Skin Horse

By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
By Shaenon K. Garrity & Jeffrey C. Wells
Color by Pancha Diaz
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2016-03-17
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2016-03-17

by shaenon on March 17, 2016 at 12:01 am
Chapter: Can't Catch Me
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Discussion (54) ¬

  1. John Campbell
    March 17, 2016, 12:08 am | # | Reply

    Are we sure Dr. Lee isn’t Mad?

    • Graeme Lewis
      March 17, 2016, 12:11 am | # | Reply

      She’s sure. We’re not. And she might not be right… I’m recalling someone else who was sure he wasn’t mad…

      • Amy
        March 17, 2016, 12:15 am | # | Reply

        Hmm… she DOES have clear glasses.

        • Darwin
          March 17, 2016, 12:39 am | # | Reply

          She may be on the edge of of cracking. When she performs her breakthrough, god only know how horrible it’s going to be.

          • Lady Pentrose
            March 17, 2016, 11:52 am | #

            Horrible and entertaining.

            Just glad I’m on this side of the screen.

    • Jerry Aethers
      March 17, 2016, 12:14 am | # | Reply

      She’s like borderline vivid mad. Sane enough to be mostly rational, mad enough to see what the “sane” people can’t. Which means she can make sense of the insensible. That’s why she got the previous job she had. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have some quirks.

    • Jay Eff
      March 17, 2016, 12:18 am | # | Reply

      She’s not Mad.

      She’s actually quite delighted at the moment.

    • Towering Barbarian
      March 17, 2016, 12:26 am | # | Reply

      I’d say she’s about as sane as Sheldon Cooper. ^_^

      • Frank
        March 17, 2016, 12:29 am | # | Reply

        cue the laugh track!

      • Casey
        March 17, 2016, 1:04 am | # | Reply

        She is, however, substantially funnier.

        • Lord Foul
          March 17, 2016, 3:11 am | # | Reply

          Cue the OOooh track

    • Ugwump
      March 17, 2016, 8:00 am | # | Reply

      Dr. Lee is an imitative genius. Pretty much all the stuff she does is riffing of the work of others. I suspect the “mad” is also just a riff.

      One wonders what will come from working with the U.S. Government. And will she find the basement.

      Oh my dear sweet lord! They share a building with the Department of Radiation!

      • mahlernut
        March 17, 2016, 9:28 am | # | Reply

        Did the D of I move with them? What about Pre-Cambrian Defense? Jet Pack Suppression?

        Gads…what would Ginny do if she hung around the Department of Jet Pack Suppression?? Probably just install their brains -into- the jet packs, I suppose…

    • CyberSkull
      March 17, 2016, 10:59 am | # | Reply

      There are degrees of madness. She’s high-functioning.

    • Forz
      March 17, 2016, 11:32 am | # | Reply

      I’m pretty sure when you reach Dr Lee’s level, the line between Mad Genius and Eccentric Genius is a lot clearer to you than it is to lowly mortals like ourselves.

    • Ahno neemus.
      September 7, 2020, 3:34 pm | # | Reply

      Difference between a Mad Scientist and a Scientist that is mad.

    • twynethetruth
      September 25, 2020, 10:13 pm | # | Reply

      Yes; in fact; the showpiece of her existence is that one can do amazing things with superscience galore without, in fact, being Mad. She’s very focused, but she is not Mad. (In fact, it’s evidence contrary.)

  2. Jay Eff
    March 17, 2016, 12:17 am | # | Reply

    If they want to sleep again, I’m afraid they’ll have no choice but to trek on over to the Big Apple. Because we all know, there’s–

    “No Sleep Til Brooklyn”

    *dodges jackhammers*

  3. Towering Barbarian
    March 17, 2016, 12:19 am | # | Reply

    Well, shoot! Now I wish Ginny was *my* coffee lady as well! ^_^

    • oneuniverse2
      March 17, 2016, 12:52 am | # | Reply

      Yes. Now I want both Ginny and the coffee hanging around. Maybe I should spend more time in their universe…

      • kicking_k
        March 17, 2016, 5:32 am | # | Reply

        Me too. Four hours sleep last night. I gave up late nights a few years back, and then I had kids…

        Does the adenosine blocker taste nice, though? Or can you dose your actual coffee with it?

        • Eric Burns-White
          March 17, 2016, 7:35 am | # | Reply

          I’m legitimately (and legally 😉 ) on a combination of Nuvigil and Ritalin these days. Neither one of them tastes good with coffee. Or anything else. But you wake up in the morning and you get so much done….

          Okay, so there was a stretch in 2014 where sleep may have been less a fact and more a concept, but in my defense 2014 sucked.

          • Galian Ryu
            March 17, 2016, 4:25 pm | #

            I just want to take this moment to acknowledge you called this in yesterday’s commentary, down to the chemistry involved. Congrats, though something along these line was pretty much the guaranteed result of giving Ginny “busy work”.

  4. EvilMidnightLurker
    March 17, 2016, 2:51 am | # | Reply

    Eric Burns-White called it in the air.

    • Lord Foul
      March 17, 2016, 3:17 am | # | Reply

      Almost a rigged coin given how likely it was, but his calling came with a good story so it was nonetheless entertaining and mildly impressive

      • Eric Burns-White
        March 17, 2016, 7:51 am | # | Reply

        I cheated slightly. I take two thirds of her active ingredients (well, armodafinil in lieu of modafinil — but it’s an enantiopure of the former) just as a matter of course. I don’t take them in combination with an SNRI, though. That would be silly. I take them in combination with an NDRI. But that wouldn’t muck with serotonin in nearly as interesting a series of ways. Also, I’m pretty sure my dosages wouldn’t be nearly as interesting useful at Skin Horse. And the neuroscientists I work with isn’t nearly as Virginia Lee as Virginia Lee.

        • Lord Foul
          March 17, 2016, 10:10 am | # | Reply

          I love how you’re using the name as both an adjective and a proper noun

          As to medications I’m on a comparatively boring concerta in the morning and melatonin in the evening (also legally)
          Occasionally suplimented with a cocktail of minor mundane drugs like guanine and caffeine, because I too understand the reality of Concept Sleep.

  5. Robert Nowall
    March 17, 2016, 7:25 am | # | Reply

    After the first hundred hours of no-sleep, you get kinda paranoid and start hallucinating…

    • Eric Burns-White
      March 17, 2016, 7:53 am | # | Reply

      See, this is why she’s eventually going to add a good eugeroic to the compound. Helps keep the less… ‘desirable’ side effects at bay. And she is a sane scientist, after all. Really.

      • Lord Foul
        March 17, 2016, 10:11 am | # | Reply

        But as scientist won’t she need a control group?

    • Lord Foul
      March 17, 2016, 10:07 am | # | Reply

      Most people start at 50 or less, these people… Not sure if they’d start at 12 or 200…

      • Robert Nowall
        March 17, 2016, 11:58 am | # | Reply

        A couple of them may already have…

        • Lord Foul
          March 18, 2016, 5:25 am | # | Reply

          Sorry, forgot most people don’t use absolute value when using units of time

  6. Robert Nowall
    March 17, 2016, 7:32 am | # | Reply

    I notice Dr. Lee’s wearing green today—St. Patrick’s Day?

    • Lord Foul
      March 17, 2016, 10:12 am | # | Reply

      Some people just like green…

  7. Zyzzyva
    March 17, 2016, 8:36 am | # | Reply

    And the meaning of the story title resolves itself.

  8. Miyaa
    March 17, 2016, 9:01 am | # | Reply

    This is why I stick with teas and hot cocoa.

  9. mickeyjf
    March 17, 2016, 10:25 am | # | Reply

    Agatha just made it “taste as good as it smells”, which no one in this universe has come close to yet and which to my mind is a more worthy goal.

  10. Ken
    March 17, 2016, 10:26 am | # | Reply

    “Just not sleeping” can kill you! If you want nightmares – you hope! – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatal_familial_insomnia

    • Stickmaker
      March 17, 2016, 3:28 pm | # | Reply

      More generally, proper sleep is important to overall good health.

  11. Robert Nowall
    March 17, 2016, 10:35 am | # | Reply

    Mention of “hamsters” brings to mind something that’s been hanging on my mind for some time—well, since I read the Narbonic books, anyway—whatever happened to those intelligent hamsters after they fled from their flying island doomsday device?

    • Gemma
      March 17, 2016, 7:12 pm | # | Reply

      I think this was covered in the last Dave in Slumberland, but I’m not sure because my phone won’t let me scroll the image.

    • EvilMidnightLurker
      March 17, 2016, 8:35 pm | # | Reply

      Last we saw, they were in jail.

      • Robert Nowall
        March 18, 2016, 8:00 am | # | Reply

        Musta missed all that—just read the books, haven’t sifted through the massive amount of extraneous info online…

  12. Sheik
    March 17, 2016, 12:33 pm | # | Reply

    Not sleeping at all is in the category of Bad Idea.
    All chordates sleep. This is because Central Nervous System tissue employs a contraction/expansion mode to flush out toxins.
    No sleep means no flushing.
    Dr. Lee needs to keep up on the literature.

  13. Prester Fred
    March 17, 2016, 5:12 pm | # | Reply

    God damn it Ginny.

  14. Shadowmehr
    March 17, 2016, 8:45 pm | # | Reply

    Okay, I’ll admit she’s in the ballpark, but before Dr. Lee gets to true Heterodyne levels of coffee, it will have to have caused at least one religious experience by a drinker.

    And why am I suddenly getting images of Bubbles Cooler dressed as a high priestess of the bean?

    • oneuniverse2
      March 17, 2016, 9:19 pm | # | Reply

      If it is Bubble’s first experience with coffee, that wouldn’t be a bad image.

      • Candace
        March 18, 2016, 2:03 am | # | Reply

        No, Unity gave Bubbles coffee once while she was still in the water cooler. She learned a new word. “Not.” She doesn’t use that one very much, though. 😀

    • Jay
      March 17, 2016, 9:33 pm | # | Reply

      Religious experience while drinking coffee? That’s already in the realm of real-world not-mad science.

      Just give someone TMS while they’re drinking coffee.

      Sure, it’s some extra hardware, but I think I’d prefer that to a hypothetical Dr Lee’s Instant Temporal Lobe Lesioning Blend…

  15. Hielario
    March 17, 2016, 9:00 pm | # | Reply

    Oooof, if she invents the Z-sup from Powernap, we’re fucked.

    • Lord Foul
      March 18, 2016, 5:27 am | # | Reply

      That’s nothing, she could make Klatchian coffee!

  16. Nyerguds
    March 20, 2016, 3:38 pm | # | Reply

    Yeah. Everyone saw this coming xD

  17. E. Bernhard Warg
    March 20, 2016, 4:39 pm | # | Reply

    Just look at how well eliminating sleep worked on Miasimia Goria!

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