{"id":2756,"date":"2010-11-29T08:38:39","date_gmt":"2010-11-29T16:38:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/?p=2756"},"modified":"2010-11-29T08:42:15","modified_gmt":"2010-11-29T16:42:15","slug":"skuggers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/29\/skuggers\/","title":{"rendered":"Skuggers"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m still working on my novel, Turing & Burroughs<\/em>, one scene at a time.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I need a word for the people who\u2019ve been taken over by skugs. They aren\u2019t exactly skugs themselves; I think of a pure skug as being one of those globs that doesn\u2019t necessarily have any human personalities inside it. When a skug eats you, you are a skug, yes, but you\u2019re also to some extent yourself, in that you can look like yourself and act like yourself. <\/p>\n


\n\u201cTuring and the Skugs\u201d\u009d, 40″ x 30″ inches, Oct 2010, Oil on canvas.” Click for larger version.<\/a> The painting itself will be on display as part of my show at Borderlands Cafe on Valencia St. in SF, CA, until December 1. More info on my paintings site<\/a>.] <\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll go with skugger<\/em>. \u201cHe\u2019s a skugger,\u201d\u009d sounds right. \u201cShe\u2019s a skugger, too.\u201d\u009d There\u2019s an echo of slugger, which suggests a heavy hitter. I do like the er ending, which suggests an on-going activity. Like \u201cbopper\u201d\u009d in the Wares<\/em>. Bopping it up. Skugging it up.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Speaking of nomenclature, I think I\u2019ll use skug <\/em>as a verb to describe the act of turning someone into a skugger. \u201cThey skugged her.\u201d\u009d \u201cI got skugged, too, man. It\u2019s great.\u201d\u009d I think of the lyrics <\/a>to Bob Dylan\u2019s song, \u201cRainy Day Women #12 & 35\u201d\u009d. Here\u2019s a verse with \u201cskug\u201d\u009d instead of \u201cstone,\u201d\u009d and with the second to last line changed for the sake of the rhyme.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Well, they\u2019ll skug ya when you\u2019re walkin long the street
\nThey\u2019ll skug ya when you\u2019re tryin to keep your seat
\nThey\u2019ll skug ya when you\u2019re walkin on the floor
\nThey\u2019ll skug ya when you\u2019re walkin to the door
\nBut I would not feel like such a grub
\nEverybody must get skugged<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p>\n

We can suppose that the skuggers like to band together. They\u2019re an endangered minority, at least for now. And I think that it\u2019ll soon be clear that they\u2019re bent on world domination, as befits their role as objective correlatives for the 50s bogeymen: intellectuals, artists, racial minorities, communists, dope-fiends and homosexuals. \u201cEverybody must get skugged.\u201d\u009d <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

As the book goes on, I want Alan to realize that the skugs have very powerful minds, more so than he anticipated. Their high intelligence is due to (i) parallelism, that is, they\u2019re using each organic cell as a computing unit and (ii) connectivity, that is, via radio waves, they\u2019re in touch with each other, and with as much of the human data-base as is being broadcast on radio, TV and telephone.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

When imagining the skug experience of hearing all the radio stations at once, I think of Patti Smith\u2019s album, Radio Ethiopia<\/em>…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m still working on my novel, Turing & Burroughs, one scene at a time. I need a word for the people who\u2019ve been taken over by skugs. They aren\u2019t exactly skugs themselves; I think of a pure skug as being one of those globs that doesn\u2019t necessarily have any human personalities inside it. When a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2756"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2759,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2756\/revisions\/2759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rudyrucker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}