More Excerpts from The Diary of Jesus H. Christ!

And now the third installment of The Nobby Works astonishing exclusive, The Diary of Jesus H. Christ .


Dear Diary,            My pal the Holy Ghost reported in with Plan B today. He’s got a nice Jewish cheerleader picked out from some high school on Long Island he says.            “Look, how immaculate are these conceptions?” I ask.            “I permeate their being,” he says.            “Then why do they always have to be Jewish girls?” I ask.            “Because they’ve got big tits,” he says.            “Big tits!” I holler. “I thought we were supposed to be above all that.”            That smirk again. “Jesus,” he says, “no one’s above all that.”                                                                                                     Dear Diary,                                    When it rains, it pours. Got a station wagon full of born-again Christians in today. Their car slipped on an icy road on their way to an Amway meeting. The first thing they want to do is thank me for bringing them up to join me in the Kingdom of Heaven. Fractured skulls and severed spines and they can’t thank me enough.            "Ladies, ladies, I had nothing to do with your accident," I tell them. "We don’t operate that way."             Do they listen? No.            Right away one of them starts in telling me how she first accepted me into her life. “K.O.,” she begins, “K.O. Hargrove, Jr., that’s my husband. He’s in pharmaceuticals back home in Huntsville, and he calls to tell me one day that he’s bringing home the boss and the boss’s wife for dinner. Can you imagine? It’s 2:15 in the p.m. and I’ve got less than four hours to do myself proud in the kitchen. Well, I don’t mind telling you, I can rattle those pots and pans when the need be there. So I’m fixin’ up the most sumptuous fried chicken and candied yams you ever ate. And for dessert, I’m bakin’ up brownies accordin’ to Granma Beauchamp’s favorite recipe, you know, with pecans. And everything’s goin’ just Jim Dandy ‘til Melody Mae calls me on the phone. That’s Melody Mae right over there; she was drivin’ the car tonight, and Melody Mae and me, when we get to talkin’, if we can take 30 minutes to say what can be said in 30 seconds well you better just kiss those other 29 and one-half minutes good-bye. Well, by the time we finished jabberin’, you can just guess what’d happened in the kitchen, every one of those scrumptious brownies had been burned to a cinder. Well, I knew right then and there that I had but two choices in my life. I could stand right there in front of my microwave and curse the day I was born and curse Melody Mae and K.O. and K.O.’s boss, and the boss’s fat, ugly wife. Or I could get down on my knees and accept Jesus Christ into my life. And that’s what I did. Praise the Lord.”                                                                                                                                                                                               Dear Diary,            I’m thinking of making a motion at the next meeting of the Blessed Trinity that all born-again Christians be granted eternal life on earth. Maybe when that long-awaited nuclear holocaust comes about we could suit each of them out with some sort of protective see-through shield. Then they could look on in all their sanctimonious glory as their unrepentant friends and neighbors fry. As born-again Christians I think they rather expect some kind of preferential treatment — and God knows we’ve got to do something to keep them out of here, they’re driving me crazy. As soon as they get here all they want to do is hang around and be my buddy. They wear these mindless grins, ask to wash my feet and sing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah to me (!) all day (it doesn’t mean what you think it means, children!)                                                                                                                          
Dear Diary,            Made my proposal about granting born-again Christians eternal life on earth today. Needless to say, it raised another tempest.            “Absolutely not!” says the Holy Ghost, demonstrating once again why he is not known as the Father of Free Thought. “We’ve already decided, after the Big One goes off the ants get the earth and we’re done with it.”            “Ants and born-again Christians, I counter. “They’ll dig their tunnels in the sand and get along famously.”            “And then they’ll start praying, and God has expressly forbidden any praying after the Apocalypse. Right, God?”            Our Father yawns and says, “I spell relief A-p-o-c-a...            “All right, very funny,” I say, “it’s easy for you to laugh it off, you don’t have to go through eternity listening to them kill Hallelujah while trying to tie flowers in your hair. I do.”            “So we’ll ship them all to Hell,” says the Holy Ghost.               “On what rap?” I ask.            “False piety,” he says.            “You’re going to send convention centers full of born-again Christians to Hell when we accept murderers and thieves through the Gates of Heaven every day?”            “We only accept murderers and thieves because you’re soft on crime.”            “I’m soft on crime because I was a criminal. Remember? That was your idea.”            “Don’t blame me for that. You were a criminal because you broke the law.”            “But I was right! I was the Son of God.”            “But you were wrong in the eyes of the law.”            “It was a bad law. What was I supposed to do?”               “Work within the system. Change the law!”            On and on it went. Our Father yawned a lot and we gotnowhere.                                                                                                                                          Dear Diary,             What does it mean to be a born-again Christian anyway? Does that mean they didn’t take it seriously the first time?

Dear Diary,             When they’re not literally getting in my hair, born-again Christians are fond of telling me how they first “bore witness” to me. I call them bored-againstories. They always seem to turn to me just after they've been caught with their fiscal fly open during an IRS audit or their golf game's left them. None of it’s very likely of course. First of all, I haven’t had to step foot on earth in more than 2,000 years (knock on wood) and secondly, if I did, I’d hardly be hanging out around golf courses. They might catch me meditating in the High Sierras, but downing vodka tonics and contemplating my 9-iron is just not my scene.              So what are all these reasonably well-adjusted humans actually bearing witness to down there? My guess is Moogolians— extra-terrestrials from an entirely different galaxy. They have 6 heads, 20 arms, 30 legs and tongues the size of watermelons. They visit earth frequently — especially the American South — drawn by the pecans I suppose. And they look nothing like me. But if you’re a Georgian looking to maintain a respectable name for yourself in the community, it’s easier to tell folks you’ve just seen someone who’s been dead for 2,000 years than to tell them you’ve just seen a Moogolian.                                                                                                                              
Dear Diary,            Father’s Day. As usual I try to spend it with Joseph. Talk about forlorn figures.            “Buck up, Dad,” I tell him, “let’s break out the hammer and nails and build Mom a birdhouse or something. Just like in the old days.”            “Don’t call me ‘Dad’,” He says, “and don’t ever mention that woman to me again. I’m a cuckold... human history’s A #1 chump, and I’ll thank you and the rest of your holier-than-thou family to just leave me alone.”                                                                                                                            
Dear Diary,             I’m often asked what’s the easiest way to break into Heaven. Well, there are no hard and fast rules — not any more anyway, not since things became so complicated down on earth. But there are a few things:            A pleasing personality helps, as does a good sense of humor — although a good sense of humor is no guarantee. The Emperor Caligula had a terrific sense of humor, but was such a sick and demented character otherwise that we had no choice but to consign him to Hell.            Then naturally, each of Us in the Blessed Trinity has Our own individual preferences. God the Father, for instance, is very fond of creative types, having begun as a creator Himself. Even now in His oppressive state of ennui, His eyes still light up when He meets a good potter or someone who can shape shrubbery into famous cartoon figures.            I reserve a special place for carpenters and fishermen—although whale-killers are another story. Basically, I like underdogs—90-pound weaklings, flat-chested girls with braces, little old men who live alone and eat cat food, bag ladies, school teachers, boat people (as in Haitian boat people, not as in New York Harbor Yacht Club), the Chicago Cubs... those are my kind of people.             The Holy Ghost, on the other hand, likes good-looking women and anyone with charisma.

Dear Diary,            I’m having a power lunch at the chi-chi new Bread and Wine Cafe with God the Father when who should appear out of nowhere but Shirley MacLaine.  She blows a kiss Our way and then starts working the tables—first a few pleasantries with old Hollywood chums, Cary Grant and Fred Astaire; then a turn as  political raconteur with Rousseau, Locke and Allard Lowenstein (Lowenstein, contrary to house rules, is still wearing a Dump the Hump button); and finally catching up on old times with Nefertiti whom she claimed to know in another lifetime. The princess surreptitiously casts God and me a bewildered look, however, and shrugs her shoulders; she doesn’t know what the lady’s talking about.             No one up here really likes to be visited by the Living. It’s sort of like being at a nudist camp when someone shows up in an Armani original. Suddenly everyone’s feeling a little self-conscious.  So it wasn’t at all surprising for there to be an audible sigh of relief when Shirley finally squinched her eyes, twitched her nose and disappeared.             “What was she doing here?” God asks, stabbing at His veal with a vengeance.            “Astral traveling, I guess,” I say wanly, not wanting to provoke Him any more than He already has been.             “Astral traveling, hmm,” He says. “But she’s still alive. Who gives her the right to drop by up here any time she wants?”            “The Holy Ghost,” I tell Him (and I don’t mind doing so, though tattling’s not my usual cup of tea).  “You know him and his movie stars.”            “Yeah, well you tell him to tell her that when I want to see her freckled little face up here again, I’ll send a chartered tsunami by her Malibu beach house to pick her up."
                                                                             Dear Diary,            I couldn’t sleep last night thinking about this major tidal wave engulfing Shirley MacLaine’s house. Who knows who else would be swept away in its wake?  Barbara Streisand? Tom Hanks? Jimmy Kimmel? A tidal wave is not a surgical blade...lots of innocent people would go down with this thing.             I don’t know. He seems to be getting more and more Old Testament everyday, so I decided I just had to force the issue with Him. I tracked Him down at His gym where I found Him in the lotus position just after His workout. He was facing East and chanting His mantra: Wo...Wo...Wo.            When I knew He was done and His head was as clear as it’s ever going to get, I spoke. “You’re not really going to drown Shirley MacLaine,” I said.             “Maybe,” He said. “Maybe I will and maybe I won’t.”            “Look, “ I said, “I know she’s a little out of bounds taking these day trips up here all the time, but you really can’t blame her. She’s in the vanguard of a movement down there. They’re all trying to figure it out.”            “Trying to figure what out?” He asks pointedly.            “Your purpose,” I say. “The meaning of life.”            “And reincarnation’s their answer?  Am I supposed to be running some kind of jumbo aluminum recycling center up here, Jesus? Don’t they give me credit for any more imagination than that? Here you go, Shirley, we start you off as an Egyptian Princess. You tease the eunuchs and short-change the Pharisees and we bring you back as a squirrel. You be a good squirrel...give your nuts to charity and don’t fight with your mother and we’ll bring you back as a Hollywood movie star. I mean who do they think created this universe...Barnum & Bailey?”            “Well,” I venture, “the message does seem to be a bit muddled.”            “Muddled? How muddled?”            “Very muddled.”            “Not how much is it muddled. How is it muddled? Remember who you’re talking to here,” He admonished me. And I took it to heart, knowing full well that I was skating on thin ice—which is not as tricky as walking on water, but twice as dangerous, since you’ve got this two-fold problem of falling through the hole in the ice and then finding the hole to get back out again. I’m a sucker for paradoxes, of course, and this is a beaut: the hole that leads us to  our peril is also the hole of our deliverance from that peril. As I’ve said before, however, it’s easier for a camel to shimmy through the eye of a needle than for a fully-clothed man with his lungs full of pond water and his brain full of the living dead memees to find the hole in the ice again.              But I digress.            “This is how muddled,” I said, “Even the God is Dead movement is dead. They don’t even care about you any more. You’ve become like old gramps, down with the rheumatism for 20 years and now buried since spring...out of sight, out of mind. There’s even a growing movement down there that believes the whole thing was started by space colonists from far, far away. They’re just hacking away at each other now, like kids left at the playground too long, waiting for Mr. and Mrs. Alien-Being  to return in their rocket and take them all home again. I tell you if a God from another galaxy gets wind of this, you can have your entire creation stolen right out from under your nose."            “So?” He says, “Let ‘em have it. Let ‘em have the whole enchilada. Who needs it?” Then He threw on his windbreaker and started heading for the exit with me fast on His tail.            “You can’t take this attitude,” I persist with total reckless regard for my long-term health (and not for the first time). “You can’t abandon the world you created like a half-empty pop bottle. There must be a standard of behavior even for Supreme Beings, a code of ethics... some guidelines. “            He stopped and slowly turned back towards me. I braced myself for His full fury, but His face was wrathless. More resigned than anything. “No guidelines, Jesus,” He said calmly. “No code, no standards. No strategy, no agenda. No game plan or road map.  Nothing. El grande nada. I just opened my eyes one day and there I was stretched out on my Naugahyde recliner. I was trying to put two and two together, but it just wouldn’t add up. Then, I don’t know...on a whim I guess, I rubbed my hands together and formed a large sphere. I did it again and another sphere. Then another. They were big and colorful and I just kept on turning them out for about a million eons. And soon I had a universe full of them, but I was bored silly. So I decided to work on miniatures.”            “Humans?” I interjected.            “Snowflakes,” He said. “Snowflakes and sand. No two would be alike. That kept my mind occupied for another millennia or two, but that got boring too."            “So then came humans?”             “Yes, I had this idea for a story...the story of mankind with plots and subplots, murder, intrigue, romance, redemption...the whole ball of wax. And I was really cooking there for awhile.”            “And then what happened?”            He grew unusually pensive and sighed. “I don’t know.  I just lost it. Writer’s block, I guess. It’s been a night at the Improv ever since.”  He shrugged His shoulders and shuffled on, leaving me to ponder a rewrite job of mind numbing complexity.