13.09.2011 off topic

This picture is the reason I didn't hear my alarm ring this morning.

I'd planned on going to bed early yesterday but then I accidentally 

glanced at the clock and had this bright idea of uploading the 

extreme changes it has been put through this past year.

To do that I had to find my bead sprite collection and once I'd found it I

felt compelled to document what I'd made and before I knew it

two hours had past and I had to hurry and get some sleep.

The story of a simple clock, most probably an IKEA one.

Made in china by an overworked and underpaid employee with

an employer that neglects his fellow human beings' welfare to

the best of his ability in search of the highest possible profit margin

the clock didn't start out with the best karma.

After spending a few hours on a mile long, highway wide assembly line

the finished clock, no. 279, was put into a box with 319 of his fellow clockmates

and together they huddled in a corner in wait for the boat to come pick them up.

The boat ride was not as unpleasant as the clocks had feared, the boat people

knew how to protect their cargo. Experience had taught them that arriving

with damaged goods meant less pay, a longer wait inbetween assignments and the

angry boss prone to giving such excessive scolds that his voice

would be hoarse by the end of it was not a person they wanted to cross.

By the time the clockmates had gotten to their destination extreme lethargy had set in.

They did not come with batteries and the energy they had absorbed in the factory

had diminished during the long journey, and now even the best of their

timekeepers had a problem with keeping time. The trip from the pier

to the store was a relatively short one but by the time they hit the shelves

they had already gone into hibernation.

The next time no. 279 came to he was in the arms of a stranger.

He had been fitted with brand new batteries and the stranger was touching his

controls. When the stranger was satisfied with the new settings no. 279 was

mounted above the door and contentedly went about keeping time, day in
and day out for many months. He even managed to put his competitors

out of business and 1487 hours, 31 minutes and 21 seconds after waking up in

the humans arms he was the sole timekeeper in the room.

His ability to keep time without making a "tick tock" sound
seemed to agree with the humans.

When the batteries ran out the humans promptly replaced them and when

he got hit with flying objects, something that had a habit of happening

when there were younger children in the household, they always

checked extra carefully to make sure he had not sustained any injuries.

He was content and when the humans showered him with extra

attention he felt more so, until the wicked witch of the east started

keeping an eye on him.

The witch lived in the room next to his, a room so ugly it made his numbers

cringe. He had been in there once and that was when the youngest in the family

had gone in there with him under her arms to ask the witch to check him for injuries.

She had given him a cursory look and declared him fit for duty and the youngest

carried him right back out, not a second too soon in his opinion. The room might

not be as bad as it used to be though, for a few weeks now the witch

had been pilfering different items from around the house and stashed it in her hovel.

His abduction came 391 hours, 54 minutes, and 12 seconds after the witch had snatched

her first item. The room had been improved enough for his numbers not to cringe but

he still missed his old space, the one above the door, with a clear view of everything

and everyone. As time past he slowly came to accept his new surroundings and the room
in turn slowly changed from something that didn't make him cringe into something
he actually approved of, something he could brag to his family about if he ever did find them.
A scenario almost unheard of in the timekeeper community, partly because timekeepers

were not an emotional lot but also because humans had a penchant for only pick one time device,
or none at all, each time they went shopping and that was where timekeeper families irreversibly parted.  Unless, of course, the time device the family brought home was faulty.
In that case a diligent family would return it to the store and a lazy one would throw it in the bin.
And a diligent family didn't guarantee a happy ending.

A time keeper with a low market value would most of the time be deemed not worth

fixing once it got back to the store and they could, and most often would dispose of the device.  If it was fixed it would go back to the shelves and very often the family had already moved on

to greener pastures, if they had not what was there to brag about? The timekeeper that came

back to the store was nine out of ten times a device that had proven to be faulty. A label

no one wanted and everyone avoided to the best of their ability.

753 hours, 12 minutes, and 9 seconds after he'd been taken into the witch's room she took a
screwdriver to his back. The agony of not knowing what she was up to was excruciating.
Time seemed to slow down and each second felt like two. When she put him back together
the first thing he noticed was that he was heavier. She had taped Pac-man ghosts onto his numbers!
Not only did they obscure his view and others view of him but they were also hideously colourful.
Probably so he would match the atrocity she called a door. He had always thought of it
as a fine piece of work, even in the good old days when he could not bear the
sight of her room, but she had gone and taken that stately, unblemished frame and covered
it with the same material she had covered him in but quintupled the quantity.

Thank Chronos she changed it to something more palpable 1030 hours, 42 minutes,
and 18 seconds later. By then she had gotten over her bead sprite craze and had moved onto 

other hobbies and other colour schemes. She disassembled him again and this time he was not worried. Nothing could be worse than the rainbow coloured ghosts. When she was done he was
almost satisfied with the results. She had taped black and white pictures on to eight of his 12
hours and a few in the middle as well. If he remembered correctly they came from an old
biology book her grandfather had left behind when he went back to the warm country he came from. He had a feeling that he had gotten so used to the rainbow ghosts that he would feel naked without them so he felt relieved at the coverage the biology knick knacks afforded him,
not that he would tell her that of course. She was still a wickedly wicked witch and did not
give him nearly as much attention as the younger humans had so why should he exert himself when she so obviously did not?