God dammit, I'm obsessed with this game. Over at Pogo, scroll to the bottom, look to the right and give "The Sims Pinball" a whirl. What I assumed would be a three-minute amusement has turned into weeks of frustration and multiballs.

As with many of the games on that site, there's a supposed progressive jackpot just waiting for me. Sims Pinball's jackpot is rapidly approaching the 5,000 dollar mark, and in the words of my Pogo-loving aunt who I see about once a year, usually after someone dies, "that means it's about to hit." So whatever moments I have to spare are divvied equally between Stupid Sims Pinball and throwing darts at a picture of Michael Fishman because I forgot who he is.

The game is decent enough. It's got all the usual pinball suspects, but I'd be lying if I said I'd be playing it this much without the jackpot dreams. My favorite part are the crude Sims girls standing beside the machine, because video games are universally improved with the addition of monstrously ugly women. Good way to kill time if anyone's got minutes to murder.