Pseudo-journalist Bud Buck has been following the controversial smartphone data collection story, and has apparently decided there’s a larger audience hungry for fresh details that will push them to becoming even more alarmed. He is more than willing to provide them.

Some Cellphones Stalk Users
by Bud Buck

Hot on the heels of revelations that cell phone tracking data is being collected and stored by Apple and Google and that these phones log your whereabouts even when the location feature is turned OFF, I have uncovered an instance of a smartphone that knows where its user goes and how much time he spends there, EVEN WHEN HE IS NOT CARRYING THE DEVICE!

A Bud Buck Reports Investigation has discovered that at least one careless user, Thomas Carping of Belle Plaine, routinely leaves his phone at home, but the phone still somehow knows where he is.

“Usually I take it with me,” he explains, “and I’m always going to pretty much all the same places anyway. I know it remembers. So I guess when I accidentally leave it in the pocket of yesterday’s pants it still has enough information inside to predict where I’ll be. That’s really smart … and really creepy.”

Carping claims that when he inadvertently leaves home without his phone, other telephones around him tend to ring, and that those phones ring in sequence along a route he typically follows. People he has called in the past receive phantom calls.

Carping’s friend, Luanne Locavore, confirmed his assertion.

“Tommy walks into my place and he’s not here more than five minutes before MY phone starts to ring,” she says. “I pick it up and it’s just line noise, and then a hang up. I check the log and discover the call came from HIS cell, but he says he left it at home.”

Carping believes that smart phone designers have built the devices with “the soul-sucking, meddlesome personality of an obsessed harpy.” He claims he has made no commitment to the phone and yet it seems bent on “tracking my movements and going out of its way to ruin my fun.”

I found it surprising that he could have a mobile phone plan that required no extended contract or commitment, but Carping insisted it is true. He and the phone “are good friends. We’ve done some work together, but that’s as far as it goes. I am allowed to leave the house without it, no matter what the phone thinks.”

Locavore agrees, saying the phone “obviously has other ideas. It’s almost like it’s trying to find him.”

And those ideas may include more than a simple phone call. Locavore revealed this shocking tidbit – she insisted that Carping download the tracking data from his phone and they discovered that on some days when he left the phone in his pants pocket on the closet floor, the device actually went out in search of him.

“All the tracking information is in there,” she says. “One night when he said he didn’t have it, the records show it came and sat out in the street in front of my house! Creepy! What will I do if it rings the doorbell?”

Locavore finds it troubling that the device can form such a strong attachment, and she thinks Carping should do something “before it gets out of hand.”

Her suggestion?

“Drown it in a five gallon pail.”

Both Carping and Locavore took offense at this reporter’s offhand suggestion that perhaps Carping had more to hide than he was letting on, and that his phone was being operated by another person during the times when it appears to be trying to track him down.

“He’s single and lives alone,” said Locavore. “That’s what he’s always told me.”

Carping readily agreed.

“Yup,” he said. “That’s my story.”

But can anyone ever be truly alone once they become involved with a smartphone?
Time will tell! This is Bud Buck!

Which of your appliances loves you the most?

Dear Dr. Babooner,

I was going through the check-out line in the grocery store when the clerk scanned my bag of clementines and said “These babies are going to cost a ton once the Federal Reserve Bank goes in for another round of quantitative easing.”

I’m not the sort of person who expects a lot from my contact with people running cash registers. I figure they have enough to keep them occupied without the added burden of sustaining a conversation with me, but I have to say this came as a surprise.

“The government is printing money like mad,” she said, “and there’s no way they can stop doing it now, not with the economic pain people are feeling and the fact that the 2012 presidential election campaign has already begun.”

She scanned my coupon for fifty cents off a can of mixed fruit.

“The pressure is intense to keep up the pretense. It’s all based on your mindless faith that everything has to work out fine, but I’m tellin’ you that the whole economy is built on a friggin’ house of cards.”

As she weighed my bananas I remembered hearing that the familiar Cavendish variety of my favorite yellow fruit would soon be extinct.

“The first thing you’ll see is unchecked inflation, wild like you wouldn’t believe. That’s what I mean about the clementines. And after that, there’ll be something like total collapse of the entire system because it’s not based on anything real. Once people figure that out, it’ll be a torching-cars-at-the-curb kind of crazy”, she said, sticking a red dot to my gallon of “No Bovine Growth Hormone” milk.

“Good thing you got the no BHG version of skim. Hope there’s not too much Japanese nuclear radiation in there.”

“I think the milk is safe,” I said, beginning to wonder if the milk was safe.

“I’m just sayin’,” she said, “that it’ll be a tough decision once you realize the only way you can re-stock on Ho-Ho’s is to throw a shopping cart through the front window and start looting, or pay for them on the black market with pure gold.”

She held up the Ho-Ho’s and shook them at me as she lectured.

“Because these babies will never go bad, and that makes them a great catastrophe food. No-spoil items will become really valuable because you might have to stay in your basement for months. Especially word gets out to the roving mobs of jobless middle managers that you might have valuables and guns in the house.”

“Or Ho-Ho’s,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.

“There are surveillance cameras at all the exits,” she observed. “Try to bury your non-perishables lower in the bag. Stockpilers will be identified and their caches re-distributed by the government. To reduce panic.”

I thought for a moment about running back to grab a few armloads of beef jerky and gallons of water.

“Winter’s hanging on,” I said, trying to return the conversation to a normal topic. “Wonder if we’ve seen our last snow.”

“Ash and airborne particulates from the fires out west will fall like snow over the entire Midwest once the Yellowstone super volcano starts erupting,” she chirped. “We won’t see the sun until 2050.”

I collected my groceries and went home, but didn’t feel like eating.

Dr. Babooner, do you think clipping grocery store coupons is worth all the time and trouble I put into it, or am I simply an unwitting dupe in a food industry marketing campaign?

Sincerely,
Unsettled By My Disaster Cashier

I told Unsettled that the key to coupon clipping is to only cut out the ones issued for things you already intended to buy. Going into the supermarket and coming out with a lot of stuff that wasn’t on your list is a quick route to the poorhouse. I’ve always thought that instead of what they usually say, cashiers should ask “Did you find anything you WEREN’T looking for?” And then, as a public service, they should set it aside and have the stock clerks return it to the shelves.

But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?

Once a legitimate journalist and now a desperate attention-seeker, radio’s Bud Buck is more than willing to purposely misunderstand the details of an assignment if he thinks it leads to a more controversial story. There is almost always less to a breathless Bud Buck expose’ than meets the eye. Here’s the latest atrocity from his growing collection:

Strange Rituals Gain Foothold

In this week leading up to an annual sacred observance for a large section of the populace, I set out to find strange superstitions that represent the worrisome downside of our celebrated freedoms. In short, I was looking for weird religion – alarming rituals happening right under our noses.

I didn’t have to look too far to discover what appears to be pagan worship of a mechanical God, the extremely loud and surprisingly portable deity “Shre-Dit”. Just this past Saturday, an impromptu ceremony sprang up in a local parking lot with loyal adherents lining up for the chance to make a sacrificial offering.

Legend has it that Shre-Dit has an insatiable hunger for human secrets.

The God must be fed large amounts of confidential information on a daily basis to maintain his strength.

The ritual requires that the secrets be written on paper. During the ceremony the faithful form a line and bring their treasures to the high priest, who is literally above the masses – standing on a wheeled platform to receive offerings from the supplicants. This platform is entirely covered by a metal enclosure, which also hides the deity from direct public view.

But oh, can you hear him! A whirring, rumbling sound slowly rises as Shre-Dit prepares to accept tributes from his people. The offerings are made in boxes and bags. These sacrifices are flung into the open maw of Shre-Dit and when the secrets are accepted, a sharp, brittle buzz cuts through the air, like the sound of a million locusts leveling an acre of corn in an instant.

Joy is obvious on faces of the supplicants as their classified documents are transformed into sacred confetti.

Why do they do it? I asked some of the faithful to describe their motivation for participating in this bizarre ceremony.

“I pray that I can keep my identity intact,” said one adherent who asked that her name not be used.

“I don’t want anyone else to try to become me,” added another who insisted his photographic image be distorted to prevent loss of privacy.

“I’m here to prevent the total theft of everything that makes me who I am, or who I ever hope be,” shouted a third, who tried to wrestle my camera away from me and kicked me in the shins several times.

Apparently Shre-Dit is seen as a protector against complete loss of one’s essential self. If he is even marginally successful at this, that would make Shre-Dit a very potent God indeed.

But there’s more! After the consumption ceremony, the secrets are said to undergo another phase of transformation, eventually being re-incarnated as more pieces of paper that will someday be able to hold new secrets that may eventually be tossed once again into the open metallic jaws of the ravenous Shre-Dit!

I was deeply impressed by the faith of those who brought offerings to the parking lot shrine this past Saturday. They stood in the wind and withstood unseasonably cold temperatures to nourish their mysterious mechanical protector, and to keep their very selves from being lost – forever. But will they reap real rewards for their efforts, or is this just another Strange Superstition?

Time will tell! This is Bud Buck!

Like I say, I think Bud misinterpreted what he saw. But who wants to hear a story about an ordinary shred-a-thon for people’s ordinary financial records? Especially when it’s so easy to think outrageous, surreal things about other people!

Have you participated in, or observed, puzzling rituals?