Alarming

The reason to set an alarm clock is so that, if if hasn't rung yet, you know that it's not time to wake up; there's still time to sleep. Having an alarm set, under this theory, always means that you will awake before the alarm goes off. So it can be a very long time before it's discovered that the alarm isn't working at all. Someone decides to sleep in late and ignore the alarm. But the alarm never goes off! So it will be traded out for another of those small black plastic dollar or free alarms that come from China and take one or two double- or triple-A batteries. Someone must be creating assemblages or some other form of art from non-working exampls of these ubiquitous timepieces.