spambag.org - The Luckless LiberalOn April 1, 2004 I woke up to find four crank calls on my voice mail. No, the following is not an April Fool's joke. It's four real-to-honest crank calls. Then, as the day rolled by, a fifth one rolled in.
This is a story of Jim Brown, the Luckless Liberal. The day before April Fool's Day, March 31, 2004, was the launch date of the Air America Radio network, a liberal-oriented talk show network, featuring the brightest stars of America's liberal movement.
Mr. Brown was trying to apply for a job with Air America. Mr. Brown's resume was returned as undeliverable, with an error message that referred to spambag.org. The rest is history.
Mr. Brown's is the customer of SBC Internet. Mr. Brown accuses me of personally blocking his VERY IMPORTANT MAIL. He wants to know why. He thinks I should call the Attorney General's office, instead of blocking his mail, for some reason. Mr. Brown is obviously upset, because he "needs a fucking job"! He's also PISSED OFF! You hear? And he's going to call HIS Attorney General, and have him crack down on me! Oh, no...
Mr. Brown quickly calls back to apologize for being so pissed off. But, in
les a minute he quickly corrects himself: he is truly pissed off, because he
couldn't "get his resume to Air America Radio". He explains that he's been
out of work for two years because they outsourced his job to India. He
quickly corrects himself -- he's not really racist, you know. Besides, the
real issue here is that I'm "pissing off tens of millions of people", not
just him, but -- Mr. Brown informs me -- not all of them are smart enough to
"look up my phone number" (Mr. Brown is very proud of his skills in running
whois), "it's not that hard to do."
He has an idea how to remove this roadblock that prevents him from sending his resume. He announces that he will be calling "them and telling them to drop me as a supplier", because he really doesn't fell like "going through an anonymous account, like Hotmail" to send his resume out. He doesn't really want to do that. He suddenly realizes that it's 3AM on April 1st. He quickly reverts to plan B: he'll call me back during the daylight hours, and "catch me from the moment I step in my office."
As a backup plan, Mr. Brown wants me to "send him an E-mail at one of his other accounts". If I don't do that, he's "on a verge of getting a lawyer"!
At this point Mr. Brown ran out of alloted time on the voicemail, and got cut off.
Mr. Brown is making progress. He forwarded the bounce message he received to "abuse address for SBC Internet". Ok, that was a good start. He also informs me that he forwarded the bounce message to the "abuse address for DomainDiscover", spambag.org's registrar. That's because if this issue does not get "resolved", he "will see that I will lose my domain". Well, so much for making progress...
Mr. Brown has also discovered that I'm "going through Earthlink", and Mr. Brows claims to have a working relationship "Sprint Internet Passport Security Guy", and that he "knows a lot of people there", and that I "might lose courier-mta.com" (it's another domain that spambag.org's administrator uses, for other purposes).
Yes, Sprint/Earthlink got joined at the hip, some time ago, but spambag.org doesn't have anything going with either Earthlink, nor Sprint.
Mr. Brown defends his attempts to shut down this public resource. He's really against spam, you know. He's a member of "See-Ay-You-See-Eee" (CAUCE), aren't you impressed? But because I'm "fucking" with him, this means war! Mr. Brown thinks that I should "get a life", and find "another line of work", because he's going to "call in his friends", and that they will "lean" on me, because I'm "pissing" him off, and keeping him from getting a "fucking job."
With such talent, Air America Radio's network certainly looks very, very bright...
Mr. Brown calls to inform me that he "just woke up my customer", and "told him what I was doing".
I wasn't aware that I had any "customer"s. I have customers? Dang, they haven't been paying their bills! I better get right on it, because I just might've "lost" a customer, and if not, Mr. Brown will "make sure" of it anyway.
The first four crank messages were left around 3AM on April Fool's day. This, the fifth, message was left in the afternoon on the 1st. Mr. Brown begins by apologizing for sounding so "ticked" off. He is no longer upset because he "managed to talk to some friends of his at the TV stations there, in the Dallas, Ft. Worth area". It seems that they are interested in doing some "expose" on me. Finally, I'm going to get my fifteen minutes of fame! Mr. Brown vows not to let this drop until he gets a response from me, and directs me to look into my postmaster mailbox (as it turns out, whatever he E-mailed got bounced, obvious). But that's OK, Mr. Brown informs me, because he forwarded copies to my Internet provider's abuse desk, and domain registrar. Uh-oh, I'm in big trouble now!
Next, Mr. Brown tries a different approach. The bottom line is that he wants a job, and if I'm hiring, I should know that Mr. Brown is a "top gun", "military, telecom, you name it." He also has "lots of friends in the telecom industry", and he wants to "work together" now.
Once again, Mr. Brown apologizes for sounding so "ticked off", and was about to end the call when he remembered one more thing: he wants me to "try again" to resolve SBC's spam problem, and he believes that I might be able to make some progress. Why? According to Mr. Brown, my name "seems to be Indian" and SBC/Yahoo's technical support is "based in Bangalore, India". That's very unfortunate, because I'm not Indian. But it was a good try, anyway...
Two more messages were left today.
Status update: Mr. Brown still can't send his resume to Air America Radio, and he wonders "what's going on." Mr. Brown resolves that if he can't get his resume out, and "ends up homeless", he'll make sure that I'll "end up homeless too."
Mr. Brown quickly calls back to leave his E-mail address, (I really don't know if the address he gave was correct, or not, given his state of mind). He reasserts that he will not "change his SMTP server", and dares me to E-mail him, if "I have the balls to." Otherwise he fears that I "will not be able to stay in business for long, playing games" that I do.
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