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Jewish World Review April 14, 2005 / 5 Nisan, 5765 When clocks go mad By David Grimes
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
In yet another example of how technology is out to kill us, scientists at MIT recently announced the invention of a new alarm clock called, appropriately enough, Clocky, that is designed to roust even the heaviest of sleepers.
When Clocky's snooze button is pressed, the clock, which is equipped with a set of wheels, rolls off the table to another part of the room.
When the alarm goes off again, the sleeper has to roust himself to hit the button a second time.
This is what I imagine would happen if Clocky were in my bedroom:
5:30 a.m. "No, no! Please stop! It wasn't my fault!"
"Oh, really, Mr. Weatherman? Four rained-out spring- training games in less than one month? Do you realize how much money I've wasted on tickets? Do you have any idea how many autographs I failed to get? Do you care, even slightly, that I cry myself to sleep at night and dream of $6 beers?"
"It was an occluded front! There was an unexpected drop in the steering currents! Isobars! It was the isobars, man!"
(I turn to the burly masked man whose hands are wrapped around the handle of the rack.) "Stretch him."
"No-o-o-o!!!"
(Rin-n-n-g-ggg!)
5:32 a.m. (Mumbling) "Why does the alarm always go off when I'm in the middle of a good dream?"
(Reach clumsily and blindly toward nightstand, knocking over lamp and sending eyeglasses clattering somewhere behind the bed. Punch snooze button and doze off.
The weatherman is now 12 feet tall and the thickness of a strand of dried vermicelli. I clap in delight, but my reverie is shattered by the sound of whirring gears and a loud crash. Strange, but at the same time familiar, music is coming from somewhere in the direction of the bathroom. "Mr. Roboto?," I say to myself. "Is there a Styx concert going on in the commode?"
Suddenly, there is another loud alarm and I groggily roll out of bed, landing barefoot on the shards of the broken lamp. Crying out in pain, I fall to my knees and grope around for my eyeglasses. After some searching, I find them, but when I try to stand up, I crack my head on the open drawer of the nightstand.)
5:45 a.m. (Must have been unconscious for a few minutes. Woozy and hemorrhaging badly, I attempt to hobble in the direction of the bathroom, from which the sound of a car-alarm is emanating. BWOOP! BWOOP! BWOOP! Must … make … it … stop. Lunge forward but balance is unsure due to deep lacerations on soles of feet and manage only to "clocky" my head on the edge of the dresser.)
8:15 a.m. (Dog-shaped robot of Japanese origin is blasting lasers into my eyes, presumably to reduce what's left of my cerebral cortex to mush and achieve world domination.
As I slowly come to, I realize that the dog is actually a paramedic and the laser is nothing more than a pen-size flashlight that he's shining into my eyes to see if I'm alive or dead. Clocky, the banshee alarm clock, was apparently so loud that my neighbors called the police.
When police saw the bloody footprints and my unconscious body lying in the middle of all that carnage, they naturally assumed my bedroom was the scene of a hideous crime reminiscent of the Manson murders, so they cordoned it off with yellow tape, which, at the moment, actually adds to the décor.)
Next day — (I'm feeling much better and the doctors say that I should be able to go home in a day or two, assuming my fever subsides.
The hydrocodone dulls the pain in my feet and helps me sleep. My dreams no longer involve using medieval torture techniques on my local weatherman, which makes me sad, but my new dreams are as good, if not better.
The weapons I use vary from dream to dream — dynamite, machine gun, 155 mm howitzer — but the outcome remains the same.
Clocky, the traveling alarm clock, rolls no more.)
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JWR contributor David Grimes is a columnist for The Sarasota Herald Tribune. Comment by clicking here. © 2005, Sarasota Herald Tribune |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
