Yesterday I got another «Hi, this is Fucker Fuckerson from Microsoft Security calling” call. They had even managed to fake a Norwegian cell phone number this time, which is the only reason I replied. (I never reply to call from abroad anymore. If people outside of Norway wants to get hold of me, they have to send me an email, or message me via one of the many online services I’m on. Once I was called from abroad and they asked “Is this Hogne?” Unfortunately, I replied “yes” and they recorded it and used it as a verification that I had said yes to a lot of services, which I was then was charged for via my phone bill).

However, back to yesterday: I realised it was a fake call when he said he was from Miscrosoft (remember, Microsoft would never ever make an unsolicited call to tell you that your computer is infected). Unfortunately for him I was in a bad mood for other reasons already, so I decided to hurt the fucker. Here’s what I did:

I played along. After he told me my computer was infected, I went “oh no” and confirmed that I would sit down at my computer and let him connect to my computer and help me fix it. What I instead did was sitting down with my trusty old Imac and I started looking through my sound effects library for one particular sound.

You see, I make movies and radio programs, so I have an extensive library of great sound effects. A lot of those are made by yours truly. I was looking for a sound that is a combination of an old modem, a Norwegian civil defence siren (with a higher pitch than usual), a dentist drill sound and nails being scraped along a school chalk board. In short: Sounds that really hurt the ear.

I found the sound, loaded it into my music player, turned the volume of my subwoofer powered speakers to 9, put on my noise cancelling head phones for protection, held the phone as close to my speakers as I could, and turned the sound on.

Even with my noise cancelling headphones my ears hurt. But it didn’t matter. The scream I heard coming from the other end of the phone line was worth it.