http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/331676

I joined the Clock Crew in 2005 when I was 13. This was my first real exposure to the sort of jaded countercultural internet society that define parody groups. At the time admittedly I only understood the humor of the original clocks only on a very superficial level, like I knew what the intention was behind the Clock Crew but I was mostly seduced by the very high quality flashes (by clock standards) that were being produced at the time, by Strangeclock and Renegade and the like. I suppose I was also attracted to the sense of community and the "clock lore" so to speak, as around 2005 the Clock Crew was in something of a renaissance if only in terms of new members and flash output, to say nothing of the actual change in culture as 13-year-old kiddies like myself swarmed in. Basically I was the archetypical kid who didn't fucking get it.

Over the next few years I underwent what I can only describe as a dramatic enculturation process that (at the risk of sounding hyperbolic) dramatically affected my life since. I was fascinated by some of the older members who familiarized me with (admittedly sophomoric at times) countercultural literature, ideologies, etc. These were people that were 10 years older than me. I almost immediately lost my faith in God (at least in the christian sense) after reading some of the arguments on the Clock Crew. I remember reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas at the recommendation of a clock at a time when I hadn't even touched alcohol let alone LSD, which was alienating but fascinating. Vector art gave me something to strive for and be proud of, and I worked very hard to improve my craft after seeing clocks who had exceptional artistic talent. I became interested in surrealism, absurdist/dadaist humor, and just generally things that I never would've been exposed to otherwise, or at least not until much later in life. I read things which I found truly insightful. When I finally outgrew the clock crew (not to say the community is inherently childish, I just outgrew it in the sense of what it meant to me while I was a member) it had altered my identity in a lot of ways, many of which I think ultimately benefited me in adult life. I don't do flash professionally, but the giddy rush of absolute concentration that working in Flash brought me I was able to apply to other things in life to great effect.

This is mostly just me rambling and reflecting on my time here, but if I were to draw more universal lessons from this I'd say that there is a unique phenomenon in post-internet western society where kids are essentially raised by the internet. My preconceptions about faith, humor, art, taste, and life in general were completely rewritten by this community, as I'm sure was the case for others who came during their very early teens, when your identity is in flux and the world is just opening up to you. I'm waxing sentimental a bit because I joined the cc 9 years ago today, but I felt it was necessary to take into account all the things that the CC taught me. Feel free to discuss your own experiences.

yeah so former clock vanillacokeclock, who made this thread about 2 years ago but is basically long gone, has become a decently successful maker of ambient bedroom pop music akin to deerhunter/atlas sound/etc under the name Foxes in Fiction

even pitchfork reviewed his album and gave it a decent score (yeah i know but still)
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14385-swung-from-the-branches/

i found his music completely on accident and when i found out he was a former clock it blew me away. even if youre not into this style of music you have to admit that's pretty cool. i for one am totally in love with his stuff. heres a couple of his songs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrssQkMW7SA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6VhF6rurVRE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41doLuKhn4M

10+ hours and a billion crashes later

i am working on a drawing thats really really really (really) detailed and now flash lags so slow that i usually "run out of memory" (to quote the error box) when i try to do something and if not it just goes slow was heck, how can i reduce lag or do i have to make individual parts in different files (i hope not holy shit)

This high rate of occurrence should be studied by all manner of scientists

i just finished watching Black Books and it was really funny and i enjoyed it a lot so i was wonder if some british people can recommend me other british comedies to watch (preferably shorter ones) thanks :)

its bullshit and pretty much the worst fucking thing ever

for people who don't know what it is wikipedia defines it as "Sleep paralysis occurs when the brain awakes from a REM state, but the body paralysis persists. This leaves the person fully conscious, but unable to move. "

so basically you freak the fuck out because youre more or less conscious but youre fucking paralyzed for up to a few minutes. i never used to get it until a few months ago but now i get is several times a week (twice yesterday)

anyone ever get this????

it was prettuy okay all things considered, they did some prewtty cheesy Hollywood alterations but at its core it was interesting enough as a stand-alone action movie to keep me interested

seeing as the year is over what are your favorite albums from these last 365 days?!?

A Sunny Day in Glasgow-Ashes Grammar
TwinSisterMoon-The Hollow Mountain
Atlas Sound-Logos
Amesoeurs-Amesoeurs
Sunset Rubdown-Dragonslayer
Polvo-In Prism
Dan Deacon-Bromst
Deastro-Moondaggers
Sweet Trip-You Will Never Know Why
The Antlers-Hospice

you can post your best of the decade too if you want (it being 2009 and all!)

courtesy of the onion

[u2]kj4V3oJEMQA[/u2]

Mines Cherrywood  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=518XP8prwZo

Keep watching through the whole thing, it only gets better

fuck cc and your liberal bullshitL also ask we whatevers one your minf

Seriously where did he go
Im sure Pirate can shed some light on that situation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZnpzfcMheA
Seems kinda like this year's Cloverfield. Looks pretty interesting to me, I guess it's based off Alive in Joburg, a really good short film by the same director. From the looks of it it's a thinly veiled Apartheid allegory, but the premise and atmosphere seem cool to me. There's a bunch of viral sites and blogs and shit out and about now, lots of viral marketing shit akin to Cloverfield.

im a big gay fag dont read this dumb shit

I opened a Wells Fargo checking account about a month ago so I got a brand new shiny golden debit card, and I stored it in Amazon.com so I could buy a laser mouse for 10 bucks. A week later I get this in the mail.

I thought a friend was pranking me until I checked my balance online: nearly 400 dollars worth of sex toys were coming to my house, Including:
-A realistic white boy vibrating dildo
-The aformentioned anal douche
-A spraying showerhead water-dong
-A 101 sex positions manual

And also a plastic giraffe used for baby teething, which was fucking baffling


So now I've got to fill out a bunch of fucking paperwork for debit card fraud and get a new debit card. I still laughed when this shit was delivered though.

This might be backlash-backlash talking but it really wasn't

Post industrialism is a pretty well tested theory which basically states that long-established industrialized states will eventually shy away from manufacturing as their main source of employment and jobs shift to the service industry (where the labor pool is not as replaceable), while manufacturing jobs are outsourced and importing becomes commonplace. Obviously this has occurred in the United States and most countries of Europe, you don't see too many sweatshops and steel mills around here nowadays.
     
This is obviously a global transition, since pre-industrial societies are dying out (limited to sub-Saharan Africa and only the most backwards countries) and more countries are becoming massively industrialized (China, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, India, etc.). Essentially the entire weight of the manufacturing world is bearing down on these Industrializing countries, almost all our consumer goods are made there. We all know the reasons for this-wages vs. import costs and whatnot, but it really boils down to the fact that people in the post-industrial world don't want to make Nike shoes for 3 cents a day like the Chinese are willing to do. This is really what defines post-industrialized societies.
     
So what I'm thinking is that eventually all these countries with their massive labor pools making these cheap goods are eventually going to become post-industrialized themselves, demanding higher and higher wages for the jobs that they did decades before for a fraction of the money (just as Americans and Europeans have done). You could consider this 'tapping' a foreign labor pool, in which case jobs will be exported to the next industrializing countries in line. Eventually you'd think the entire world would be developed socially to a point where people just aren't willing to work for the amount of money an industrializing or pre-industrialized society would work for years before. Who would take up the burden of manufacturing at this point? Would corporations just bite the bullet and accept that they can't fight a wage conscious-world population any more? Would there be a massive mechanization movement? In which case, are there even enough service-oriented jobs to accommodate the future population?