This is the time of year where I bring over half a dozen Type O Negative CDs to work and listen to them when I'm not listening to Radio KoL. Tis the season!

Thinking of that damn crack that is Sims 2, I finally started dabbling in ghosts last night. I was inspired, I guess, by earning the Necromancer title on Fable. In the first Sims, ghosts were simple beings. Something horrible would occur, and you would get a tombstone/urn (depending on where you put it). People would mourn, and a ghost would sometimes show up floating around and scaring the remaining sims. An expansion pack added the grim reaper, who you could gamble with to save the poor corpse, or tie (updated link here) with and get a zombie.

Not so in Sims 2. You've still got the grim reaper, but now you've got a ghost that imitates how the person dies. I think madolan will enjoy that one. I drowned a townie, now I've got a blue watery ghost that wanders around the place leaving puddles that turn into either a mess my maid has to clean up or weeds for my gardner to pull. If I starve a townie to death, I'll get a pale ghost that raids the fridge. Similar things for ghosts that die of fire, electrocution, or falling satellite debris.

So I've decided to start a collection. I put the urn of the drowned sim in a tiny hut out back, and had my sim paint a picture of the pool to hang behind the urn. Beautiful stained glass windows and candelabras complete the little nook. My knowledge lusting Hiro Protagonist loves seeing ghosts, so I'll see how many different ones I can get.

Unlike most people, I really didn't enjoy sim torture in the first one. Many of my friends, online and off, had tons of fun with moats and fire pits. easydamsel's sister made a female sim that took all of easydamsel's male sims, called them over, and walled them all in until they starved. Despite rumors to the contrary, some think I'm not evil. I just created, and didn't destroy. But the sad image of a watery ghost crying about how much she wanted a family is too precious to not produce. Soon I'll have another fiery sim crying about the woohoo they wanted.

I love this season. Halloween is up there with New Year's for my favorite holiday, not counting All Saint's Day, Kanamara penis festival, Day of the Dead or other holidays that we don't traditionally celebrate. Despite my lack of serious costumery in a while, I love it. And not just because I used to hit all the stores the day after and pick up cheap decorations to leave up year round. I'm lucky petemagyar lives with me, otherwise I'd decorate like I did back in college... Glowing little plastic skulls hanging from my windows in a cheap pseudo-goth Kurtzesque fashion, plastic bats and spiders everywhere, plenty of bones, and so forth...

And now, for _sterno_: Want to know what I really think of you? Just ask. I'll answer truthfully and bluntly. Except if you've posted the same offer in your journal, and have yet to give me a response. Which means that johnstevensaul, caniswolfie, and some others aren't getting responses. I think only windexcowboy is in the clear on that one.

Feeling: working
Listening to: Type O Negative, Everyone I Love is Dead