Alarm Clock Will Shred Your Cash If You Don't Wake Up

For as long as there have been alarm clocks, people have been trying to figure out how to make them effective. "Put it across the room!" "Set multiple alarms!" "Drink lots of water before going to bed!" And so on.

The latest proposal comes from Seattle inventor Rich Olson, who combined a Sparkfun Clockit and a USB paper shredder to create a gadget that will tear your cash to ribbons if you don't hit the "off" button in time.

The New York Post reports that Olson isn't looking to monetize his work. Instead, in keeping with the collaborative spirit of the age, he's posted a guide to making your own cash-eating alarm clock on his blog, Nothing Labs.

So all you deep sleepers who don't have money to shred might consider trying it -- although I don't see how pressing a button within a set number of seconds to prevent your bills from being torn asunder is significantly different from using a snooze feature. Are there really people who actually sleep through alarm sounds, as opposed to silencing them and then going back to bed?

As the Post notes, it's technically a federal offense to destroy money, but if we aren't free to do as we like with our currency, then what is our freedom really worth? It may not be lighting a cigar with a $100 bill, but it's as close as most of us non-plutocrats are likely to come.

Check out Olson's infernal machine in action. It's surprisingly amusing to see a blaring alarm clock consume a $1 bill.