The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Fifteen

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This series is dedicated to my friend ‘The Pieman’ who hosted ‘THE P.I.T.S’ BBS in New York City and sadly passed away in 2016. I know his son ‘Blake’ will be reading this sequence of stories with anticipation.

We will never forget you man, you were one of a kind.

Also I would like to say a big thank you to Fabulous Furlough, ex-leader of ‘The Humble Guys’ who helps me fill in the gaps of what happened almost 30 years ago, The Slavelord who has given me a plethora of memories from the early days and to Suicidal Tendencies (@trolleydave) who remembers more about the UK scene than me.

The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) is a continuation of my previous series, The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops.

I was once known as 'Bryn Rogers', a member of THG (The Humble Guys).

Other articles in this series:
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part One
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Two
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Three
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Four
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Five
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Six
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Seven
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Eight
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Nine
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Ten
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Eleven
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Twelve
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Thirteen
The Software Piracy Chronicles of Slobberchops (The THG Years) – Part Fourteen

August 1992
The next leg of our trip was to be my future home at least for 18 months from March 1994, almost 2 years into the future. This was unbeknown to me at the time.

I had made a positive connection with MickeySoft who ran the Final Frontier, a BBS in Mesa, Arizona.

While MickeySoft alleged he had a connection to THG, this was just via The Nokturnal Trading Alliance, which was the official semi-secretive ‘business shit’ spin-off group.

MickeySoft never really had an interest in games, but he did like the business stuff. I loved business stuff too, if to only wind up Hi.T.Moonweed as well as the fact it gave me masses of easy download credits due to its enormous size.

Dance of the Planets? I released a load of Astronomy Business Shit for NTA, this could well have been one of mine.

Whether anybody wanted or ever downloaded 'Astronomy Crucible for DOS v.1.32' was quite irrelevant, and I personally didn’t give a shit.

Phoenix is generally a hot place, and in August something that is hard to prepare yourself for.

MickeySoft and his bubbly slightly deranged blonde girlfriend, Vanessa were waiting for us at the airport and had a taxi ready. We were not going to boil alive on that occasion.

He was a small skinny bloke but made up for it with his incessant chattering. It was hard to get a word in and he seemed to continue with endless streams of sentences without breathing.

This made for one-way conversations and I wondered if he didn’t actually require oxygen to communicate.

Vanessa who ran another pirate BBS named 'The Necter Jar' or something and was a talented computer artist with either iCE or AciD, I can’t remember which.

She seemed to take a shine to me, maybe because of my blond streaks, but it was most likely the accent.

iCe and ACid were the premier ANSI artist groups in 1992, though it was tough to read the writing at times.

The American women seemed to swoon over my accent and I was making the most of it.

‘Oooooh, I just love your accent’, how many times did I hear that?

HootMon, wanting to get in on the action attempted to describe the particulars of his hairy back to her which unfortunately didn't go down so well.

The Scottish accent may have won him some points, that is if she could understand him at all.

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Hairy Backs - Not so popular with Arizona girls, especially ones named Vanessa.

It took me all my time to understand HootMon at times, and I frequently had to slow down my speech for Americans to pick up all my dialogue.

I don’t speak like Queen Elizabeth, and my accent was frequently a little harsh for their ears.

MikeySoft lived in an apartment complex and rented one of the largest rooms they had. This still only equated to two bedrooms but I was impressed with its looks, the facilities, barbecue grills, and the swimming pool.

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Windermere Apartments in Mesa, AZ - The American way of life looked awesome to me and one day, I too would live here.

The Final Frontier was rather less impressive, all tied into one darkened squashed room accompanied with 2 21’ CRT monster high radiation monitors.

Unlike The Pieman, MikeySoft was a little protective of his BBS and seemed reluctant to let me loose on his baby.

We stayed at The Days Inn as there was most definitely not the space to house us in his apartment, and noticed a Motel 6 just across the freeway. It seemed wherever I looked that dodgiest of dodgy motels was always in my vision!

Sure enough the very next day we see cops drawing up, and a couple of blokes being dragged out of the rooms with batons reigning on their heads and bodies.

Despite I-60 (Superstition Highway) being between us and them, the howls of pain and profanity from the would-be thugs, robbers or murderers drifted audibly into our ears from across the freeway.

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My perception of Motel 6 is not good. Dickheads persistently banging on your doors at night was not a good start to a budding relationship.

I concluded that there’s just no shortage of action when near a Motel 6 and if I wanted some entertainment or drama, simply to drive in their car park and wait around for a few minutes.

We stayed only a couple of days in Phoenix then rented a car and jumped on I-10 for the 6-hour car journey to Los Angeles, which would be our final destination and our flavoursome meeting with 'The Bitch...'.

To be continued...

All images have been cited and are under the category 'Labelled for Reuse' or are in the public domain.

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.NFO files courtesy of the .NFO libraries at https://defacto2.net

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