| Image via ThinkGeek |
Not a morning person? Step into my lair.
I’ve recently made more concerted efforts to convert to Morningism. This is because I realized that it’s not so much waking up early that I dislike as much as it is waking up in general. For 26 years I’ve operated under the misguided assumption that, with the proper amount of sleep, I can awake like a Disney princess — breathe deeply, stretch my limbs and happily greet the woodland creatures crowded at the windowsill awaiting my good cheer. This is not so. Whether 10 hours or 10 minutes precede my awakening, the difference in unpleasantness is only slight. So why not get it over with and get a jump on the day? The difficulty is that applying this rational logic to my 6 a.m. zombie brain is like cautioning my dog about gingivitis. I tried setting several alarms at once and placing them across the room, but no luck. Granted, it truly was fascinating to see how many alarms I could turn off without ever technically waking up, but my wife can only resist poisoning my lunch so long. I needed something like Mr. Bean’s alarm clock, which connects to a garden drip tube that sprays cold water on his bare feet. Enter ThinkGeek.com, a purveyor of delightfully strange wares, including alarm clocks that were probably forged in fire by the Devil himself. There’s the Sonic Bomb Alarm Clock with Bed Shaker, or wheeled clocks that roll under your bed, or ones with wings that playfully elude your sleepy grasp as they hover around the room. I opted for the Twist Equation alarm clock. This cylindrical device features (from left to right): a dial numbered 1 through 9, an LCD screen, another numbered dial, an “=” sign, then another screen. Normally, those screens display the hours and minutes, respectively, but when the alarm sounds, the first screen flashes either a “+” or a “-” sign, and the second flashes a sum. To make the beeping stop, you have to twist the numbered dials to complete the equation. Calling “5+6=11” an “equation” might sound silly, but at 6 a.m. it might as well be quantum mechanics. What’s more, the dials don’t light up, so when the alarm sounds, I can either A, ignore it, then get kicked in the kidney by my wife (can’t be ignored), or B, grab that thing and race it into the light of the bathroom to defuse it like a ticking time bomb. Early trials are hopeful — 5/5 successful wake-up’s so far. And if this doesn’t take, ThinkGeek has an impressive offering of caffeine-laced soap, body wash and lip gloss. (Really.) |
