If you’ve just tried to call your husband and you get your mother’s mobile number, then you’ve been the victim of the latest smartphone spam-scam, and you know who to blame – President Bush! The ‘Shuffle’ virus has been traced to the president’s own smartphone, and has spread rapidly to all his closest contacts.

It all started when Bush revealed his taste in music by disclosing that he had an iPod. Cyber-terrorists of the clever kind diagnosed his preferences and created a predictive model for future downloads to the Oval iPod. By inserting some surreptitious ‘noise’ in songs George W was likely to download, a clever virus made its way onto the device Bush keeps in his pocket everyday.

When the president finally migrated to a smartphone that could keep him in touch and let him listen to music, the virus moved with his playlist. But it was the repeated use of the ‘shuffle’ function that activated the virus. Perhaps he meant to shuffle his cabinet instead?

ANALYSIS >> SYNTHESIS: How this scenario came to be

“I get the shuffle and then I shuffle the shuffle,” Bush told FBI investigators. At first they thought he meant getting his Chief-of-Staff to shuffle the Administration, but it eventually dawned on them he was talking about his music playlists on the presidential smartphone.

It appears the virus was inserted into music as static noise, but designed to cause random shuffling of the playlist sequence as a prank. Bush never noticed it on his iPod, as he thought he was cleverly randomizing his favorites. “The Beatles, the Beach Boys, Angels, Archies, Aretha Franklin, remember them? What great songs,” Bush enthused.

However, when the ‘Shuffle’ virus arrived on his smartphone, it shuffled his contacts and their phone numbers, so the president found himself calling Cheney when he wanted the Secretary of State and Rice when he wanted the NSA [National Security Advisor]. Not only that, it also shuffled itself off onto their phones, and soon everybody’s phone book was in a mess.

“I told him [the Chief-of-Staff] to just re-arrange everybody so they were in their new jobs,” mused Bush, “but then it did it again and Laura was Leader of the House!” So then he called in the FBI.

Until they get to the bottom of it and discover the author of the virus, who may or may not have links to Al-Qaeda, the president has been banned from pressing the ‘shuffle’ button unless authorized by Congress. Aw shucks.