How come I get get my background thread to output anything?

[grocery_stocker]

Given the following....

#!/usr/local/bin/python

import os
import time
import thread

def domsg(string, sleeptime, *args):
    print "%s was here", string
    #os.system('tel %s test' % person);
    #time.sleep(sleeptime)

def buildlist():
    out = 1
    persons = []

    while(out != 0):
        pern = raw_input("Enter person to message:")
        if (len(pern)):
            persons.append(pern)
        else:
            out = 0
    return persons

if __name__ == "__main__":
    #buildlist()
    thread.start_new_thread(domsg, ("person",2))

I get....
m-net% ./massmsg.py
m-net%

I was expecting to see

person  was here