with the romantic aspiration and therefore wants to get his groove on but things like engagement, marriage and kids etc cause bad memories. So one would of thought Don would have been thrilled to no longer be engaged, but like anyone else he spent the next two days sobbing uncontrollably. Oh well, I could finally have Brandi propose to Don and he accepted even though it was one of his fears and has now kicked him into the red on his aspiration level. Unfortunately, the game won’t let the elderly procreate which makes since but I would have liked Brandi to squirt out another kid before she dies.

Regarding Don at this point I’m gonna go ahead and move him through his career despite the fact that I constantly want to kill him. He’s just an insanely irritating character to play. He’s as slobby as a Sim can be and the romantic aspiration is just boring. Unlike Carl however, who is just as slobby, Don truly fits the description. I have yet to see him flush on his own. Every time he showers it floods the bathroom. He won’t put books back on the shelf after reading or clean up his dishes after eating. Carl would normally do all these things with only the occasional slip-up.

I think I’ll go ahead and play the Swipers until Dora heads off to college since by that point Brandi will probably have died or at least be on her last day or two. I’ll then switch back over to Carl and Dina until Carl is dead and then hook Don and Dina up together since the Lotharios are really sucking as far as money goes. Maybe I’ll get Dina pregnant with Don and then finally kill him off since he just irritates me so much. At the very least I’ll probably focus on his fears more than his wants since I want to see him go crazy.

I read an article today on MSNBC.com that is making me dread the show even more than I already had been.

For starters, I’m just not a fan of “family” editions of shows. They tend to focus on the idea that everyone in America finds all children and their zany antics cute. Unfortunately, there are enough jackasses out there that really do feel this way that the networks keep making these shows to cater to them. Now I know some of the things kids do really are cute and humorous, but these shows tend to focus on children that act so horribly that they deserve a good caning along with their parents for allowing the behavior. I originally thought the show was limiting kids to no younger than 12 which in my opinion is too young. Do the family thing but require them to be at least 16. The rumor now is that they have allowed kids as young as 8 which is just ridiculous.

My second fear with the show is that they wouldn’t be able to go anywhere interesting. I was getting tired of the requisite trip to India every season but a lot of the best episodes occurred in places where the local culture combined with a language barrier put the contestants as far out of their comfort zones as possible. The locations in the world that typically do this (and that are safe enough for them to travel to) also tend to be backwaters where you don’t have huge vans and such available at the drop of the hat. With teams of four people, be it families or otherwise, along with at least one cameraman per team it just becomes too difficult logistically to take them somewhere like that and keep everyone together.

Well, now it seems that they possibly won’t even be leaving North America. I guess they’ve repeatedly been seen filming in numerous areas in the Northeast and also in Canada…far more often than if they were just there for one or two legs of the race. To me the “amazing” part of the race was the fact that they were traveling around the world and I was pissed last season when they didn’t actually circumnavigate the globe. To stay in North America is even worse since it turns it from being an amazing race into just a wild family summer vacation and nothing more.

I know I’ll end up watching the show, but damn it feels like a kick in the nuts that one of most acclaimed reality shows out there is going this route. Thank god we already know that season 9 will be back to just two person teams.

To start I have to say that I’ve really been gaining back a lot of respect for Howie that I lost when he carried on with his tirade a few weeks ago for just too long. Tonight was a nice look back on why I originally liked him so much. How can you not like a guy that is that secure with himself that he doesn’t mind potentially looking like a fool on national television by tapping into his inner child. He reminded me of The Star Wars Kid minus the whole retard factor.

Despite how much I love watching Howie I’m still hoping Janelle wins it all, although she doesn’t have any shot at all unless both her and Howie make it to the final two. Even then I have a feeling the majority on the jury would vote for Howie just because they like him more than her. I seriously doubt that Ivette would flip and side with them even though she brought up the idea to Howie without prompting. At least she realizes she has a better chance at the money with either of those two but I’m not going to get my hopes up. The one good thing is that with the exception of Ivette all the other players have a chance at the next two HoH spots. Janelle’s only shot now is to win both of them.

Speaking of Janelle winning, is anyone else getting sick of just how predictable the editing of reality shows is getting? Out of the ones I watch, Big Brother is the worst offender. Survivor, The Apprentice, etc all have the same issue but at least they occasionally throw the audience for a curve. Even without the live feeds (which I don’t follow) Big Brother is completely predictable as you watch it.

As an example, tonight during the veto competition there was only one player where they focused on their reaction once they got back into the house after completing the game…Janelle. True, she needed it more than anyone else and she thought she did poorly, but as soon as they did it I immediately knew she won. My question is whether the producers truly think people don’t catch on and that they are simply building the drama or do they realize it’s a give away and just hope only a minority of the viewers notice or care?

Well, Maxis seems to have a really interesting take on the elderly according to what I’ve seen in The Sims 2. Let me explain.

Tonight I was playing my Swiper family some more and was trying to get Brandi (who is elderly) to get her groove back with Don Lothario (the young NPC stud that comes with the game). So, I had Brandi make Dora dinner, sent Dora to bed and called Don over. Of course it only took a couple kisses before Brandi had a 100 relationship with Don so I send them upstairs for some woohoo (for those that don’t play it is the game’s name for sex) to up her fun meter.

Now normally the two would fall asleep after woohoo so I was ready to wake them up so Brandi could try to propose engagement followed by marriage. Needless to say I was surprised when they both immediately rolled out of bed and ran across the hall into the nursery to play some kicky-ball in their undies. I was even more shocked when I went to get Brandi to propose to Don and the only proposal options that it gave me were to ask him to spend the night or move in.

Note: I’ve updated page 5 of the Swiper family album with visual evidence of their kicky-ball shenanigans.

So I went ahead and asked Don to move in thinking that maybe the guy had to do the engagement proposal. Even if it wouldn’t let him I knew he would be bringing almost $60,000 with him so I could at least move them into a new house. Anyway, he accepted and low and behold it doesn’t even give me the propose option when I click on Brandi. Who knows, maybe he’s okay with sleeping with the elderly but just doesn’t want to make it public by marrying them.

A second thing that seemed weird in relation to the elderly in the game is related to Mortimer Goth (the rich old NPC that comes with the game). As some background for those that don’t play, the game automatically makes the Sims walk a little different based on their condition or age. For instance, pregnant women waddle, young people walk fairly quickly with straight backs and the elderly walk a little slower and kind of stooped over. Well, from the first day that I started playing Scooter Swiper, Mortimer would shuffle by Scooter’s house on a fairly regular basis. Whenever it happened I had Scooter working on a skill that he needed to up before going to work so I never went out and talked to Mortimer.

Once Scooter and Brandi get married though things went crazy. This old bastard starts randomly running (literally, he wasn’t shuffling anymore) into my house and starts shoving Brandi around. The thing is that neither Scooter nor Brandi had him as an acquaintance prior to this so I’m not sure what his deal was. Also, the game won’t let an NPC enter a home unless the PCs first greet them so he’s essentially breaking and entering but the security alarm doesn’t go off like it does with a burglar. One time he even ran in while the two were sleeping, ran upstairs, woke Brandi up and then as soon as she was out of the bed he started shoving her. Once she told him to leave he would go back to his slow shuffle as he walked away.

So what the hell Maxis? Elderly people can screw their brains out then play nearly naked kicky-ball in a nursery but they can’t get hitched? I know the elderly sometimes go senile but to the degree that they constantly commit B&E on a strangers home followed by a few rounds of punch the pregnant lady?

Personally I find it funny, but what message are we sending to our elderly? My grandparents could play this game and think it’s perfectly acceptable to play naked kicky-ball. Not only is that just gross but it’s potentially dangerous. What if they slipped while going for a wicked save and broke a hip? How would I explain it to my grandpa when he’s sitting in the back of a squad car after beating up a pregnant lady with his walker that it’s not okay to do that? You know he’s not going to understand since he saw it in a game and is now conditioned to it being acceptable.

It’s too late to save the elderly of the present from the scourge that is The Sims 2 so we need to focus our energies on protecting the elderly of the future. If you want to keep your children or grandchildren from experiencing the shame and nauseation of someday walking in on you playing naked kicky-ball please contact your congressman and make sure they pass a law banning this game from being sold to or played by anyone that will live long enough to be considered elderly. The future is in your hands. I’d do it myself but I’m currently busy trying to get Brandi and Don to have woohoo again before the dryer stops and I have to fold some laundry.