Day Seventeen

'Nooreen, we're expecting most of the day to be overcast with spells of warm weather until the cold front pushes in from the east.'

Nooreen goes to work. She is secretly planning to return with the decapitated heads of the patients she liked least.



Jack is dreaming about himself again. Catriona dreams about... I have no idea who that is.



Jack heads off for work in a nifty new uniform. As he makes his way to the carpool, he can't help but feel he's forgotten something...



Catriona awakes and sits bolt upright, screaming in pain. Jack left his lego bricks on the sheets again, silly man.



Right, this time I will not be defeated! I click 'Examine Sherpa' firmly and decisively.



WHOOP! We must all celebrate Nooreen being promoted for a reason that has absolutely nothing to do with merit! Break out the champagne!



Dr Nooreen Crombie M.D. - yes, it sounds good. Mechanical and logic skills, eh? I haven't seen any of the Crombies do anything that improves either voluntarily, or at least, not much. She may be an intern for some time yet.



Catriona prepares herself a meal, and like Pyke and Nooreen, wanders upstairs to eat it. Whatever happened to cleaning up after yourselves, eh? You guys used to do that all the time!









Crombies, I bow down to your squalor. You've developed and perfected it into an art that rivals Michaelangelo's Sistine chapel.



'RRAGH NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM'



That Nathen is indomitable isn't he? There must be something about those arms and legs of hers that just make him go all wobbly inside.



'I don't think she's particularly busy, I'll shout for her in a moment. How's your book coming along?'

'I just need a few more women and then it'll be done. I figure you could make a tonearm for a gramphone out of an ACTUAL arm, and use the finger for a needle! I can't wait to try-'

'I'll have to stop you there, Nathen, I think I can hear her answering.'



'BUBBLES HE CAN'T TAKE MY BUBBLES THEY'RE MINE MINE MINE!'



Pyke has a date with destiny. I wish I'd known about this before, because it's something that's been quite annoying ever since the Crombies first moved in.

I present to you, gentle reader...



PINK-HAIRED PYKE!



She either wants a shower or an onion. Neither of which the house has. Tragic.



Jack decides to wash the dishes. He must have been particularly stung by my earlier sarcasm.



'I'M ON TOP OF THE *buuuuuuuurp* WORLD! HEE HEE HEE HEE! I... BURPED!'



Amin stares into your dreams... brrr...



...

Whatever. Pyke missed work today, incidentally, so while she's got nothing to do, I think she should visit one of the community lots. She's in such a constantly bad mood, I think it would be beneficial for me to satisfy some of her wants. It looks like she wants a mobile phone. Perfect! Head to the garage, Pyke! You're going for a trip!



No, Pyke, the garage! Downstairs!

She then walks straight through the new room, and enters the lift. Why, I ask you, why?



Catriona starts waving her arms to let me know she's horrifically hungry. Right after she's put a bowl of whatever-the-crap-it-is into the microwave. All sims to do this kind of thing and it's quite, quite grating.



This sounds interesting. I wonder what it's like?



The building was so high I couldn't fit it all on the screen.



It only has one floor though. Hmm... wait- crap! Pyke doesn't want a mobile phone anymore. She wants to ask another sim on a date. OK then, that's what I'll try to do. Let's see if she can seduce any other patrons of this... place. I'll just get her to chat to people, and if she takes a shine to them then she can do the rest herself. Then I'll just click the 'ask sim on a date' button. Easy right?



Pyke is more interested in the blue shirt with the yellow stripe that is clearly twice her size than romance. Let's see who's around here...



It's Donald Assortment, everybody's favourite leather coat-clad elf. I think he might be in the mood for love.



Gah, beaten to the punch by this blonde woman! She's using the old 'do you want to go skiing?' gambit, the hussy. Fine, who else is here?



Egads! It's the very creepy woman who sniffed Nooreen's hair at the bar all that time ago! Maybe Pyke will have better luck with this predator than Nooreen did.



'Hi, Creepy, look what I did to my hair today! Isn't it great!'

At this point, Creepy does her air-raid siren impression which spooks everyone in the store.



'So... Pyke. What brings you to these parts? Are you looking for some, ah... friendship?'



Creepy makes a tragic faux pas in her advances. Pyke could never love a woman who hates briefcases.

Well, that didn't work. I see Donald's lost the blonde, let's see if Pyke likes him at all.



'Donald, before I can decide whether I like you, I must know your opinion of trains.'



'Hmm... do I like trains... do I like trains...'



'No, I hate trains! I like elven soda! It comes in five different flavours and is so cool and refreshing! We elves can't have enough of it!'



'Fucking men, they're all the same!'

Pyke cooks some hot dogs. Symbolically.

Why's the shop so empty? This place should be swarming with sims, that's what happens every other time.



Here they are, mingling like the great zombie horde.



Immediately after taking the picture, they disperse except for Donald who stares at a dog in dumb astonishment. The dog looks at the camera as if to say 'What the fuck was all that about?'



Donald and Pyke settle down to a fine meal of hotdogs. How romantic.

'Did you see that briefcase go past?! It was genuine leather!'



Donald chows down on his hotdog, the natural successor to lembas bread.



The little crossed-out love hearts show that Pyke is massively turned off by Donald. Man, I'll never be able to get her to ask someone on a date at this rate! What a failure this outing's been. Well, I'm not leaving empty-handed! Let's at least get Pyke to buy herself some new clothes.



The one that looks like it's been dragged through a field of cowpats or the one that was dyed using the blood of a thousand virgins? Choices, choices, choices...



Cyberpunk Pyke = yes.



Pyke's really tired now, so I direct her to buy the outfit and return home. But first she must manoeuvre her way past the walking undead... and a small dog drinking its own piss.



THAT'S how it was supposed to be! Now the cast screen looks... right. Proper and decent. Pyke returns to Rainbow Cottage and goes to bed.

When the mountains have been worn to dust and the stars have twinkled their last light into the vacuum of space; when the last book has been read, when the last human thought travels between synapses; when all that's good is said and done, I can look to the heavens and proudly proclaim this eternal holy truth!



This mess is not Nooreen.



Catriona mops up the urine and floating wotsit that besmirch the fabulously pink floor of Jack's bathroom. The toilet is as foul as ever.



Now the Gateway to Hell is clogged too! What will it take for these people to clean the damn toilets? An outbreak of cholera?!



With these zombie eyes...



'So Nooreen, I heard you like to play tennis? You think you've got something I haven't? I challenge you to a match. Just you, me, and a pair of racquets. Think you can take me on?'



'Yeah, I think I can take you on! Want to raise the bar? We should do it on the wings of an airborne plane! Best of three!'



'I don't wanna do it on a plane.'



'As soon as I've mopped the court...'

Bathroom tennis is all the rage.



Ah, the joys of forced perspective. Here we see a diminutive Jack been stared at by Mega-Nooreen, the popular monstrous subject of many '50s horror flicks.



Nooreen joins in, and Catriona enters. First she tips Jack a hundred simoleons, and then she tips Nooreen only fifty! I totally understand that she may be tipping based on merit, but Nooreen's right there, you know? It'll make Nooreen feel inadequate all day.



Catriona then starts only listening to Jack, clapping, making 'woo!' noises and generally sticking the proverbial two fingers up to Nooreen's performance. That's a shameful display of favouritism, Catriona, it really is.



Whatever it was Pyke was cooking herself, she's burned it badly. She resolves to eat the caramelised carbon in her bowl anyway. Why? Because she's one plucky girl.

OK, I think it's time for another outing! Catriona's really sleepy, so she can stay behind this time and the rest of them can go into the car.



Out of curiosity, I tell her to sleep wearing pyjamas. They're so orange I can feel my optic nerves fizzling.



I don't know at what point Nooreen turned from the straight and true path of most medical professionals and dabbled with the dark arts of voodoo and the evil eye, but she's definitely good at it.



It's really difficult to make only some of the sims in a household leave. One is easy, all is easy, but if I leave one out then the car doesn't want to leave until they've joined. It's really quite frustrating. Jack, Pyke, and Nooreen ended up sitting in this car doing nothing for several hours until it gave up and let them go. From now on, it's one or all, I'm not putting up with this crap again.

So there was nothing. But. Silence.

...

...

...



'I think I'm gay.'



Finally! Let's get this show on the road! Midnight Flows sounds interesting, I wonder what happens there.





It's a karaoke bar! THIS is going to be fun!



Nooreen's the first one in the bar and she just cannot WAIT to let everyone know how much she hates the door to the kitchen. As if it even matters! For Christ's sake!



Pyke is quick to join in on the door-bashing, even going as far as to give an ostentatious mock-vomiting gesture. I swear to the skies I have never seen any of them approve of something. Never. NEVER.

For the record, Jack hated the door too.



JACK, DON'T RAPE THE CHEF!

Actually this is him trying to shoo him away. No Jack, you can't sponge-bathe yourself in the kitchen.



Goodness me! It's Brychan of the Chumble family! Looking a little bit more than just stoned, too!

The Chumbles are a number of people I know from real life and put into a house next door to the Crombies. I was hoping we'd have seen some of them by now, but no it took over two weeks for any of them to appear. Well, let's see how everyone's favourite opera-singing American does.

Also, Scott cheated on his wife with Brychan. That man has his fingers in many pies.

The Chumbles also don't really resemble their real-life counterparts very well at all. We'll just have to roll with that particular punch.



Goopy's here too, it seems.

'Does anyone have a copy of the latest Westlife album I can borrow?! Anyone?! It's really important!'



Nooreen tells it like it is.



'Hi, my name's Pyke! I made my hair pink today!'



'LALALALALA, I'M NOT LISTENING I'M NOT LISTENING I'M NOT LISTENING LALALALALA'

Relations are not going to be easy.



Half of the bar are overpowered by Jack's sinus-crushing smell.



'I'm sorry, sir, I've spoken to the chef and he says we don't serve footballs here.'



Body language. There are lessons here to be learned.



Well, this is classic. Brychan is singing karaoke and she sounds DREADFUL.



Everytime Brychan passes by, thought bubbles with her face appear everywhere. I can only assume that she's some sort of man-magnet. Even the waitress seems to find her irresistible.

Wait, wait, wait a minute! What's this I see in Pyke's wants? Could it be something I can actually fulfill?!



This should be good.



Ever wonder why girls take so goddamned long in public toilets? WELL THE RUMOURS WERE TRUE!



'Hey, guy, this place has the same plates we do back home! Crazy, huh?'



There's nothing quite like dramatic on-your-knees-and-from-the-soul singing to give a patina of slime to any cheesy pop song. In fairness, Pyke doesn't sound that bad at all.



'FUCKING CHAIRS ALWAYS KEEPING GOOD MEN DOWN.'



Jack succumbs to Brychan's succubus-like aura.



'PEEEEAARLS,' says Pyke to no one in particular. I think she may have a had a wee bit too much to drink.



Well, here's someone who doesn't like Brychan. Don't lose your breakfast, random man!



'And here we have Pyke wandering off to the toilets to clean her dish,' says Daria Hibberts, roving comedienne. 'I mean, really folks, this is feminism just going down the toilet, you know what I'm saying? Anyone here from Memphis?'



It's time to go home! A stranger wearing a glowing green innertube waves at Pyke as they leave. So many unanswered questions in that one.

More piss-drinking from small canines.



Pyke hits eighty-eight miles per hour.