Uncle John's Bathroom Reader The World's Gone Crazy (10 page)

Only someone totally crazy would try to sue the Lord Almighty, right? Certainly not a state senator with nearly 40 years’ experience
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T
HE “ANGRIEST BLACK MAN IN NEBRASKA”
That’s a label Ernie Chambers has worn proudly since he was first elected in 1970 to represent Nebraska’s 11th district in the state legislature. Never one to shy away from controversy, Chambers, an Independent, once called the U.S. a “hypocritical society,” saying, “The public doesn’t look for politicians to tell the truth or to deliver on their promises, and politicians know this.” Another favorite target was the Catholic Church, which Chambers once said was “more effective as a criminal enterprise than the mafia.” Yet he still managed to get reelected eight times.

In the 2000s, Chambers didn’t let up. But after the Nebraska legislature voted to limit state senators to two terms, Chambers was disqualified from running again in 2008. “They had to change the constitution to get rid of me,” he said.

SUFFERING THE WRATH

But Chambers had one more big fight in him: In September 2007, he filed a lawsuit against “God Almighty,” which sought a permanent injunction against the Lord from creating “fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilential plagues, devastating droughts, genocidal wars, birth defects, and the like.” Chambers claimed these horrors affected his constituents, thus making it harder for the senator to do his job.

Case dismissed, right? Not so fast. Courts must take all lawsuits seriously, however ridiculous they seem. Dismissing it by denying the existence of God would have obvious PR ramifications in a deeply religious state. With this in mind, the judge needed a good reason to toss it out. The reason seemed clear enough: God was not a resident of Douglas County, so the court had no power to compel God to appear, and the case could be dismissed. So the case was dismissed, right? Not so fast.

A woman in France married her boyfriend in 2009. What’s so odd about that? He died in 2008
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SEEKING THE LORD

Chambers refused to give up. He argued that God exists in all places, so it stood to reason that He should be considered a resident of Douglas County. The court countered that since God had no address, there was no way to send Him papers informing him the lawsuit had been filed. “As an all-knowing being,” said Chambers, “God should already know that the lawsuit had been filed against Him.” This back-and-forth continued as the courts tried every trick in the book to shut down the lawsuit: Did Chambers and God first attempt to resolve the issue out of court? Chambers said he’d tried to contact God on several occasions, and met with failure each time: “Despite reasonable efforts to effectuate personal service on Defendant, God has been unable to do so.” Did God even exist? Chambers drew attention to the fact that in Nebraska, few state employees would be willing to deny the existence of God outright.

Was anyone taking this case seriously? Chambers said he was: “This is a lawsuit against a Defendant who has perpetrated much harm on the human race.” Ironically, he said he actually wanted to bring attention to all of the frivolous lawsuits that were currently bottlenecking the judicial system. “Anybody can sue anybody, even God,” he said. But both his proponents and his critics were unsure if Chambers was saying that was a good thing or not.

JUDGMENT DAY

The judge dismissed the case on the grounds that God could not be located and compelled to appear. Chambers, of course, appealed—and the arguments continued. Finally, in February 2008, Nebraska’s Court of Appeals tossed out the lawsuit a second time, ruling that courts decide “real controversies, not abstract questions or issues that might arise in a hypothetical or fictitious situation or setting.”

Chambers let the matter go, believing that he had successfully made his point. However, a few days later, a mysterious piece of paper appeared on a desk at the Douglas County courthouse. It contained a neatly typed, two-point response to Chambers’ suit: 1) “God is currently outside the jurisdiction of a Nebraska state court.” 2) “God is not subject to earthly laws.” The document was reportedly signed by the almighty Himself, and witnessed by one “St. Michael the Archangel.”

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DEMENTED DENTISTS

It takes a special kind of person to take up a profession that involves putting your fingers inside strangers’ mouths all day. And while most dentists are really good at what they do, the ones in this article may make you want to switch to false teeth
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B
OGUS UNIVERSITY
A 2004 investigation in Italy discovered that you can’t count on your dentist’s diploma being real. Officials uncovered a ring of scammers, involving two dental schools in Rome, that sold fake diplomas to dental “students” for as much as $220,000 each. Investigators found evidence of false school-attendance records as well as test answers and term papers provided to students for a fee. Other university staff members were bribed with vacations, gifts, and bonuses to keep them quiet about the scam. Investigators are still trying to locate the dozens of dentists who are practicing without a degree.

TORTURE CHAMBERS—WITH FREE SWEATSHIRTS!

In 2004 twenty dentists in California’s Central Valley area were accused of defrauding the state Medi-Cal health system of $4.5 million by performing unnecessary—and cruel—dental work. To lure low-income patients, these dentists went to homeless shelters, shopping malls, and schools and offered gift certificates, sweatshirts, and electric toothbrushes. The patients were then given unnecessary dental work, including root canals. Some dentists were accused of holding crying children down in the dental chair and using straps on elderly patients. Then they charged outlandish amounts of money for the work and sent the bills to Medi-Cal. “In every single one of the 300 files we checked,” said an official, “we found fraud.” In 2008 the two lead dentists in the scam were sentenced to one year in jail and forced to repay $3 million.

LAUGHING MATTER

On Long Island, New York, a patient (name not released in press reports) showed up for his dentist appointment, but the waiting room was empty. “Is anyone here?” he asked. No one answered, so the man walked into the back, where he found the dentist, Norman Rubin, lying on the floor. According to police, “He was unresponsive and drooling, and had the gas mask on his face.” Rubin was later charged with “inhalation of hazardous inhalants.” He blamed the incident on a migraine, but admitted, “It was a mistake.” An investigation found that his license had been suspended several times, which he blamed on “six disgruntled patients.”

British businesses lose $260 million of productivity per day from workers surfing the Web
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WHAT A TOOL

Donna Delgado of Tampa, Florida, had dental surgery in 2008. In the weeks and months afterward, she suffered from frequent nosebleeds and sinus infections. A year later, Delgado was still in pain, so she went to another dentist…who discovered that a one-inch steel dental tool had been left inside her right maxillary sinus. It was removed, and Delgado’s symptoms disappeared (although she may have nickel poisoning). A lawsuit is pending.

AT LEAST HE’S NOT A PILOT

In June 2004, Dr. Colin McKay of Halton, England, drank six glasses of wine at lunch and then performed a tooth extraction on Andrea Harrison. It didn’t go well. It took McKay two tries to inject the anesthetic into her gums, then he started the procedure before Harrison’s mouth became completely numb. “I was in a lot of pain and yelled, but he carried on,” she said. “Then he seemed to fall over me. I ended up running out.” Another dentist finished the extraction; McKay was found guilty of professional misconduct.

YANK!

“Dr. Allena Burge pulled teeth so hard and fast, the patients’ blood would spray,” her assistant, Janet Popelier, told investigators. “Sometimes parts of the jawbone or mandible would break.” Why did the Florida dentist have to work so fast? “She was trying to make $12,000 a day from Medicaid. I saw many half-conscious, bleeding patients led out the back door soon after their surgeries to make room for new patients.” Burge was charged with fraud and malpractice. (She even let her 12-year-old son administer anesthesia.) In just four years, she filed more than 57,000 Medicaid claims totaling $6.6 million. No word on the investigation’s outcome, but at last report, Burge was still practicing dentistry.

U. of California studies suggest that obesity, smoking, loneliness, and happiness are all contagious
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OVEREXTENDED

Just because a company is good at selling one thing doesn’t mean consumers will buy something else from them. While some “brand extensions” make sense—Hershey’s chocolate milk, for example—others, like these, are just weird
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• Cheetos lip balm

• Colgate frozen dinners

• Tootsie Roll earphones

• Humane Society Dog Lovers’ Wine Club

• Sony PlayStation snacks

• Harley Davidson perfume

• LifeSavers soda

• Donald Trump steaks

• Bumble Bee chicken

• Frito-Lay lemonade

•
Cosmopolitan
yogurt

• Smith & Wesson bicycles

• Burger King underwear

•
Girls Gone Wild
clothing

• Jeff Gordon wine

• Sylvester Stallone’s High Protein Pudding

• Disney’s
Sleeping Beauty
executive fountain pen ($1,200)

• Snoop Dogg pet accessories

• Barbie clothing…for adult women

• Pierre Cardin cigarettes

• Hooters Airline

• Salvador Dali deodorant

• Willie Nelson biodiesel fuel

• Diesel Jeans wine

• Starburst shampoo

• Precious Moments coffins

• Disney milk

•
Chicken Soup for the Soul
dog food

Celebrity phobia: Matthew McConaughey is afraid of revolving doors
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AHHHH!!!

And we don’t mean “Ahhhh” as in, “this feels really good,” but “Ahhhh!!!” as in, “Something just scared the @&*# out of me!”

S
ETUP:
One night in November 2009, a thief in Wuppertal, Germany, decided to steal a Mercedes Transporter van. What the thief didn’t know was that…
AHHHH!
…an African lion was in the back of the van. The vehicle belonged to an entertainment company called Circus Probst and was fitted with a special cage in the back. The lion, a five-year-old male named Caesar, was being transported to a new circus site. Police found the van the next day, a few miles away from where it was stolen. Whoever had taken it had crashed it into a road sign and run away, leaving the engine running. Police said they assumed that Caesar had stayed quiet at the beginning of the escapade, then suddenly roared and scared the wits out of the thief. The thief was not caught; Caesar was fine.