EVERETT, Wash. -- Residents of one local community say a neighbor's hobby is inadvertently bombarding their homes with obscenities and uninvited messages, day in and day out.

Laura Holland says a vulgar rant came through her TV while she was watching a movie.

She says the source is her neighbor, a ham radio operator whose strong signal feeds every word of his transmissions directly to his neighbors every day.

"He's interrupted the middle of the mariners baseball game on the AM radio band," said Rick Bowen, a neighbor.

The conversations come through on their TVs, telephones and even their karaoke machines.

"My wife and I like to do karaoke and we're the only two, but there's a third one and that's him," said one neighbor.

"Any channel I'm watching on TV, I can hear his voice in the background," Holland said.

Holland said the string of obscenities that she heard through her TV was the last straw.

The radio operator refused to talk to KOMO 4 News, but his reaction to the request was heard on Holland's TV.

"Apparently, I make the news again. Hey!" he was heard saying. "This is good, I'll start signing autographs for you guys now."

But Holland isn't laughing. Comcast told her a filter might block the uninvited noise, but it would also block her cable and Internet as well. A technician is scheduled to visit her house to see if anything can be done.

She filed a formal complaint with the FCC, but said all they did was send her a generic brochure titled "Identifying the Source of Interference."

The radio operator's son told KOMO 4 News his father has a license and is following FCC rules.

However, if the man is indeed broadcasting the vulgarities on amateur radio frequencies, he would be in violation of the licensing rules, said Allen Pitts, spokesman for the national association for Amateur Radio.

The man is a licensed amateur radio operator, but it's not known what frequency the interference is being broadcast on or whether it is part of the regulated amateur radio spectrum.

Judging from what came over the airwaves, the conversation is far from over.

"Since the one lady got so nasty, I give. I'm not going to try anymore," the operator was heard saying.

"It's almost like he does it to piss people off and that I find rather disturbing," Holland said.