Kev is smelling none too sweet.

I’ve been sucked into the story of Alice and Kev, two characters in The Sims 3 which their creator has deemed shall be homeless. Alice is on the cusp of being a teenager, while Kev is her dad, an irascible, irredeemable lout. They sleep on benches in the park, where Kev raids nearby trash cans and Alice cadges the occasional meal from the kindly older folks nearby (who seem to be losing their patience with the whole arrangement).

It’s fascinating because, given only a handful of basic human traits and preferences, what we see play out is disturbingly lifelike. I’m linking to somewhere in the middle of the story, where things are coming to a head, but if you’d like to start from the beginning, here you go: Alice and Kev: Genesis.

What exactly is The Sims 3 saying about human nature? Are things really not that complicated? Can all this misery really be explained by the fact that some people aren’t, well, nice?

A.H. Campbell wants Luftwaffles for breakfast

Heath Campbell wonders why it’s so difficult to purchase an inscribed birthday cake for his adorable toddler, pictured at right. It’s hard to figure out which is more disturbing: That someone named their child “Adolf Hitler,” that a newspaper devoted the equivalent of five web pages for the story, or that I read all five. At least I can justify that last one, by extracting the one useful-to-everyone nugget from the article: