Abandoned as an infant high in the mountains of Colorado, James was taken in and raised by a family of marmots. They trained him in the art of satire, but warned him: ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’ He didn’t understand the truth of their words until his adopted rodent brother, Donald Trump’s hair, turned to the dark side.
James could only sit by and watch, helpless and appalled, as his evil brother meme’d his way to the White House. Forever changed by what he had seen, James fled to The Netherlands and vowed to always use his powers for good.
Lex ‘The Flex’ Hoogduin has flatly denied these allegations.
‘I’m not on the juice’, said Lex at press time, as he took a long drag off a freshly lit cigarette. ‘It’s a complex world we live in. The fuzz have got nothin’ on me. They don’t know anything. In fact, none of us can know anything, can we? It is simply too uncertain.’
Economics is a high-stress, high-stakes occupation, and many turn to substance abuse in an attempt to stay competitive. But the allegations against Lex came as a surprise to most: champion of Complexity Theory and international man of mystery, Lex ‘The Complex’ Hoogduin has been a vocal advocate of the economics faculty’s campaign against the use of performance enhancing drugs for years.
‘If these allegations are true, this could be the biggest scandal in the history of the faculty’, said an anonymous colleague of Hoogduin. ‘But I’m sure Lex is better than that. His name will be cleared after this is all said and done.’
Though Lex ‘Apex‘ Hoogduin has supporters throughout the university, there are some who would like nothing more than to see him fall.
‘It’s nice to see him taken down a few pegs’, said an adjunct. ‘He stars in one MOOC, gets voted sexiest economist two or three times, and suddenly he thinks he’s all that. He’s always strutting around like he owns the place, and trying to get people to call him those weird nicknames.’
Despite this, Lex ‘Tex-Mex’ Hoogduin is not troubled by ‘haters’ as he calls them. ‘It comes with the territory’, he says, before flexing his impressive biceps. ‘You can’t have capital gains like this without making a few enemies. Also my nicknames are not weird, tell me who said that, I’ll show them why they call me ‘wrecks’.’