okay. I guess i'll just list what I installed. maybe the evil concoction hath spawned something needed for nethack..

Keep in mind that i installed the 2007 H.E. OS.

I have:
aisleriot, battlegweled, becomeroot, canoe, crazyparking, fceu, icebreaker, libsdl-net1.2, lxdoom, maemosweeper, nethack, osso-xterm, ttf-bitstream-vera, visualboyadvance, and xmaeme.

i also installed libxau0 from here (since i couldn't find a easier way to get it)
while in "red pill mode"

also enabled streaming music..

then i ran nethack like showed above, and after all this, it works..
you might not have to run it from xterm to fix it, because i installed some of this stuff after i tried it, so one of the things i installed might have fixed whatever was broke.. hopefully this helps..