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)