So...what does a teenage mutant ninja female turtle look like?

I tried.  I mean, I really tried to connect with these...these...humans. I even gave them pizza when they got the male and female pig genitals correct.  I gently worked them through simple concepts of comparative anatomy, and the differences dividing all phyla in Kingdom Animalia.  I even gave them a review. Yes, that's right, I did this, even though I felt dirty the entire time for abandoning all I hold dear, the social Darwinism, only the strong survive, the no-holds-barred of basic biology class.  I am supposed to be the thin red line (really, more of a maroon, and quite large) to stem every ignorant civilian from the wonders of being a biology major.  I thought I had a good class--alive, taking notes, asking questions...except for that one obligatory comotose patient in class.  I gave them a review for the final, (yes, me!), along with the questions to the cumulative final short answer portion.  So what was the result?  Oh, most did well, but there were a number of students who completely muffed the questions.  For example, did you know that turtles have an exoskeleton as well as mammary glands?  I certainly did not.  Also, a certain student confessed to not knowing the answer and blamed me for the class being too hard for a freshman.  Well, you know what?  Science is hard.  But Science is also awesome.  That fickle mistress frustrates us and tempts us further, saying, "But what will the next experiment show?"  And so we plow ahead, radiation safety regulations and those shifting morals nonwithstanding.  But we don't give up, because we never know what the next discovery the new day will bring.  A new laser?  An artificial intelligence whose violence we can control (important note:  Check safeguards before giving robot the new laser system next time) and who doesn't have an obsession with backgammon?  Sharks with laser, please.  Give me a Koala with lasers, and then we'll talk (no one would expect those cute, little, std-ridden tree climbers to have lasers).  But just as quickly, Science can destroy one's chances to become great--or at least infamous.  Look at me, had all the radiation, chlamydia, and disposable minions I could ask for one minute, and the next, teaching students at a small (but respectable) private college in (redacted).  I mean, no one has really missed those frog species, have they? (stupid talking minion--how am I supposed to destabilize the environment as a weapon for that tin-pot dictator per our contract without wiping out a couple species??)  But now I cannot get a vision of a insectoid-like gigantic turtle with huge, pendulous, scaly breasts out of the seared parts of my imagination.  I mean, it doesn't even have lasers.
*sigh* So, boobs and turtles are a thing...I think people should stop breeding. 

Soo...a couple of things have happened in the interspersing months since my last post to the ether of nothingness which is this hidden blog.  First, I got my scientific mojo back, huzzah!  Turns out I needed to start sleeping again and returning to the well of focused anger of martial arts.  I am ignoring the suggestions by our Dean and have resumed training in the lab with a hanging bag and faces of random faculty on it.  I am not angry with them, quite the contrary, they rarely even intersect my focus, but apparently I have fresh comments (complaints?  Whatever.) about my behavior.  Just because my workout time coincides with the large groups of potential students touring campus doesn't mean I planned it...precisely. I think that we need to shock these jaded and entitled youth out of their comfy highschool shell, shattering their expectations of elderly professors quavering through a musty explanation of moth mating patterns.  No, they need to realize that biology is where the rubber hits the road, where chemistry, genetics, and cells have a cage match, all of nature duking it out on every mountain during every storm, in every gram of soil at the molecular level!  No holds barred, to the death, sweep-the-leg-Johnny-put-him-in-a-body-bag battle of biology against everything to survive!  How else to explain the awesomeness of biology without words than to see a scientist running experiments in the lab while whizzing through the air and kicking nikola tesla with a tornado roundhouse kick!

Secondly, my oldest minion has stated that I am an 'evil scientist'.  Not a mad, but very decidedly evil.  I don't know where she gets this stuff, I make a very conscious effort to avoid implying 'good' or 'bad' or 'heinous' to anything I talk about around the lair.  Someone is feeding her misinformation, and I suspect the nanny of this, in the library!  Why does the nanny get to judge on my transgenic experiments in toxin-exuding rats as, "evil, horrid, abominations"?  Why can't I be the "fun scientist"?  Those rats, while demonstrating a surprising increase in their intelligence, have a wonderful sense of humor.  Who is more fun that I?  Don't say Bill Nye, that guy is as much a scientist as a zucchini is a Nobel laureate. 

What happens when the spark dies...

Failure.  Emptiness.  Happiness is so far away it is like I am in a deep well, and looking up, can only faintly discern the memory of joy.  What is this joy?  It is the burning sensation, deep in the soul, the inferno of curiosity tied to the knowledge that you can go out and poke the boarders of human knowledge and morality, just to see what happens.  You don't care about those plebian concerns such as 'human experimentation ethical concerns', 'concerns about the environmental impact', or the old favorite, 'this is an abomination before God and nature!'.  No, you don't care for those silly things, because you are following SCIENCE, that wonderful mistress of the unknown who whispers into ears as the Ceasars of old, saying, "You are but mortal...but your ideas could  be immortal!  Send that minion into the test chamber, he'll thank you for the tentacles later on!"  Oh, it was wonderful time, feeling immortal and having the head raging with ideas, ideas to change the world...whether they want to change or not.

Yes, I used the word, "was".  It is gone.  I woke up this morning and that immediate desire to bend nature to my will, my constant muse, was silent...no, gone.  There was an emptiness, quickly filling with  dread, panic, and confusion.  WHAT has happened?  WHERE has my drive gone?  Has it been burnt out?  I have heard of this, but never thought this would happen to me...is there a pill to take?  I will take both the red AND blue pills if necessary...

The Best Nemesis of a Mad Scientist...

...is not a strapping young hero, but a family.

No wonder the Bond villian chose a fluffy white cat...

In order to increase my standing within my scientist cred circles, I decided to get a pet, an animal which is a visual representation of my innermost being.  This animal will serve as a warning for the weak and envious and an aphrodisiac for those craving power through the use of science.  So, using my intense powers of self-critique, I bought a scorpion.  Nothing ostentatious by the catalog standards, just something small and suggesting that I may be...poisonous.  Subtle.  Sexy.  Also Carolina Scientific had a cheap price!  A week goes by, and the stockroom manager informs me that I "better get my monster out of his stockroom."  I come in to see that they have placed the little rascal into a terranium with a hollow log and a screen on top.  Nice.  With massive textbooks holding down the top.  Wait, what?  The...scorpion hardly seems worthy to describe the nightmarish creature currently trying to attack through wire mesh, a calculus and physics textbooks.  It is as black as night, with a sheen suggesting the carapace might actually be made of Satan's own black blood.  It took one glance at this new disturber and you could sense the predator/prey definition had shifted.  How could I use this as a pet when I would be afraid to be within 10 unfettered feet of this...spawn of the Dark One?  What do I feed it, souls of my Minions?  On the upside, no one would question this creature's right to live, it clearly lives to threaten the lives of others.  So far, I have learned it doesn't like crickets or mice, but it does like Minion fingers.  I have named it Harvey. 

Mad Scientists Reproduce by Asexual Means, but We Tend to Eat Our Young.

In an attempt to alleviate my boredom as a brilliant mad scientist without grant funding and whiling away time in academia whilst my volcano lair is under construction, I am experiencing a new aspect of professorship: advisees.  The new chair of the department, whom is so over the top handsome that I half expect him to show up shirtless with an oar or other random obscure sports apparel, has in desperation asked my august self to take some advisees.  I distractedly thanked him, but informed him that I don't need any more test subjects for the chlamydia aerosolization tests.  He reacted badly to this offhand remark, spouting something about, "ethics", and "moral responsibilities in scientific research", or something equally incomprehensible.  At least that is what I think I heard, I get distracted when he turns so red and flaps his arms like that, and then I was calculating how much chlamydia I would need for the large, 10-person aerosolization chamber....Long story short, I was informed that these students are taken under a wing of a nurturing professor, who works with them to make sure their direction in classes and information is sound for a future career path and graduation.  An interesting idea, that.  Perhaps I could instill a few choice students with a careful orchestra of advanced knowledge, to pass on a small fraction of my vast stores of wisdom to another generation of...of....mad scientists?  Is this a form of reproduction, to pass on eldritch knowledge?  Well, they first have to pass the chlamydia aerosolization chamber.  With this monumental decision for producing prodigy, I cut through the rant of the Chair, something about "Tuskagee", and grandly announced that I would happily take some of these advisees, the cream of the crop, to nurture as a mother turkey vulture to her chicks.  I need 10 strong subj--I mean students.

The audacity of these...proto-humans astound me.

I have done my best to be a proper research professor.  I hide from students, lock the office door, turn off the lights, and freeze when students knock at the door.  Still, these audacious carbon sinks are persistient.  I thought to drive them out of my lab, my sanctum sanctorum, by scattering live plates of my latest pathogenic success conspiculously around the lab, with a light layer of cracked, oozing beakers labeled with radiation stickers.  Stiill they come in.  They come like an inexhaustible tide of creatures whose only job is to completely waste time.  Time I could be using to write up another set of experiments for research to culminate in my 15th Nature paper, curing Chlamydia, making a more deadly Chamydia, anything other than wasting oxygen repeating information students could find on the syllabus.  In fact, *knocking* (currently hiding)