Some of you may have heard about the “hiding” alarm clock that uses robotics and A.I. to roll off your nightstand each morning and seek a hiding place in your bedroom until you rise to shut it off. (the story is here, in case you hadn’t.)

I had an idea along similar lines. The problem with alarm clocks is that we grow accustomed to them. Sometimes the sound just fails to wake us up and sometimes we simply turn it off in our sleep.

My alarm clock would consist of an LCD screen with an extremely bright backlight. The time would be displayed on a regular red LED panel somewhere in the screen’s frame. Each day the clock connects to the internet through your wifi and downloads a selection of disturbing imagery from a central database. The images are all scary pictures of human faces such as scary clowns, bat shit lunatics, regular people with digitally distorted features (like in that Pizza Hut commercial,) fast food mascots, the monster from Mullholand Drive, Michael Jackson, et cetra.

When it’s time to wake up, the clock emits a loud audible alarm. If it is ignored or turned off the screen displays an EXTREMELY bright randomly selected image from the aforementioned list. Since it is always updating its archive there’s always a good chance that the clock is going to scare the shit out of you when you look at it, especially if you wake up when its still dark and the scary face is the only thing you see in a dark room.

I suppose it could be set to display pleasant images for people who are wussies.

What image would scare YOU out of bed on a regular basis?