Leon Jackson Must Die!

Hello, everyone. Welcome to yet another day of excellence in simmery. It gives me the greatest of pleasure to be able to brighten your day today with the magic of the written word. Or some crap like that. Welcome just the same. You know, for the briefest moment today, I thought it was a little strange that I spend so much time blogging the sims, but can't be bothered to write anything personal in my own blogs, but until I can provide the level of weirdness and excitement found in my sims posts in my real blog, I'm just not all that interested. I can't…not without lying, anyway. Oh, well, tough luck there.

I don't remember if it was always this way in the earlier days of Monkeesims, but there seems to be some definite bad blood between some of the families in the new Monkeesim neighborhood. A lot of that heat is directed toward Leon Jackson, and I can't say he hasn't earned it. Trying to fulfill his demanding romance aspirations any way possible has caused him to "use" a lot of his fellow sims, and they generally don't take too kindly to that. Will he ever change? That depends on what you mean by "change". One fine evening, he was wandering outside the trailer of Marty and Kitty Wilson, when Marty came out of nowhere, chasing him in his Speedo.



Leon: "Uh…I was just looking for garden gnomes to steal..."
Well, initially, it looked like Marty was coming to cause trouble, but that wasn't actually the case. Moments later, he produced an attractive tiki bar (from his Speedo pocket, no doubt) and began serving drinks. Huh…well, that's different. Leon seemed a little uncertain about what was going on, so much so that he didn't partake of any beverages right away. I mean, it's not every day you're passing the trailer of someone whose wife you had a fling with and they come out and offer you a drink. Not that I have a lot of experience there or anything…



Gizmo: "Hey, dude…how about some tunes!"
The odd thing is that after Leon and Kitty's little tryst, Marty still has Leon listed as a friend in his relationship bar. I'm not sure there was ever an interaction between the two that would have changed that, it was just Kitty and Leon who slapped each other around after it was over. Marty apparently wanted no part of it since he and Kitty had already reconciled - why spread the hate? Kitty paid no attention to Leon's presence…she was hanging out in the flowery hot tub with her daughter, Katrina. They were too busy splashing water at each other to notice anything else.



Kitty: "Ech…okay, these hot tubs need some new non-romantic interactions!"
Not to give anything away, but I seem to have a serious problem with fire where sims are concerned. I'm not just talking the occasional blaze. I'm talking about how every time I play, no matter how careful I am, someone or something is set ablaze. I think it's payback for all those years I played the original Sim City games with disasters turned off (I wonder if I'd do the same if it was an option in the Sims 2). I spent a lot of time trying to isolate the issue, and while it doesn't say so anywhere in the "Seasons" manual, I think maybe sims catch fire if their little thermometer gets too hot. That would probably be useful info to put in writing somewhere if that's the case…at any rate, Kitty suddenly caught fire for no reason at all, and everybody spazzed out, as usual…everyone but Leon, who was strangely calm…



Marty: "Uh…Kitty…there's a huge tub of water, RIGHT THERE..."
I do often wonder why during these hot tub fire incidents, the sims don't just douse the flames in the tub, but maybe they know something I don't…or maybe it's just hard to think clearly when you're in a bikini and your butt is on fire. I just don't think sims in general have a lot of fire safety smarts to begin with. They run TO the fire whenever there is one, and you have to work like the dickens to get them to go elsewhere out of harm's way. I mean, what are they, moths? Katrina felt the need to get really close to Kitty before she did her panicking, and managed to catch the fire in the process. Great, so Kitty and Kat (hehe) are both on fire. Luckily, Marty finally pulled an extinguisher out of a hidden compartment in his Speedo, just in time to save the day (or night, rather - I didn't mean to confuse you).



Marty: "Careful…we don't want the car catching on fire!"
Well, by the following day, the incident was forgotten…or was it? What had Leon really been doing skulking outside the Wilson trailer? Everyone knew he and Kitty had a deep, abiding hatred for one another…could Leon have sabotaged the hot tub and been hanging around to watch his handiwork? It certainly seemed like a possibility (after all, you can only knock over someone's garbage can or steal their newspaper so many times before it starts to lose it's impact). That morning, Marty called Leon up to invite him over…that's one heck of a suspicious grin on Marty's face there as he makes the call…



Marty: "Come on over, dude…I made pancakes!"
Despite the odd reception earlier that evening, and the suspicious stares he got after the hot tub fire, Leon accepted the invite and dropped by. There were, in fact, pancakes, as Marty had described, and Leon ate them without incident (after first waiting for someone else to eat some so he could make sure they didn't keel over). Kitty must have stayed up all night from the looks of things, since she's still in her bathing suit (not surprising, since I've seen visiting sims spend all night and part of the following day in the hot tub long after I've forgotten about them). As usual, Leon did nothing to hide his dislike for her…



Leon: "That frickin', frackin'…grrrrrraarrr!!"
Him imagining Kitty on fire in his little thought bubble kind of looks suspicious, no? Marty was quick to step in and diffuse the situation before Kitty could deliver one of her famous butt kickings to Leon (he hasn't started a fight since he was left crushed and humiliated next to the garbage can that one time). He coerced Leon into the hot tub, then directed him back to the tiki bar to cool off with a few drinks. What's up with Marty trying to make Leon drink at the tiki bar? Well, if you'd quit asking, maybe you'd find out! Oh, wait…that was me. Sorry…



Marty: "Hmmm…looks like Kitty might have already had one too many..."
Well, when you open up a free tiki booze stand right out on the sidewalk, you attract all kinds of weird folk. That pleasant looking dude featured in the picture below is the Wilsons' almost-next-door neighbor, Ali Thunder. I hate Ali's hair worse than anything imaginable. I would never have made him…at least not with that hair. Ali is the creation of my younger brother, and he felt the need to pay a neighborly visit while walking his green cat, Shartfield. Oh, and to get some free booze and shamelessly ogle Kitty in her swimsuit.



Marty: "Geez, man, at least pretend to be looking at something else!"
Marty and Kitty and Leon stood around drinking seemingly forever, and Leon was eventually pretty well saturated - yet the Wilsons' bathroom door was locked, presumably because the toilet wasn't working. Leon had no choice but to mosey on back to his boat to use his own facilities. Now, all of this may seem to the untrained eye like harmless socializing, but there is actually a much greater scheme at work here - and it's called "payback". Take a gander at the picture below, and see if you can spot anything out of the ordinary. Don't worry if you can't, that was sort of the whole purpose behind the scheme…



Think "modern art museum"...
Yes, Leon was in a desperate rush to use the John, and definitely wasn't expecting anything out of the ordinary. Those ten or fifteen drinks he had probably dulled his observation skills a little bit as well. If you guessed there was something wrong with the toilet, well, good eye. If you guessed that there was an incendiary device rigged to the toilet bowl, well, you're a real pro! Leon didn't guess any of this, and didn't seem to find anything really strange about it when flames started bursting up at him out of the toilet. I never did say that Leon was the most observant sim around…



Leon: "Hmmm…why does it burn when I pee?"
At this point, Leon was probably pretty happy he didn't sit down to "go". It didn't matter though, because while the flame shooters don't always catch things on fire instantly, Leon hesitated just a moment too long, and he burst into flame. It must be those cheap synthetic fibers his suits are made of, or the excessive amounts of cologne he probably wears. Or maybe his breath reeked of booze vapors and it helped make things more flammable. Whatever factors were at work, Leon was doing the fire dance moments later, and Debbie, the only other person who lived on the boat, didn't seem to be anywhere around. Uh, oh.



Leon: "Aw, dang, man, I just bought this suit!"
The deck isn't that big, and luckily for Leon, it wasn't long before Debbie smelled smoke. It's also lucky that he never cooks because she never for a second thought it might be food burning in the kitchen. She ran inside the boat (I'm not sure why she was outside in her underwear to begin with) and began dousing the blaze in the bathroom. She managed to save Leon, but didn't manage to save the toilet, the mirror, the bathtub, or any part of the mystery device that caused the fire in the first place. Oh, well…you can't win them all. She's a maid, Jim, not a firefighter!



Now that's what I call a "hot tub"…heheh...
So much for sims "forgiving and forgetting", eh? Did Leon actually start the hot tub fire at the Wilsons home? Probably. Were Marty and Kitty responsible for the flaming device in Leon's toilet? Most likely, but how could they have planted such a device while they were busy pumping Leon full of food and drinks to make him use the bathroom? Would either of them even have known how to install such a device? Intriguing questions, and I promise you they shall be answered in time, but not today. It's time to take a breather while we prepare for a post of epic size, if not epic content. Tune in next time for our 100th entry! :-)