As some of my classmates, many of my friends, and all of my ex's well know, I'm not the easiest person to wake up in the morning. Much of my professional life has been spent devising a series of clocks or alarms that manage to actually kick the brain into activation, not just rouse the body. Without that, I just turn off an alarm and fall back asleep, waking only after the important class/interview/date has come and gone.

It seems, however, that I'm not alone in this problem, and that a much brighter mind has come up with an innovative solution: the Wake Me Clock.

The WMC is a simple computer-based alarm clock with a very interesting twist: each morning it selects two entries from a dictionary at random, and won't shut off until you've typed those two words into a text box. In other words, by the time you've stopped whatever racket you've set yourself, you're awake.

Just what the doctor ordered. Now it is simply a matter of deciding on a sound file that is annoying enough to get me out of bed, and yet puts me in the right frame of mind for the day. During exam periods, I generally choose Tweak from South Park ("AAAAAH! Too much pressure!), but those aren't coming for another few months. I generally select some cheesy TV quote, but nothing springs to mind right now.

Any suggestions from the gallery? Past wake-up hits have included:

• Vorlon from Babylon 5: "The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote."
  
• Cartman, South Park: "Bad! That's a bad snake!" (Cartman, by the way, has an incredibly annoying voice, and thus is perfect for waking me up)
  
• Joel Cairo (Peter Lorrie), The Maltese Falcon: "You always have a very smooth explanation ready."
  
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail: "Now you see the violence inherent in the system!"