Skin Horse

By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Color by Pancha Diaz
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2020-02-21
‹‹ First ‹ Prev Buy! Comments(42) Next › Last ››

2020-02-21

by shaenon on February 21, 2020 at 12:01 am
Chapter: A Life in the Woods
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Discussion (42) ¬

  1. Robert Nowall
    February 21, 2020, 12:02 am | # | Reply

    Gross, Jonah Yu. Gross.

    • David B Huber
      February 21, 2020, 12:03 am | # | Reply

      Jonah could foresee the effects and decided it was worth it!

    • Candace
      February 21, 2020, 12:30 am | # | Reply

      Meh. Depending on how expired they were, the Spaghettios may have been just fine. A lot of expiration dates are arbitrary anyway, especially for canned goods. Expiration dates or “Best by” dates are required by law, but most of them are just someone’s best guess about how long a product should last. As long as the can wasn’t leaking, bulging, or badly dented and rusting, the contents were probably still OK.

      • Robert Nowall
        February 21, 2020, 12:35 am | # | Reply

        “Woke up last night to the sound of thunder…in the john I sat and wondered…started eatin’ a can from 1962…ain’t it funny how the night moves…when you just don’t know you’ve got some crap to lose…strange how the night moves…your bowels are closin’ in…”

        • RICHARD CLEMENTS
          February 21, 2020, 2:38 am | # | Reply
        • RICHARD CLEMENTS
          February 21, 2020, 2:39 am | # | Reply

          You win 1 internet

        • jdreyfuss
          February 21, 2020, 9:21 am | # | Reply

          You know, I used to like Bob Seger. Not so sure I can anymore . . .

          Nicely done.

      • jdreyfuss
        February 21, 2020, 9:22 am | # | Reply

        I’ve seen someone drink a can of Billy Beer that was 40 years old at the time. Well, he didn’t swallow it, but he did put the beer in his mouth and describe the taste. He didn’t get sick from it either.

        • Robert Nowall
          February 21, 2020, 9:30 am | # | Reply

          I still have a can of Spam I bought in the 1990s. It’s a tradition in our family to keep an aged Spam can around till it explodes.

          • Jim Baerg
            February 21, 2020, 12:45 pm | #

            An outdoor group I was in had an ‘Awards Night’. I had long been just for joke awards. One long standing tradition was an award for odd food eaten on a camping trip. The ‘trophy’ was a package of Kraft Dinner that had been passed on to the next ‘winner’ for at least a decade.

        • davidbreslin101
          February 21, 2020, 4:07 pm | # | Reply

          Christmas pudding (an old British tradition) is famously long-lived. I’ve had five-year-old pudding and not noticed any difference. A 46-year-old specimen found in a cupboard in Nottingham was recently declared safe by microbiologists, boiled for five hours, and eaten. They described it as a bit dry, but delicious. The oldest known Christmas pudding dates from 1900, but remains untasted to this day.

          • awgiedawgie
            February 21, 2020, 4:49 pm | #

            Sort of like fruitcake in the U.S.

            Back when the Pilgrims first met the Native Americans, they presented them with a fruitcake. The Natives said “This is what you eat?! We will teach you to grow good food to eat.”

            That same fruitcake has been handed down from generation to generation for the past 400 years, and hasn’t changed in texture one bit.

          • Nix
            February 22, 2020, 10:48 am | #

            The canonical case is, of course, honey. It appears to be almost immortal: honey removed from the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs is still edible. It might eventually fossilize after tens of thousands of years, I suppose.

        • pdp15
          February 21, 2020, 4:26 pm | # | Reply

          I bought some Town House crackers recently, got them home, then noticed the expiration date: NOV1820 … geez, these are 200 years old!

      • Guesticus
        February 21, 2020, 5:59 pm | # | Reply

        Yeah, some things you don’t expect to last a long time, do, and some things you do expect to last (at least until the date), don’t (like a bottle of fruit juice, pure juice, nothing added, sometimes it will start to ‘ferment’ and even start growing mould well before it’s finished, fortunately the mould just floats on the top and can be easily removed)

  2. David B Huber
    February 21, 2020, 12:12 am | # | Reply

    How do you reprogram a gestalt mind? Use social media to bias the assimilated! After all, absorbing dark, violent minds caused the fork so let the biomass recruit all the influencers it wants…

    Now, what do we want our Stepford Gestalt to be?

    • David B Huber
      February 21, 2020, 1:49 am | # | Reply

      Or would Aimee’s mind control crown work on the biomass?

    • David B Huber
      February 21, 2020, 1:57 am | # | Reply

      Or they could resurrect Nick’s backup from VR, use Tigerlilly’s Clone-O-Mat to create a meat body for him, brief Nick2 on the situation and let him sacrifice himself to the Collective so his pacifism could overwhelm the gestalt’s agression…

    • David B Huber
      February 21, 2020, 1:58 am | # | Reply

      (I’m so glad the voices are talking to me again!)

  3. BMunro
    February 21, 2020, 12:35 am | # | Reply

    If the zombie bear attacks weren’t an intentional effort to kill, what were they? A severe allergic reaction?

    • David B Huber
      February 21, 2020, 1:46 am | # | Reply

      An argument could be made for self defense. Remember these were Anasigma assault teams…

      • jdreyfuss
        February 21, 2020, 9:24 am | # | Reply

        That actually makes a lot of sense. If you think of the bears as white blood cells, you could even call it an overactive immune response.

    • Shadowmehr
      February 21, 2020, 9:06 pm | # | Reply

      It could be considered a violent attempt at assimilation. The biomass may have been added to the Thing collective, with the consciousness being dissolved into the larger gestalt due to the brain matter no longer being in one piece. Growth without consensus.

  4. OneUniverse
    February 21, 2020, 12:37 am | # | Reply

    Is this a political message for 2020?

    • casimir
      February 21, 2020, 12:54 am | # | Reply

      If it is I can’t wait to see what genius solution our intrepid team comes up with.

    • Robert Nowall
      February 21, 2020, 12:59 am | # | Reply

      I hear a certain late-entry billionaire candidate is paying top dollar for people to say nice things about him on social media.

      • BMunro
        February 21, 2020, 1:29 am | # | Reply

        Probably do better just sending everyone $20 to vote for him.

        • Robert Nowall
          February 21, 2020, 7:10 am | # | Reply

          It’d be cheaper…but it’d probably be illegal.

          • jdreyfuss
            February 21, 2020, 9:24 am | #

            Extremely.

          • jdreyfuss
            February 21, 2020, 9:25 am | #

            The FEC nearly opened an investigation on Gene Yang just because he suggested offhand that it was possible for him to do it.

          • Robert Nowall
            February 21, 2020, 9:28 am | #

            I could also add that it wouldn’t work—people would take the money and vote for whoever they felt like.

          • Sheik
            February 21, 2020, 12:16 pm | #

            My wife advocated that the political parties should be allowed to set up bribery stations right outside the polling stations and make it illegal to prevent people from taking bribes from all of them at the same time. With a secret ballot it would make little or no effect on the outcome except to attract more voters.
            But then again, she was a lifelong Democrat.

        • s854
          February 21, 2020, 4:22 pm | # | Reply

          “Bribery stations” could work in a country where voting is optional. You just find polling stations where most people who vote are likely to vote for you, and put the bribery stations there. A few more of the right sort of people will end up voting, and you are likely to do better as a result.

          If you’re in power, there would probably be all sorts of pretexts you can use to concentrate the bribery stations in the right sort of area.

          • awgiedawgie
            February 21, 2020, 4:42 pm | #

            Which is precisely why it’s illegal.

      • OneUniverse
        February 21, 2020, 9:02 am | # | Reply

        The billionaires could save money by persuading the Russians to pay for the social media propaganda.

  5. Schismatism
    February 21, 2020, 7:36 am | # | Reply

    When did Jonah ever play on the BOSS softball team?

    • Robert Nowall
      February 21, 2020, 8:50 am | # | Reply

      Salvaged clothing. They’ve been out there awhile now. Nera is wearing what looks like one of Unity’s pullovers.

      • awgiedawgie
        February 21, 2020, 4:43 pm | # | Reply

        Well, it’s not like Unity needs a shirt at the moment.

  6. jdreyfuss
    February 21, 2020, 9:29 am | # | Reply

    There’s also the small problem that, even with Nick’s new armaments, even if he were willing to actually kill the Biomass completely dead, they probably don’t have the offensive capability at their disposal to actually do it.

    • awgiedawgie
      February 21, 2020, 9:04 pm | # | Reply

      Depends on how well-fueled those St. Charlie flamethrowers are. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if they were capable of wiping out most of New England. One thing Mad scientists are really good at is overdoing it.

  7. AYH
    February 21, 2020, 12:58 pm | # | Reply

    Way back Jonah said that they would call Tip but the next time they did he wouldn’t believe them.

    Did that ever happen because I can’t seem to recall that particular incident. Maybe I missed it or is it still something that has yet to occur?

    • awgiedawgie
      February 21, 2020, 9:18 pm | # | Reply

      Jonah said he would call if they found the source of the weather disruptions, but that Tip wouldn’t pick up.

      So maybe Jonah did already try to call Tip, but Tip couldn’t pick up, or maybe they haven’t found the source of the weather disruptions yet. I don’t recall seeing anything saying one way or the other.

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