Are you chronically late for work?
Just can’t seem to get up in the morning?
Well, you’re not alone, apparently, judging by the number and variety of alarm clocks being promoted on the Internet to solve that sleeping-in problem.
On Hammacher Schlemmer’s Web site, www.hammacher.com, check out the $50 side-wheels-equipped Runaway alarm clock. It’s designed to roll off your nightstand and across the floor until it finds a place to hide. To shut it up, you definitely have to get out of bed and find it first.
Or, try the $40 Hammacher Schlemmer Flying alarm clock that launches a rotor into the air that flies around the room as it sounds the alarm. It hovers up to 9 feet in the air and never ceases ringing until the rotor is returned to the base of the clock.
For something a little tamer and simpler, there are Wacky Wakers! at Alarm Clocks Online, an assortment of $14 old-fashioned clocks with two-ringers on top. Collectively, their individual sounds include not only the inevitable crowing rooster but also a duck, donkey, horse, dog, cow, pig, lion, bullfrog and others.
It might be worth buying the dinosaur clock just to hear what its manufacturer thinks a dinosaur sounds like.
Solving the problem of oversleeping reaches new heights with the Sfera alarm clock that hangs from the ceiling above your bed. You can reach up and hit the snooze button and it will retract toward the ceiling. But each time the snooze alarm is pushed it retracts higher and higher — until you have to really get up to turn it off.
OK, for variety, try the Drill Sergeant clock that wakes you with a spirited rendition of “Reveille” and the sergeant barking orders.
Of course, any clock shaped like a World War II hand grenade has got to be worth a try. A spouse, friend or particularly an enemy has to be enlisted to help with this one.
Pull the pin on the “grenade,” yell “fire in the hole” and lob it into the sleeper’s room. After 10 seconds, the grenade broadcasts an annoying and loud sonic noise. (No, of course, that’s not devious enough. Here’s the second part: to shut the alarm off, the sleeper has to get up and find the person who tossed it — so they can put the pin back in to silence it!)
If none of those clocks will get you up, you’re ready for this one: the Sensory Assault alarm clock, prominently displayed on Hammacher Schlemmer’s Web site, very worthwhile at only $60.
This one uses a strobe light, a vibration pad under your pillow or mattress and your choice of several high-intensity and alarm tones up to 95 decibles.
By comparison, normal conversation is 60db, and 95db is in between being 10 feet from a passing truck (90db) or a passing subway train (100db). At 120 db, you’ve hit a human’s pain threshold (64 times as loud as conversation and twice as loud as a night club).
That much noise and commotion may finally awaken you in time to keep that appointment you made with your neighborhood hearing clinic.
— John Wolcott, SCBJ Editor
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