Thursday, November 12, 2020

An Interview with "Q"

Q Desmond Llewelyn

As many of my loyal followers know, I have been politically active for many years, even having run for President a couple of times. What almost no one, not even my closest advisors, knows is that I have been working for the past four years as an advisor to President Trump and as his liaison to the mysterious and popular figure "Q." I admit, that when the President first approached me about the opportunity, I was not certain that having a former British intelligence officer tied to the US presidency was ideal, but I was assured that no one would connect the Q in QAnon with his former role as creator of fine gadgets for 007.

So, with that introduction, I am pleased today to be able to provide my readers with a closer look inside the mind of this fascinating man.

PROFESSOR: It is so nice to have this opportunity to visit in the open Q. We have spent several years now silently working in the background and your followers are eager to know more about the man.

Q: Now, you remember that we have agreed that you will not ask any hard questions.

PROFESSOR: Yes. We'll stick with the soft-ball questions. First, Q, how did you get into the unsubstantiated rumor business?

Q: Well, after MI6 replaced me with someone younger, I floundered around a bit before I discovered that the rumor business was pretty wide open. I mean with all of the new tools you Americans have provided for fostering this sort of thing, it just seemed like a natural sort of fit. Rather than create new gadgets and always let someone else get the girls and the glory, why not be the instigator myself.

PROFESSOR: I see...so why the US? Why not have stayed in the UK and helped Boris Johnson? He seems to be similar to President Trump in many ways.

Q: Yes, that may be true. But people in the US are just so much more gullible. They will believe almost anything I put out. For example, you remember the Pizza shop business we stirred up a while back. I had no idea that someone would actually buy into that rumor. Who in their right mind would believe that powerful Democrats were secretly having orgies with underage teens in the basement of a Pizza shop? I'm not sure it even had a basement.

PROFESSOR: Yes, we've pushed that rumor about as far as we can now, haven't we? The President was pleased to see how well that rumor took off. And besides, it did deflect some of the attention from his own links to that kind of business. But enough about the past. What are your plans going forward? How long can we continue to push the "stolen election" rumors?

Q: Well, you know the President. Once we give him a good rumor to run with, he is reluctant to let it go. I am sure he will still be putting the illegal ballots and stolen election rumors forward for many years to come. Wouldn't be surprised to see him start a new reality TV show around the idea. And we actually did find some fraudulent votes. Unfortunately, most of them were discovered in the trunk of Eric's car while it was parked outside of the Philadelphia election center. I'm not sure how he was planning to get those into the system, but details like that have never bothered the Trump boys.

PROFESSOR: But again, what are your plans now that we will apparently have a new president?

Q: To be honest, I haven't thought too much about it. I suspect I will take a bit of a vacation (I apologize to all those waiting to hear from me). And after that, who knows? Perhaps Nancy Pelosi could use a good person in the unsubstantiated rumor department. 

PROFESSOR: Well, it has been a pleasure to work with you for the last few years and I am sure we'll be hearing more from you in the future. Rumors and conspiracy theories are always in style.


Friday, March 29, 2019

A Campus Crisis

Yes, it's the Professor here. I know that many of you are still very disappointed that I did not make a better effort to capture the presidency in the last election. However, it was obvious to me that I did not have the right set of skills to compete with the eventual winner--our current president, Mr. Trump. He has intelligence, grace, and social skills, combined with a temperament, never before seen in a leader of the free world, in addition to a great comb-over hair style. These attributes have established a new level of competence for those seeking the presidency. I simply could not compete.

But I digress. My reason for communicating with all of you, my loyal followers, on this occasion is to make you aware of a growing crisis on our college campuses. I have become aware of this serious problem during my daily walks--and no, contrary to what some of my detractors have suggested, I am not wandering about campus because I can no longer find my office, but because I have found that many of our societal social problems can be observed in these brief excursions from my protected office environment.

Yes, well--here is the crux of the problem, or the problem in a nutcase--or should that be nutshell? I forget. Anyway, the problem is this: more and more young people, particularly young women, are suffering in extreme poverty while they attempt to complete a college education. How do I know this, you might ask? Well, I did not get to be a doctor of science for nothing. I make observations, you see. I watch our students as I wander around looking for my office...no, I meant to say while I am getting some fresh air. You may be as shocked as I to discover that perhaps 15-20% of our current college students cannot afford to buy a good pair of jeans. I have attached a few example photos for you so that you can see the magnitude of the problem.



Can you imagine the struggles these students must have to even keep themselves fed and housed when they cannot afford to buy new jeans. Where is United Way, the World Health Organization, the Children's Hunger Alliance, the national church charities, the AMA, ABA, NOW, OPEC, NRA, CBS, ABC, USSR, etc. on this important issue. Do they not care? Where does our President stand on this critical issue?

Frankly, I am quite disturbed that I have not been able to find anyone who seems to care. University administrators say their hands are tied by federal regulations. My contacts at the Environmental Protection Agency have told me that although this might be considered an environmental issue, they have got their hands full right now trying to decide whether or not global warming is real. The Department of Health and Human services refused to take my phone calls--something about my previous involvement with the DiHydrogen MonOxide (DHMO) scare. Which, by the way, is still a serious problem. 

Although both men and women are affected by this epidemic of student poverty, it seems to be much more prevalent among the young women on campus. So, I would have thought that the National Organization of Women would take up the cause, but here again my pleas have fallen on deaf ears.

So, I have come to you, my faithful followers. I am going to start a fund called something catchy like "Grants for Pants" or "Means for Jeans" or perhaps "Anti-Poverty Program for Ladies in Education (APPLE)". I would like to hear from you and get your input on the name. Funds, of course, will be deposited in an unnamed account somewhere in the Caribbean. As always, you can be sure that any donations will only be spent on the purposes for which I intend them to be spent.

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

One Fan's Opinion on Coach Bronco Mendenhall


Let me start by saying that this is just my opinion. I am happy to allow anyone else theirs, so I hope you will put up with mine.

I have sat by patiently waiting for someone else to speak up, and maybe they have, but I haven't seen them. I'm a BYU fan and have been for as long as I can remember, which in my case is a long time. Back when I first started following BYU sports no one cared too much about football. Basketball was king. As a BYU freshman, I spent many nights in the Fieldhouse waiting in line for tickets to the next basketball game. The games were always entertaining even when we lost. President Wilkinson would come out at the start of the game and got down on the basketball court to do push-ups. This always got the crowd worked up since he could usually do more than most of the students could do.

Football season back in those days was an afterthought. Beating Utah was not really something we got too worked up about because, frankly, we rarely beat them. We got excited when we beat anyone. My freshman year of 1970 we played and lost to such powerhouse teams as Western Michigan (35-17), UTEP (17-0), New Mexico (51-8). We did beat North Texas (10-7), Utah State (27-20), and Wyoming (23-3), however, and ended the season with a glossy 3-8 record, not quite as good as the 6-4 record of 1969, but a significant improvement on the 2-8 record of 1968.

Then, of course, Lavell Edwards came along about the time I returned home from my mission and things changed. Not quickly, but there was change. We generally started to win more than we lost: 7-4 in 1972, 5-6 in 1973, 7-4-1 in 1974 with our first bowl appearance, and then 6-5 in 1975. Three out of four years having a winning season was almost too much to handle. But we got used to it and Lavell and his teams got better.

There's no point in my repeating what happened over the next few years, because you all know. We won a lot of games. We also occasionally played a team from one of the power conferences and won a few of those, but we lost more than we won. We got to bowl games, but we lost more than we won. Still they were pretty good years all and all. Still, there were the down times.

The year after winning the national championship, we lost three games. Two losses were against power conference teams UCLA and Ohio State (Tangerine Bowl). Against UCLA our defense couldn't stop the Bruins from driving the length of the field with only 1 minute left in the game even though we were playing here at home in front of a very noisy home crowd. Against Ohio State, our vaunted offense never got untracked. In both games we were right there and could have won. But then there was UTEP.  In the middle of that same 1985 season we went to UTEP and played a team that hadn't won a game, a team in last place in the league, a team we were supposed to cream...and we lost. It happens. I don't remember anyone calling for Lavell's head that season.

So, this brings us to the present and Coach Mendenhall. Just to be upfront let me say that I have never met Bronco even though I walk the same campus he does every day. I guess I should get down to the practice field more often, but going down the hill is not so easy for me anymore. I've got bum ankles. But even though I have not met Bronco, I have a deep respect for him and what he brings to the BYU football program. Yes, I like to win. And yes I can gripe about the officiating and the coaching right along with the rest of the fans. But you won't hear me complain about Coach Mendenhall.

In my role as a professor at BYU, I have had a lot of football players and athletes in my classes over the years. I teach sections of some very large general education classes. During the Lavell Edward's period I annually had coaches call me to see if I couldn't help with a student's grade or if I couldn't perhaps let a student take a test that they had missed or if I couldn't just give some extra credit. I had players come to my home in tears to plead for a better grade so they could continue to play. I watched as star players seemed to ignore the honor code and no one cared. Allowing those students to get around the standards that every other student committed to live always felt wrong. It was wrong, and I am glad that we have moved past that era.

My point in all this is that during the Bronco Mendenhall era, I have never had a coach call me, I have never had a football player come to my home to cry for a better grade, and I have never had one miss a final exam even though I still teach the same classes.

I get it that fans want to win every football game, but I am tired of the senseless, derogatory way that many fans behave. No one knows more keenly than Coach Mendenhall that in college football you have to win games to keep your job. This season has been rough and there are things that need fixing. I am confident that he will get them fixed and my vote (as meaningless as it is) is that BYU will keep him around for a long time to come because he not only knows how to win, he knows what it means to represent Brigham Young University. If we lose that, then there is no point in having a football team.