The Suffering of SimEarl

A few days ago, I pointed readers to a story on Jeff Shyluk's Visual Blog that showed how Jeff had made custom skins for The Sims back in the early 2000s. And now, thanks to Allan Sampson, I'm sharing a glimpse of how Jeff's very abstract-looking art looked when overlaid onto the Sims in-game models. Allan shared four screenshots of SimEarl in various stages of content (reading a newspaper, upper left) or distress (lacking nice furniture, playing chess in lonely solitude, and passing out in the street). I'm very grateful to Jeff for creating the Sims skins in the first place, and to Allan for capturing these screenshots. 

Meanwhile, on Jeff Shyluk's Visual Blog: Sim Bleak House

A couple of weeks ago I found an old CD-ROM with some of my friend Jeff's art, specifically, art he'd created to customize characters in popular sandbox computer simulation The Sims. Jeff and I had a brief e-mail exchange about the old files, and I wrote, in part:

"I'm sure you created these skins for either the first iteration of The Sims, or The Sims 2 at the latest - but I'm sure it was The Sims. I, too, recreated the Bleak House of Blahs to run SimEarl, SimCarrie, SimRon and SimAllan through their paces, and I can still feel the bruises from the belly laughs. Most disturbing was the misery the Sims endured, how perfectly it mirrored our early-20s ennui and angst. I loved it most when one or more of us peed our pants with a plaintive 'Poo poo pee dee!' I was happy to see your memories captured in your recent blog post."

To see 1990s me, Allan, Carrie and Ron brought to virtual life, check out Jeff's story on the subject. 

Living Room, Breathing Room

If you've ever played the computer game The Sims, you know that the game's titular characters are affected positively or negatively by their surroundings; they have a "room" score. The nicer the room, the happier your Sims will be.

This is what my Baywood Park apartment looked like when Sylvia and I started dating. As you can see, Sylvia is mashed into a tiny space on the couch, surrounded by towers of clutter. I still feel that any room is nicer with bookshelves, but Sylvia has very different aesthetic priorities. Her "room" score always took a dive whenever she visited my place, and with good reason; every room of my two-bedroom abode was filled with similar piles of stuff, save the bathroom. When we moved into our first condo, it took several weeks to sort out all of my stuff and bring some semblance of order back into our lives. During this time, Sylvia would often pace up and down the halls of our new home, her eyeballs rolling around madly in their sockets. Sylvia is orderly.

So am I, but only when it comes to my books and movies; those are all carefully arranged by alphabetical order or genre. Unfortunately for Sylvia, this touch of OCD is limited to media; it does not extend to arranging furniture, sorting laundry, fixing appliances and so on. This is almost certainly because I feel that the books I read and the movies I watch reflect my identity in some way. They're an expression of my outlook and style, though what message they send I'm not sure. I don't feel the same way about decor, though thanks to Sylvia I'm learning to appreciate that subtle art a little more. I actually had when Sylvia and I unpacked our artwork and hung various paintings and photographs around the house. It really does make a difference in the feel of our home. And even though I have a high tolerance for household clutter, I have to admit that from time to time I'll go on a cleaning binge to straighten out the mayhem of my office. I always feel better when I do, too.

There's something quite satisfying about forging order from chaos every once in a while. Sylvia's helped me appreciate this aspect of life a little more, one of many reasons why I'm so grateful to have her in my life.