The many ways fraysters get up in the morning.

Dan Crane's guide to alarm clocks had fraysters abuzz over the best and worst ways to undergo the daily ritual of waking up.

For twifferTheGnu, the inherent flaw in all alarm clocks

is the alarm. doesn't matter if it's screeching or gentle. these damn things are designed, specifically, to wake you up. therein lies the problem. how can one ever be pleased with such a device, when its primary function is so unpleasant?

next item up for review, find the best personal electro-shock therapy system! wait, that might actually be something more pleasant that an alarm clock.

How about wakin' to bacon? LiannaKong tells us here about

…the Bacon Alarm Clock which wakes you up to the smell of bacon. If you google Bacon Alarm Clock, you'll find that numerous blogs like Boing Boing and Gizmodo have blogged about this fantastic invention. You put a piece of bacon in the alarm clock and when it is time to wake up, a light bulb turns on and cooks the bacon(a la Easy Bake Oven) so you get to wake up to the delicious scent of greasy bacon in the morning. To me, that seems like the most pleasant way to wake up. There are no loud noises or lights or sleep cycles involved. It's just you and your basic human instinct to eat in the morning.

run75441 describes another intriguing brand of alarm clock which "projects the time, in red, on the wall or the ceiling large enough to make it readable."

panscapes, for his part, is a partisan of what he calls the "Zen alarm clock":

Waking up to the Zen alarm clock is a kindly process - a hammer strikes the bowl, producing a warm, harmonious chime that lifts you from your sleep and gently lowers you right back into it as the note slowly fades. Five minutes later, it chimes again, and you're like, "Mmmm. *snort*" and you roll over and hug a pillow. The interval between gong-strikes halves until the bowl chimes every five seconds or so, and by then, you're as awake as you're going to get before coffee and a shower.

It's also totally bourgeois, and it makes me feel like a well-intentioned, leftist white guy in my forties, but I swear, it's worth that awful feeling of self-recognition.

According to bathsheba, none of the reviewed models even compares to

the Nokia cell phone, "free" when I signed up 4 years ago. The phone has long been replaced but I keep the Nokia solely as an alarm clock.

Small, travels well, battery lasts a long time, programs in an instant.

Here's the genius to the design: the Nokia starts beeping barely audibly, then gradually gets louder. Most civilized. The only thing kinder is a lover gently rocking you awake.