Excerpts from The Diary of Jesus H. Christ, II

A week ago, The Nobby Works unveiled for its readers one of the most astonishing publishing events in  history, The Diary of Jesus H. Christ. This week The Nob is proud and humbled as pie to present the second installment of this blog exclusive. 


Dear Diary,            They’re starting to talk Second Coming around here again, and I’m getting a headache just thinking about my first coming. My side still hurts every time I laugh, and when the wind whistles through these holes in my hands and feet I sound like an ocarina.             “Jesus,” they’re saying, “the world’s going to hell in big, green Hefty bags, and we’ve got to do something about it.”             Yeah, sure, I say. We’ve got to do something about it all right.  Let’s deck Jesus out in human form and trot him on down there to do his sacrificial lamb thing again is more like it.            Well, not this time they don’t. I can think of better ways to spend Easter vacation (Helloooo, Cabo!). They can just get themselves another boy. There are plenty of others running around up here that’d jump at a second chance to save the world —Father Flannigan. Mother Teresa. Che. Michael Jackson (just a short hop, skip and a jump from King of Pop to King of Kings, wouldn't you say?). Break out the swaddling clothes for one of those semi-demi-gods, and let them go down and beat their head against the bloody wall for mankind. But not me — not this time — not for all the frankincense and myrrh in the world. -- JHC
Dear Diary,                 Big con-fab of the Blessed Trinity today—Identity Crisis time for yours truly. For the life of me I’ll never get this all-for-one/one-for-all/three-persons-in-one-God business. I mean it’s schizoid city every time the Three of Us get together.                  On the one hand you have the Holy Ghost, and he’s absolutely salivating at the mouth for me to go down there to try and save mankind. (Of course, anyone who knows his appetite for Semitic virgin girls knows he’s got more than the salvation of mankind on his mind.)                 On the other hand, you’ve got me — and you can call me Jesus — you can call me Christ. Call me JC, if you please — but don’t call me Messiah — and Handel be damned. When I heard that crowd cry, “Give us Barabbas!” I said to myself,  This is the last time I go out on a limb for rabble like this.            And I meant it too.            And then we have God...Our Father. And He doesn’t know what he wants anymore. He’s become so disillusioned with humanity — especially since Bush v. Gore. And I hear Him getting more and more nostalgic about the dinosaurs. “I really miss those big fellas,” He said recently — kind of melancholy-like. “They didn’t have a whole lotta smarts, but I liked their style.”               I think if He had it to do all over again, it would be mankind that’d be stuck in the tar pits and the dinosaurs who’d be frolicking at St. Moritz.               Anyway, there are the three of Us — Father, Son, and Holy Ghost — and we can’t even agree on the time of day any more. Holy Ghost says I’ve got to go down and redeem the world, and I’m saying go down and redeem it yourself, and Our Father’s off in a corner by Himself mumbling something about pterodactyls.               Now if I’m them and they’re me and we’re all each other — then we’re pretty damn near Three Faces of Eve territory. I mean, like certifiable. Right? --JHC
Dear Diary,            Mother dropped by today. “Heard about your upcoming Second Coming,” she says, “and some of the girls and I were talking about how nice it would be if this time you went down as a woman....”             Some of the girls. Ha! I know who some of the girls are — Ms. Germaine Greer and Ms. Bella Abzug and Ms. Gertrude Stein — who wouldn’t even be here if ugly as sin carried any weight at all. The last time they got to talking, they wanted us to start calling Him God the Person.              “Look,” I said, “I was practically a Saviorette last time — long locks, soft skin, gentle eyes — and all thumbs as a carpenter. What do you want from me? Blood in lunar cycles? Besides,” I told her, putting aside my macramé, “I have no intention of taking the Passion Play on the road again.”            “Well! We’ll just see about that, Mr. Jesus H. Christ,” she says. And she stomps out of here just like that. -- JHC
 Dear Diary,            After all these years and Voltaire’s still stumbling around in a daze mumbling, “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it.” --JHC
Dear Diary,            Today was Abe Lincoln’s Ascension Day, and a bunch of us got together at the Martyr’s Club to celebrate. Sir Thomas More set the tone for the day’s festivities by reading a piece of doggerel he wrote about putting your neck on the chopping block for principle. Everyone applauded politely.             We’re such a dreary bunch when we get together — except for JFK, who, as usual, was busy charming Joan of Arc out of her pants.             Later Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr. and I got to talking amongst ourselves. And Abe was saying what a paradox it was that John Wilkes Booth was doing time in Hell for shooting him in the head when he really did him a favor. “Another year of those political cartoons and that lunatic wife of mine,” he said, “and I would’ve taken a walk in front of the nearest moving train.”            Then I asked them what they both thought of this Second Coming nonsense. Abe said he wouldn’t do it, but he wouldn’t mind going back some day as maybe a male model. “Someone with a face you could do more with than stick on a copper penny,” he said.            Martin said he’d only go back again if he could be white. And I told him I knew just what he was talking about. I wouldn’t want to be Jewish again either.            Abe just smiled sagely and said, “Boys, if you think being born white, Anglo-Saxon and Protestant is a bed of roses, think again.” And he tapped his own noggin knowingly.            The rest of the day was ruined when Hitler, Booth, and Richard Nixon came roaring by on a chariot from Hell singing a mocking chorus of “Abraham, Martin and John.” Then they all dropped their drawers and mooned us.             I swear, those guys will never grow up — and I don’t think they’re suffering a whole lot either. Our Father’s letting the entire Cosmos go to wrack and ruin ever since He got into this Grand Funk of His. -- JHC
Dear Diary,            Speaking of Abraham, Martin and John, has anybody here seen my old friend Bobby? Once he found out we gave his old man the Big Negatore at the Pearly Gates, Bobby’s been very reclusive. I sure wish he’d be more like Jack and not take everything so damn personally. --JHC
Dear Diary,            Today I did nothing more than lie around all day contemplating the mysteries of the universe.            I wonder how they did do that Shroud of Turin trick. --JHC
Dear Diary,            Just my Father and me            And Holy Spirit makes three            Up here in my            Blue Heaven...Well, they’ve got the ball rolling on this Second Coming thing. The Holy Ghost reported in with what he called Plan A. I’m to be born on one of those cursed Israeli settlements on the West Bank— away in a manger — to a teenager named Tolvah and a retired furniture wholesaler from Queens.              “Very original,” I told him. “Only I’m not going to be born anywhere near the Middle East. You can stick me in Asia during monsoon season — you can stick me in Russia during winter — you can stick me in Detroit if you like — but I’m not going back to the Middle East. A guy can get killed there.”               And so he gets this little smirk on his face and says, “That’s the point, Christ.”  --JHC      

Dear Diary,             Here’s a depressing little item. Came home tonight to find the following smeared on my door in lamb’s blood:

            Christ!
            I’m ready! Let’s do it! NOW! Duffle bag packed! Lion’s skin cleaned and pressed! Let’s Go!                                             Sincerely!John the Baptist

             My first question is: where did he get the lamb’s blood? My second is: does anybody in his right mind think I’d return to earth with that fanatic leading the way? (Better Rodney King — even on crack he’d be easier to control than that guy.) --JHC
Dear Diary,             Processing Day tomorrow — gonna find out who’s been naughty and nice.             The Holy Ghost, whose left-brained persnicketiness comes from way too much time sitting at the portside of God, has been pushing us to adopt a Lean manufacturing approach to assigning souls to Heaven or Hell.               “What did you have in mind?” I ask him. “Post-its?”               “Exactly,” he says. “We hang charts all along the Pearly Gates and color code the whole process. Your name on a blue Post-it means Welcome to Heaven; your name on a pink Post-it means Go to hell.            Well, I’ll admit to the tedium involved in the current process, especially if you’ve got a lot of dead to deal with — and sometimes there can be a ton of dead. I mean, you mix in your typical Mideast religious bloodletting or African genocide with the usual assortment of natural causes, car crashes and household mishaps and we’re talking SRO crowds of dead. Add to that something exotic like e coli in the salad bar and then you’re into backlogs--having to turn folks away at the Gates until the next Processing Day.             All and all, though, despite the tedium and despite the tempers that sometimes flare up — a TV minister who gets here and finds out we don’t approve of that sort of thing, or an atheist who arrives only to learn that he or she had it figured wrong (I’m looking at you, Hitchens) — despite all that, I approve of the process. It’s a good chance for all God’s children to finally meet their Maker, and it’s certainly a good opportunity for Him to keep in touch with things. --JHC
Dear Diary,             Processing Day, and what a circus it was. First of all, the dead were in a very negative mood. That’s not unusual of course. It’s because of the wait. Somehow they get it in their heads down there that they die and just like that they’re at the right hand of God, sipping Chablis and munching Melba toasts — especially the suicides. Suicides are very impatient. You’d think they’d all be accustomed to waiting by now — what with all those lines they have to deal with down there — DMV lines, banking lines, ski lift lines; lines for grain in the Sudan, rice in Dear Diary,            Aside from teenagers who get here by way of drug overdoses or high -speed car chases, “holy men” are most disruptive on Processing Day. I don’t care if it’s a priest, a rabbi, a monk or a mullah, they’re always coming up to the reviewing table and whispering “Clergy,” as if they expect us to drop everything and wave them on through.            I remember some time ago when Cardinal Spellman got here, and he noticed Eleanor Roosevelt still standing in the Processing Line. He was livid. “The woman died five years ago and you still haven’t gotten around to processing her yet. What kind of place are you running here?”            Just the kind of talk to impress the Supreme Being, right?            Well, I had to take the pugnacious prelate off to the side and point out to him that we were up to our eyeballs in war dead thanks to a little conflagration he was helping fan in Southeast Asia, and if he was in such an all-fired hurry to get processed we’d be more than happy to accommodate him.            And with that we issued him a flak jacket and a one-way ticket to the eternal war zone. “Give our regards to Attila the Hun!” we told him. --JHC
Dear Diary,             Mother’s Day and I took Mom to lunch. It wasn’t easy for either of us. Today she wanted to nail me to the cross of my bachelorhood.            “Oh, not this again,” I pleaded.            “Yes, this again,” she persisted. And wagging her finger at me, she says, “If you refuse to have anything to do with women, people are going to talk.”            “I have lots to do with women,” I informed her. “I write poems with Emily Dickinson, I play tennis with Althea Gibson, I skip the light fantastic with Cyd Charisse.”            “Yes, all very platonic, I suppose.”            “So what’s wrong with that? Plato has platonic relations with women and his mother’s not after him all the time.”            “What about Mary Queen of Scots?” she asks.            “Well, what about Mary Queen of Scots?”            “She has a good head on her shoulders and she comes from royalty.”            “Mother, what in Heaven’s name do I want with royalty? I sitteth at the right hand of God, Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth.”

“O.K., O.K., have it your way. But after 2,000 years of celibacy, people have a right to wonder just what kind of man you are, Jesus.”            “What do you mean by that?”            “You’re so good at raising the dead, you figure it out.”            That was the last word either of spoke. We sat through the rest of our lasagna in total silence. -- JHC
Dear Diary,            Press conference today.            We make every effort to keep the inhabitants happy up here, and of course for journalists happiness is a forum where they can gather together and ask smart-alecky questions of their betters.            Every once in awhile those of us who’ve had experience in the public eye volunteer to subject ourselves to a press conference. Today was my turn.            Sure enough, they all turned out — Zola, Zenger, Orwell, Huntley & Brinkley. And wouldn’t you know it, we’re not even through the cordialities when Mencken pops up and asks if I care to deny the rumors about my alleged homosexuality.             Alleged homosexuality!!!            Where do they get the gall? Where on earth did they get it?            I ask my Father, “Did you give them the gall to ask such questions? Did you? Huh? Did you?”            He says, “Back off, Jesus. I don’t even remember creating lousy, stinking journalists.”            “Well, where did they come from and what are they doing here?” I persist.            He says, “Well, they’re here to protect the peoples’ right to know. At least that’s what they tell me. As to where they came from, I can only guess. I think when I wasn’t looking Cro-Magnon Man mated with the hyena and journalism was born.”--JHC
Dear Diary,            Alleged homosexuality...boy, I wonder who’s been spreading that one around? --JHC
Dear Diary,            Of course there are homosexuals in heaven...but I am NOT one of them!!! --JHC