“Should” Never Have Played

“SIM CITY”



Back in the day

When the graphics

Were crude

Yet simple enough

To understand

The premise of

“Play” building

A virtual world

Starting on

” Empty” land or

“Existing” city



You could “build” your own roads, power plants, parks, factories and houses. With the click of a mouse. Roll, shift, press. Voila!! A new road. Poof, a new building with optional settings to use “real time” entropy, so when a road or building succumbed to disrepair, ta-da, click, new road etc. With virtual money collected from virtual taxes. It was fun.

Trouble is now, while driving on dilapidated roads past empty buildings, my mind goes to the wishing want of a mental mouse, that with just a few clicks, could restore and replace. Or worse/better yet, start a new game.

Constantly struggling with the way things “are” as to the way it could be. Obviously knowing it takes more than a click of a button, but still…… How hard would it really be to dismantle a building or road for their usable material, reuse what could be used, and recycle the rest.

At some point, probably long past when I am dead. That will be the only option as mother earth’s resources will become more finite and harder to extract. Amongst the blackened skies and rising waters.

Which, if memory serves, one could make the settings, replicate “disasters”, such as fires and earthquakes. Am not recalling, if floods were an option……,might have given the player an omnipotent deity complex. Good thing, the early versions, had no “people” to “drown”. (Sorry, that part just slipped out.)

Back to the game. Ever notice, when you go to a neighboring city, that you have not been to for a while, then you do. It is as if someone is playing a large real life version of the game.
Poof, there are new apartment complexes, next to strip malls and gas stations.

“It just seems to me, that only a really low IQ population could have taken this beautiful continent, this magnificent American landscape that we inherited.

Well, actually we stole it from the Mexicans and the Indians, but hey, it was nice when we stole it. Looked pretty good, it was pristine.

Paradise.

Have you seen it lately? Have you taken a good look at it lately?

It’s fucking embarrasing. Only a nation of unenlightened half-wits could have taken this beautiful place and turned it into what it is today – a shopping mall.

A big fucking shopping mall. You know that, that’s all you’ve got here, folks. Mile after mile after mile of malls after malls. Many, many malls. Major malls and mini malls.

They put the mini malls in between the major malls, and in between the mini malls, they put the mini marts. And in between the mini marts, you got the car lots, gas stations, muffler shops, laundry mats, cheap motels, fast food joints, strip clubs and dirty bookstores.

America the beautiful.

One big transcontinental commercial cesspool. And how do the people feel about all this? How do people feel about living in a coast to coast shopping mall?

Well they think it’s JUST FUCKING DANDY!”

//

“Have you pictured what this planet is going to be like in 40 to 50 years? It’s going to be a big smoking ball of shit, a big, smoking, flaming, stinking ball of gaseous shit. That’s what’s going to happen.”

– George Carlin

Unfortunately the commerce catastrophes gobble up the precious farm land required to feed the “Sims” (simulated people), not real people mind you, but easily programmed ones, that replicate and consume. Like an unstoppable planetary cancer.

As if it is a game, that can be reset, or “started over”. Once this game is “finished”.

When in reality, that does not happen. The game we are playing is unbalanced, tilting toward self destruction.

Why?

Perhaps, because there is more and more sales on less and less nutritious food. Plus shinier objects to hide duller people. Trying to keep up with the other “Sims”, competing in a blind race to a finish line that does not exist.

“Just an observation,
Maybe I need
Different glasses.”

– Angelo Devlin

Or should never have played “Sim City”