Waking Life
Getting Awakened by a British Butler

Waking up.

It can be a tall order.

You’ve tried regular clocks, elaborate, Goonies-esque booby-trapped snooze alarms, even an auto-timer on the stove to get breakfast going. Slept through them all. And burned a lot of bacon.

It’s time to turn to the Internet. And... a British actor.

Introducing the Wake-Up Dialer, a website that uses pillowy soft vocal greetings from a famed UK thespian to ease you away from slumberland, available now.

Think of this as a hotel concierge wake-up service. Only, you know, minus the hotel concierge.

Setup is the opposite of difficult: the next time you know you’re going to need a little extra help to wake up in the morning (say, the day after your birthday... or St. Paddy’s Day... or this Sunday), head to this site. Enter your phone number and the time you’d like to emerge from bed. When the appropriate day and time arrive, you’ll receive a call from actor Stephen Fry saying something like, “I’m so sorry to disturb you, but it appears to be morning.”

Oh, and about that actor: he played the butler Jeeves to Hugh Laurie’s Bertie Wooster in the popular UK comedy Jeeves and Wooster.

Next up: bedtime stories read by Dr. Gregory House.