Week and a half ago, I was chilling in my room, and heard my hyper-talkative flatmate Dean yakking in the kitchen. This happens all the time, often for hours, so there’s no mistaking his voice, but this time it seemed to be the only voice. Who was he talking to?
Usually the kitchen-talk that comes through my door is Dean talking to Robert, my other flatmate, and Dean’s reliably 97.5% of their dialogue, but this time he was 100%. Robert’s occasional replies were missing.
I had an errand to run, so opening my door and exiting through the kitchen was a requirement. As I dressed, Dean’s voice continued coming through the door, but indistinctly, so I didn’t know what he was saying. Still never heard Robert’s voice, though.
Fully dressed, I finally emerged, and Dean was alone in the kitchen, talking on the phone. Ah, that’s why I’d only heard one voice. It’s perfect Dean: of course he’d sit on a chair in the kitchen, not in his own room, for a long conversation on the phone.
Darting past him and out the front door in mere seconds, here’s what Dean was saying as I passed by: “Oh, I just love going to the games. It’s always worth the price, even the playoff price. I’ve been a Seahawks season ticket-holder for 24 years, never regretted it, win or lose, because you guys always make sure that every game is so much fun…”
Closing the front door and emerging into the world, I pondered Dean’s words, and especially hearing him say “you guys” — nobody says “you guys” in that context, if they’re talking to a friend about attending football games. He must’ve been talking to someone in the Seahawks office.
Dean has told me many times (though I’ve never asked) that he’s an NFL season ticket holder, and the Seahawks had just clinched a playoff berth, so what I’d heard was Dean on the phone, buying post-season tickets. But he’d been talking to them for 15 minutes at least, before I’d opened my door, and there’s no way buying tickets takes that long — unless you’re Dean.
Some frustrated employee at the Seahawks ticket office had sold Dean a ticket for the upcoming playoff game, presumably said ‘thank you’, but Dean was refusing to hang up. He wanted to talk, and the employee had to politely listen, so Dean was talking. How much longer he could talk on the phone to the Seahawks ticket office, telling them how much he loves going to the games, one can only wonder…
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Gmail is Google, and Google has money, and money builds excellent spam filters, so spam rarely reached me during my many years using Gmail. But as previously mentioned, Gmail is Google, a company that started with the internal motto “Don’t be evil,” but then dropped the “don’t.” Because of that, I’ve switched my email to self-hosting, doug at itsdougholland.com. Drop me a note, any time.
Self-hosting’s spam filters, though, are not up to Google’s standard, so ever since switching, there’s been a steady flow of spam, a couple of spams daily. It had been so long since I’d seen spam, it felt like the early 2000s again.
After months of being mildly annoyed, I began answering all incoming spam with, “This looks interesting. Please call so we can discuss this. Thanks.” And with that, instead of being an annoyance, spam became an amusement. I like knowing that I’m costing the scammers a few minutes of their time.
Without fail, they answer my spam replies, and want to make an appointment for a phone consultation. You’ll perhaps recall, I almost literally don’t have a phone. The ringer is always off, and I never check messages, but two of the spammers have asked me to verify a number they think I’m at — same number both times, a number unknown to me, with a Kentucky area code. Of course, I verified that yup, that’s my number.
If they ask for a number, I give them (360) 753-6200, which is the Attorney General’s office for the great state of Washington.
I thought this would be simply a smidgen of vengeance against the spammers. It certainly wouldn’t get me off their lists, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if it increased the spamming — hey, spam this guy, he responds! It was fun, though, and I even programmed a button so I don’t have to type “This looks interesting. Please call,” every time.
But the dangedest thing seems to be happening: Incoming spam is way, way down. Since I started replying to every spam, four weeks ago, I’ve received only one fresh spam. From an average of two daily, to one in four weeks — it can’t really be that easy to beat back spam, can it?
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Speaking of spam, as mentioned a while back, I applied for a job at Dollar Tree in December of 2023, and received no reply until September of 2025, when they started sending job listings once weekly. I also applied at UPS in 2023, and heard only silence, until they also began sending weekly job listings, a couple of weeks ago.
I grow more and more suspicious that giant corporations have far more job listings than job openings. Like all of capitalism, it’s a scam, ain’t it?
1/16/2026
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