The Rude Awakening You Need

The only dreams like this are the kind you want to wake up from anyway–that’s how you’ll know you’re not dreaming when the Sonic Bomb makes its alert. And by the time this knowledge has been acquired–by the time your Sonic Bomb has been shut off and you’ve decided to confront the day–the day has already met you more than halfway. That’s the kind of shift in consciousness that occurs.

So while there are alarm clocks that do all kinds of things–alarm clocks that simulate natural sunlight, that provide sonic ambience, that project the time in a blue glow on your ceiling, even that are powered by water–it’s good to know there’s also an alarm clock that, you know, wakes you the fuck up. Now, a lot of alarm clocks wake you up, it’s true, but for those of us who prefer to seal out the world and its sounds in our somnolence–who prepare with earplugs for the unfortunate contingencies of noisy neighbors and other incidental intrusions–we need to know that we’re not going to pay with tardiness for our insistence on sleep uninterrupted. Beause if you think that gadget you got at Brookstone to wake you up to the chirping of birds is gonna serve you from within a truly insulated sleep, then you’re obviously still dreaming anyway, and you’re already late.

The Sonic Bomb relies on no such smugness–it sends an all-points bulletin to three different senses: it flashes red, it vibrates your bed (through a wire-attached pod you place under your mattress), and then it beeps. When set at its loudest, it beeps very loudly. Personally, it’s proven very effective even when wearing NPR 33 earplugs. And the instant it goes off, I’ve already forgotten that I’d even been asleep—it doesn’t feel like I’ve been woken up so much as delivered, deftly and instantly, into consciousness. The Sonic Bomb makes the transition from dreaming to reality seem somehow both effortless and irrevocable in its entirety, by denying you the luxury of your own denial, and delivering a whole different luxury altogether.