WOOF Read The Stars

God Got Served (Not Quite)

THE PLEADING:

In the District Court of Douglas County, Nebraska

STATE SENATOR ERNIE CHAMBERS, Plaintiff,

v.

GOD, Defendant.

COMES NOW the Plaintiff and alleges for his claim for relief against the Defendant:

NATURE OF THE CASE

1. This action seeks a permanent injunction order Defendant to cease certain harmful activities and the making of terroristic threats.

PARTIES

2. Plaintiff is the duly elect and serving State Senator from the 11 Legislative District in Ohama, Nebraska.

3. Defendant (also known by various aliases, titles, names, designations) is present in all places at the same time ("Omnipresent"), is the admitted perpetrator of the deleterious acts complaint of herein.

JURISDICTION AND VENUE

4. This Honorable Court has jurisdiction by virtue of the fact that Defendant, being Omnipresent, is personally present in Douglas County.

FACTUAL BASIS OF THE ACTION

5. Defendant is present in Douglas County by and through putative agents, representatives, spokespersons (hereinafter "agents") of the various religious denominations, persuasions, cults and the like, who publicly and notoriously hold themselves out to be agents of Defendant who are authorized to speak for and represent Defendant.

...

11. Plaintiff cannot determine which of said agents upon whom to make service of notice.

12. The law does not require Plaintiff to perform a futile act.

13. It would be a futile and perhaps unlawful act to nail a notice to the front door of each such agent, even if every one were known.

14. Plaintiff, despite reasonable efforts to effectuate personal service upon Defendant ("Come out, come out wherever you are") has been unable to do so.

15. Plaintiff respectfully requests this Honorable Court to take judicial notice that Defendant, in addition to being Omnipresent, also is all-knowing ("Omniscient").

16. Plaintiff under admittedly peculiar circumstances of this singular case, respectfully requests this Honorable Court to waive personal service.

17. In the alternative, Plaintiff respectfully requests this Honorable Court to find that lawful personal/constructive service has been effectuated by virtue of the fact the Defendant, being Omniscient, shall be deemed to have actual knowledge of this action, sufficient to satisfy all requirements of law regarding notice.

CLAIMS FOR RELIEF

...

COUNT II

19. Defendant directly and proximately has caused, inter alia, fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornados, pestilential plagues, ferocious famines, devastating drouths, genocidal wars, birth defects and the like.

...

COUNT IV

21. Defendant has directed said chroniclers to assemble and disseminate in written form, said admissions, through the Earth in order to inspire fear, dread, anxiety, terror and uncertainty, in order to coerce obedience to Defendant's will.

COUNT V

22. Defendant has manifested neither compassion nor remorse, proclaiming that Defendant "will laugh" when calamity comes.

...

COUNT VIII

25. Contemporary agents of Defendant assert that Defendant has informed them by way of direct and personal communication, that Defendant has caused, is causing, and threatens to cause more calamitous catastrophes rivaling or exceeding those of yore.

...

PRAYER FOR RELIEF

Plaintiff respectfully prays this Honorable Court:

(a) To grant Plaintiff summary judgment.

(b) In the alternative, to set a date for hearing as expeditiously as possible if the Court deems such hearing not to be a futile act.

(c) To enter a permanent injunction enjoining Defendant from engaging in the types of deleterious actions and the making of terroristic threats as identified and described herein.

(d) To grant any other and further relief that this Honorable Court deems proper to serve the ends of justice and equity.

Dates this 14th day of September, 2007.

***

The District Court threw out the case, opining that the Almighty was not properly served due to His unlisted home address. On November 5th, 2008, Chambers filed an appeal to the Nebraska Supreme Court. The case came to an end on February 25th, when Nebraska Court of Appeals dismissed the appeal and vacated the order of the District Court, holding that "a court decides real controversies and determines rights actually controverted, and does not address or dispose of abstract questions or issues that might arise in hypothetical or fictitious situation or setting".

Chambers was first elected to the Nebraska State Legislature in 1970, and upon further successes in subsequent elections, on April 25th, 2005, he then became Nebraska's longest-serving state senator. He was not allowed to seek re-election in 2008 in light of a constitutional amendment passed by Nebraska voters in 2000, which prohibited Nebraska state legislators to hold office for two consecutive four-year terms.

Flow

In a sense, Csikszentmihalyi transcends Aristotle; he is telling us that there are some activities that are not about approach or avoidance, but about something deeper: the fulfillment that comes from absorption in an activity outside yourself. "Psychological theories usually assume that we are motivated either by the need to eliminate an unpleasant condition like hunger or fear, " Csikszentmihalyi writes, "or by the expectation of some future reward such as money, status, or prestige." But in flow, "a person could work around the clock for days on end, for no better reason than to keep on working."

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, Susan Cain

A species in which everyone was General Patton would not succeed, any more than would a race in which everyone was Vincent van Gogh. I prefer to think that the planet needs athletes, philosophers, sex symbols, painters, scientists; it needs the warmhearted, the hardhearted, the coldhearted, and the weakhearted. It needs those who can devote their lives to studying how many droplets of water are secreted by the salivary glands of dogs under which circumstances, and it needs those who can capture the passing impression of cherry blossoms in a fourteen-syllable poem or devote twenty-five pages to the discussion of a small boy's feelings as he lies in bed in the dark waiting for his mother to kiss him goodnight... Indeed the presence of outstanding strengths presupposes that every needed in other areas has been channeled away from them.

- Allen Shawn

The Sadness of Happiness

But I have to admit it--being Gretchen and accepting my true likes and dislikes bring me a kind of sadness. I will never visit a jazz club at midnight, hang around in artists' studios, jet off to Paris for the weekend, or pack up to go fly-fishing on a spring dawn. I won't be admired for my chic wardrobe or be appointed to a high government office. I'll never stand in line to buy tickets to the Ring Cycle. I love fortune cookies and refuse to try foie gras.

It makes me sad for two reasons. First, it makes me sad to realize my limitations. The world offers so much!--so much beauty, so much fun and I am unable to appreciate most of it. But it also makes me sad because, in many ways, I wish I were different. One of my Secret of Adulthood is "You can choose what you do; you can't choose what you like to do." I have a lot of notions about what I wish I liked to do, about the subjects and occupations that I wish interested me. But it doesn't matter what I wish I were like. I am Gretchen.

The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin

Overdue Journal

Spring is finally here. Gone are the multi-layers, the snow and the cold-induced shivers. In a way, it has not been much of a winter, which I am pretty grateful for. Apparently last year the weather went so bad that they had to cancel their exams to wait for the snow to thaw and get the roads cleared. While the sight of snowfall was exhilarating through one's third-world lens, the novelty wore off quite soon after, where the trouble of dumping on layer after layer each time I needed to get out was becoming increasingly unbearable. And much like a castaway gone astray in a desert, I too had my fair share of struggling with mirages: my craving of warm coffee (read: comfort!) remained omnipresent, and I have had dreams (emphasis on the plurality!) of myself lounging on Kuta beach basking in the glory of the sun.

The first month of living in land far, far away was filled with an undercurrent of anxiety. So much for my fairy tale getaway! The interminable and excruciating wait for that email letting me know whether my applications had been successful did take away some of the fun. In fact, it was punishing. Nonetheless, when it came and the wait ended, the much-anticipated euphoria did not rush in as violently as I thought it would. Do not mistake this as a sign of ingratitude because I was over the moon with the result-- I still am. After much contemplation, I realize the reason why I could not feel as ecstatic as I could and should have been was that: I was not with the very people with whom I wanted to celebrate my winnings. And by 'people', I meant my parents.

Funny enough, I do not consider myself as close to my parents. In fact, most of the times when I was at home with them, I hardly had anything much to say. Most of the conversations revolved around me senselessly verbal-vomiting about how my life had been (read: filling in the silence and fulfilling filial duties). The conversations were unilateral. While my dad had ambitiously (albeit to no avail) tried to engage me in an adult-to-adult conversation regarding whatever was on the news that particular week (which I could not care less about), I have always been able to guess what he was going to say to me for the rest of dialogue right from the very beginning, from his very first opener. Of course, I have always been filial and follow through with the conversations because now I realized, on hindsight, it did not matter what we actually talked about. The fact that we spent quality time together was what was important.

I did tell my parents about the outcome of my applications, and they were thrilled about it, but unfortunately I just did not get the kind of closure that I needed. This has been quite a journey: never in a million years would my 16-year-old me ever imagine that the 22-year-old me is standing where I am today. And this-- I-- deserves a much cooler celebration than what that 10-minute Facebook chat could conjure up.

It was Very, Very Dangerous to Live Even One Day

She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. She had perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.

Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf