[--------------------------------------------------------------------------] ooooo ooooo .oooooo. oooooooooooo HOE E'ZINE RELEASE #591 `888' `888' d8P' `Y8b `888' `8 888 888 888 888 888 "A Personal Rekolektion & 888ooooo888 888 888 888oooo8 HIStory of TELETYPE" 888 888 888 888 888 " 888 888 `88b d88' 888 o by AIDS [4/24/99] o888o o888o `Y8bood8P' o888ooooood8 [--------------------------------------------------------------------------] When I first started getting involved in the [401] modem scene, sweet Rhode Island, there was always this character on the fringes, this weird guy that didn't seem to have a modem anymore, but that everyone knew about, and that everyone thought was one of the two biggest lunatics that the BBS scene had ever known. (The other, of course, being Keith Pepin, A.K.A. ATDT911--INSANITY!!!!, A.K.A. DecWolf, who was *also* long gone by the time I arrived. He was in a boarding school (mental hospital) in Conneticut somewheres.) Well, this guy, his name was Teleterror or Eternity or something, and everybody had a story about him. He was the only RI hacker to actually get busted, (yours truly became #2), the Secret Service had come to his house and stolen his disks and tried to take his list of phone numbers, but he had eaten the notebook, he wasn't allowed legally to have a modem anymore, or his father kept him locked up in the basement, etc. etc. This guy was a thing of mystery. He was fucked up. I'm not sure how I became acquainted with a fellow who called himself Vladimir Spazojevic, but I suspect it was because of my own growing reputation for being an inchoate moron combined with me being one of the only self proclaimed "elite d0udz" who called his BBS, The Total Perspective Vortex, which he ran off an Amiga 3000. I'm sure this wasn't the splash screen that displayed when I first called it, but it is the only one that I have buffered: 2400 baud connection established. úßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßßú ú ú ú ú ú ú ú Welcome to oooooooooo ú ú úú ú ú ú úúúúúúúúúú ú \ oooooooooooooo / ú úúúúúúúúúúúúúúúúúúúú The Total ú |\oooooooooooooooo ú /| ú úú ú úúúúúú ú ú Perspective Vortex / \oooooooooooooo / \ ú /\ ú ú úÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜÜú / / \oooooooooooo / \ / \ /\ /\ ú /\ ú | / / \|(o)\/(o)| ú / / \ \ / \/ \/ \ /\ ú / \ /\ | | | / \\/(oo)\/| / // |\ \ô / /\/ / \/ \ / \/ \ | | | | \______/ / / | || \|/ ú/ \ / ú \ / / \ \ ú | | | | / \ \// \ / / || || || / \/ \/ /\/ /\ /\ \/\ \ / / / | | | | \/ /| || || ||/\/ /\ \ /\ \/ / \/ú \/ \/ \ \/ / / / / |______/ /| \ \ || || \/ \ \/ \ \ /\/ \/\/ \/ / / / / /\_____/ |/ \__\ \ \ \ \ / \ / \ / / \/\ / \ ú /| | | / / /\______/ \ \__| \ \ \ ú \//\ \/\/ \ \/ \ | | | | | /_______ \_ \__|_| \ // \ú/\/ / / \/ /\ \ | | ____ /\______ ____ \_ \ | // / \ / \ / \ \ | |/ /\_____ / \ \__ \ | // / ú \/ ú \/ \ |/ | /\______ |Vlad | \___ \| // / \ . \ \ | | \_______ |is | \_ | / / _ \ \ | \_______ |eleete| /\ \ / / SysOp-_- \ \ \ \________\_ @! _\____/ / ú\__\ / ú \ __/ / ú __/ / \__/ Vladimir Spazojevic ú ô / ___/ / ___/ ú ú ÄÄÄÄÄÙ |/|/ |/|/ ú ú ú Well, Vlaad and I became buddies, chatting it up. I appreciated the fact that he was so unrepentantly geeky and had such a terrible sense of humor, and he was a really nice guy, and we clicked, and blah blah blah. We talked quite a bit, (and as a result, at one point, I decided that I should go to Vlaad's private high school, which I did, and was expelled from) and eventually I discovered that he was best friends with this strange beast named TeleTerror. (I did not know the profound and loving nature of their friendship until later, when another scene member named Daver informed me that they may in fact have been homosexual lovers. While both deny it to this day, even if they have not physically consummated their feelings, it is quite clear to those who observe that they are spiritually in love.) Eventually I convinced my mother that getting three-way calling would be a real boon to my misspent teenage existence, and she finally acquiesed. One of the first people I called was Vlaad, and conferenced him in with Daver, and it was one miserable geek fest. At some point Vlaad realized he could connect his BBS line to his two-line phone and conference in ANOTHER person, and in prototypical fashion, Daver said, "Eh eh he eh! Call TeleTerror! Eh eh eh eh!" So Vlaad did. I'd heard from Daver & Vlaad & even the man hisself that Teleterror was enormously fat. We're talking Donahue in the house with a chainsaw cutting open a wall to make a suitable entrance and exit FAT. Enormous! People had also told me that his hair was green due to some sort of photosynthesis. When Teleterror and I agreed to meet, I was much afeared that I was about to hang out with some gelatinous blob of flesh topped with the lightest green film, but my fears were undue. Teleterror indeed did have skeletal structure and his hair was normal, if not a bit thin, as far as I could tell. But, oh my god, was he ever fat. He was so fat that I was forced to stop calling by his real name, Rob, or his handle, or anything other than "Fatboy". For years I called him Fatboy. My mother calls him Fatboy, but then feels guilty about it, and amends it to "Chubbyboy". He took me to Providence in his ghetto blasted car, which, unfortunately, the driver could not enter on his respective side, so I was forced to watch Teleterror slither across the seats like some super-villian, after he went in the passenger's side. After that, he started calling me regularly and we hung at least one a week. Things were very restricted because of his Father, with whom Teletype did not have the best relationship. If his Father came home, teletype would immediately hang up the phone without saying goodbye, and every time we hung out, tty would be constantly checking the clock against his father's schedule, to make sure he'd get him before his father. Keith Pepin had a name for Teletype's father, but I can't remember it. It was something like "Hurricane Headless." Scenes from the life of Teleterror: Teletype comes over my house, and shows me this new Swiss Army knife he's just bought. Later we go to Bickford's to meet my girlfriend, and I introduce her to Fatboy. The whole scene is very awkward, and no one really knows what to say. Teletype starts fiddling with his Swiss Army knife, and I turn to him, saying, "Cut some of your hair off!" He pulls the scissor attachment out of the knife, and starts chopping away as his hair, throwing it to the ground. My girlfriend and her friend are aghast. Teletype and I had the odd fate of going to the same schools, but NEVER met through them. He went to Gorton Junior High in Warwick at the same time as me, but he was in 8th grade when I was in 7th, and we never met. After being expelled from Rocky Hill (Vladimir's school), he had nowhere to go except Gorton. The day they expelled him from Gorton goes like this: Early in the day, Teletype pisses off some thug or something, and almost gets into a fight. Later, the thug catches up with him and pulls a gun on him in the boy's locker room. Teletype is driven so nutty by this incident that when he is in his math class, next period, he starts ripping up text books and throwing them in the air, screaming "FIESTA!$@$!" What did Teletype do to be expelled from Rocky Hill? Well, at the time of his expulsion, he wasn't exactly on good terms with School administration, as he was a general jackass, and they suspected him of an earlier atrocity. Someone had taken it upon themselves to take a big shit in one of the sinks in the boy's bathroom. Everyone thought it was Teletype, but couldn't prove it. He denies it, and I believe him, but I think it's funny to tease him over it, so I bring it up occasionally. In the Apple ][e based computer lab, Teletype took it upon himself to start putting food inside the computers. Some chicken in one, milk in the other, etc., etc. Well, this other lunatic named Eric came along and screamed "MILK SHAKE" and shook up the computer with the milk inside of it, which fried the whole thing entirely. Eric recieved some censure, but teletype got the full blast of it, and they threw his ass out. Later, when I was at Rocky Hill, I had the opportunity to go through the old Apple computers lying around in the closet, and I found the carcass of the milk shake computer. what a fucking disgusting mess. On IRC, one random night, an extremely drunk teletype comes on and says, "ehhahehaehaheheaueaeahhuahaeh$@!!$!@$! I am so drunk and lonely$@!$ I am going to commit suicide! Muahahahah! I just ate 40 sleeping pills!" What teletype did, of course, in order to get up the fortitude to attempt suicide is drink himself silly with Everclear, which had a nasty reaction with getting all these pills shoved into his body, so he fucking vomitted all over the place. Scratch that, he vomitted all over MY FUCKING STEREO which I had lent him in exchange for a monitor, or something. MY FUCKING STEREO was covered in his god damned vomit, and he was busy passing out somewhere. Anyway, he cleaned it up. At least I can say that for him. The real real real suicide attempt also started on IRC. Good ol' Teletype had gotten hisself staggeringly drunk and decided to end it all. Well, I was god damned sick of his failed suicide attempts, so I decided to give him some advice. A (reconstructed) sample of hte conversation is something like this: ehehheh i am going to do it! Listen, fatass, if you're oging to do it, do it fucking right this time. Don't fail! Make sure you can't escape! ehehehe ok I am going to gas myself in my truck! Lock the doors, you fat fuck! We went back and forth with this for quite a while until teletype had devised a (basically) failproof system. He signed off IRC to write his suicide letter e-mail. He finished drafting it and I sat around wondering how I would find out about his death, as he had always been too scared to let his father know I existed. I figured I'd tell my mom to read the obituaries for suicide notices, and see if he appeared at all. I went away from the computer to watch some television or jerk-off or whatever, and came back to read my email. There was a message from teletype, and it was his suicide note!!! I was surprised he sent it so soon, and decided to go check the channels he hung around in on IRC, interested in the reactions of other people. They were all going apeshit wild freaking out. I could totally imagine these people at their terminals at home weeping with grief and misery, pulling out their hair with anguish. I decided it was probably a good idea to pretend like I didn't know what was happening. So, finally, one of them called the Rhode Island State Police. The police went to teletype's house and found him in the truck, slowly dying from carbon monoxide poisoning. (Teletype's suicide note, by-the-way, was SUPPOSED to be released at 12:00 noon the next day. However, in his drunken stupor around 11:45 or so, he set the at job to run it at 12:00 MIDNIGHT, thereby saving his own life.) Well, the next day, I went into one of the channels and convinced some guy from 401 that he needed to come pick me up so we could go find Teletype. I guess we must have called the hospitals to find him or something, but I don't really remember. All I know is that we found him at Rhode Island Hospital in Providence, and when we saw him he, he said, "Oh, christ!" Then he pointed at his shoes, which had no shoelaces, and said, "Look! I'm suicidal! I can't have shoelaces! hahahahah!" We laughed about that and then he told us that he was listed as a hernia (or something equally ridiculous) patient, so that his Dad's health plan would cover his time in the hospital. He mentioned some intense vertigo, I told him he was fried beyond belief, and then we left. He later fucked Meenk while she was startlingly underage. Once, on IRC, it had been at least six or eight months since I had seen teletype, (he having moved to Boston), I messaged teletype to see what was going on. He told me he was in RI, and that he had totally abandoned his apartment and was about to move to Minnesota. Somehow we started talking about his old Unix machines, and he revealed that he had just left two or three of them lying around in the apartment for no good reason, and I was horrified. I told him that we should go get those fucking machines, and that I'd pay for gas. He didn't have anything better to do, so he said, "OK". It was about 6 AM when he got to my house, and we went and had some food at Bickford's, and just recollected on old times. We drove to Boston in about 35-40 minutes, with Teletype driving at his typical 100 miles per hour, and nearly killing us seven or eight times. It was disorienting being in a car with him again, because I had grown soft and forgotten what it was like to be with someone who was a truly reckless driver. I have never seen such a terrible and miserable shit hole as his apartment. I looked over this barrier that completely barred entrance to a room and saw trash piled AT LEAST five feet high. Teletype said, "That used to be the kitchen." The bathroom mirror was smashed out from when Teletype had punched it in a drunken ramoage, and the sink was partially pulled out of the wall. There was filth everywhere, and an unbelievable amount of broken computer equipment. A cum spattered poster of Tori Amos adorned one wall, and old Doors LPs hung above the doorway. I felt like I had been transported into a parallel universe. It is not possible to express the feeling of walking from a (relatively) decent hallway into that seething pit of chaos. We moved the computer equipment out and into his car, and drove away. As far as I know, teletype never attempted to clean the apartment up, and never attempted to go back. He just decided that losing the $550 security deposit was and ok thing, in contrast with having to face that mess. Which isn't a bad decision, because it would have taken a couple of thousand to get the apartment back up to speed. Teletype ratted me out. I had stolen something and convinced the police I hadn't and they were going to charge him, and so he ratted me out. I don't blame him for it and I don't hold him responsible for it. I wish I could remember more, but so much of my time with him was spent in transitory states, driving or eating, and don't make good memories or recollections. But Teletype has been, undoubtedly, one of my true friends throughout time. He is a weird, weird fucker and I was his beloved disciple, the one he loved best. This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true. And there also many other things which Teletype did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen. [--------------------------------------------------------------------------] [ (c) !LA HOE REVOLUCION PRESS! HOE #591 - WRITTEN BY: AIDS - 4/24/99 ]