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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
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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.
???????????????????? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
Welcome to oooooooooo ? ? ?? ? ? ? ?????????? ?
\ oooooooooooooo / ? ????????????????????
The Total ? |\oooooooooooooooo ? /| ? ?? ? ?????? ? ?
Perspective Vortex / \oooooooooooooo / \ ? /\ ? ?
???????????????????? / / \oooooooooooo / \ / \ /\ /\ ?
/\ ? | / / \|(o)\/(o)| ? / / \ \ / \/ \/ \ /\
? / \ /\ | | | / \\/(oo)\/| / // |\ \? / /\/ / \/ \
/ \/ \ | | | | \______/ / / | || \|/ ?/ \ / ? \ /
/ \ \ ? | | | | / \ \// \ / / || || || / \/ \/
/\/ /\ /\ \/\ \ / / / | | | | \/ /| || || ||/\/ /\ \ /\ \/
/ \/? \/ \/ \ \/ / / / / |______/ /| \ \ || || \/ \ \/ \ \
/\/ \/\/ \/ / / / / /\_____/ |/ \__\ \ \ \ \ / \ / \ /
/ \/\ / \ ? /| | | / / /\______/ \ \__| \ \ \ ? \//\ \/\/
\ \/ \ | | | | | /_______ \_ \__|_| \ // \?/\/ / /
\/ /\ \ | | ____ /\______ ____ \_ \ | // / \ /
\ / \ \ | |/ /\_____ / \ \__ \ | // / ? \/
? \/ \ |/ | /\______ |Vlad | \___ \| // / \ .
\ \ | | \_______ |is | \_ | / / _ \
\ | \_______ |eleete| /\ \ / / SysOp-_- \
\ \ \________\_ @! _\____/ / ?\__\ /
? \ __/ / ? __/ / \__/ Vladimir Spazojevic
? ? / ___/ / ___/ ? ?
?????? |/|/ |/|/ ? ?
?
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:
<teletype> ehehheh i am going to do it!
<squinky> Listen, fatass, if you're oging to do it, do it fucking right
this time. Don't fail! Make sure you can't escape!
<teletype> ehehehe ok I am going to gas myself in my truck!
<squinky> 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.
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[ (c) !LA HOE REVOLUCION PRESS! HOE #591 - WRITTEN BY: AIDS - 4/24/99 ]