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In This Issue

• The Issue of Suicide
• Potential Hobo Camp or Wussy Veldt?
• Choose Your Own Fed-venture
• Letters To and From The Editor
• Thumb-Addled Troglodytes
• Ed-in-Chief Joins Staff Diaspora
• Jesus is a Crappy Dermatologist
• Action Jacksons
• News Briefs
• On Action and the Philosophy of Inaction
• Wacky Fun Whitey Meets a Bum
• Fed Bash a Spanking Success
• Point / Counterpoint: Actions and Words
• Horoscopes Will Keep You Regular
• Revenge for Your Shitty Housing Lottery Number
• Columbia Needs Real Affirmative Action
• News Quiz
• THEY Watch
• The Staff of 16.9

Saint Zizmor, M.D. of Floral Park. Martytred by beheading. "And yea shall my Fruit Acid Wash cleanse you of your sins and your excema."

So this Holy Week business is over with and the Son of Man is back on the street And that's just terrific. Mir-fucking-raculous. The Savior is once more among us. But these are tough days for JC. The current intellectual landscape is littered with postmodern ideas that are unfriendly to Christianity's longstanding staples of faith and reason. Witness, for example, the pantsuit. No creation of a God could be so continuously popular despite its total lack of aesthetic merit.

As a product of the era, I have a lot of trouble believing in things  like morality, faith, and salvation. I can, however, believe in the festering leprous lesions all over the most fragile, sensitive regions of my skin.

The maddening itching sensation that precedes the appearance of each sore; the sting of swollen, bubonic lymph nodes; the nauseatingly sweet odor of dying, infected flesh; the subsequent numbness of my extremities. These are things I can kneel on a wooden rail and proudly declare my faith in. You hear that Aquinas? I got your First Principles right here.

The Jesus of the New Testament wouldn't stand for this kind of atrocity. In Luke 5, Jesus tells a leper to "be clean," and the ailment fails off like a nun in a lawn chair on the wing of a DC-10. He used to do these quickie leper jobs all the time. It's my understanding that infections of flesh-and-nerve eating bacillus are exactly His forte.

During a 3a.m. commercial break from Lakewood Church, I learn that The Savior Himself will be signing relics that very morning at FaithCon2001, at the Sheraton Meadowlands in E. Rutherford, NJ. 1-95, Exit 16W. I want to get there early and avoid the lines. I bandage the more freely oozing pustules, the hood of my Champion sweatshirt as far as possible over my bulbously deformed face, and set out to see if I can't find some compassion in the eyes of the Lord.

I've been camping for several hours on a wide concrete sidewalk, breathing damp, acidic, North Jersey air, and listening with minimal politeness to an excitable overweight man in white sneakers and an authentic biblical cloak. The wind stings my open sores where mycobacterium leprae hasn't already eaten the nerves cleanly away. Finally, the doors open. A disinterested Sheraton employee takes my fifteen dollars and admits me to the convention center's main hall, which is somehow already crowded. I consult my Sheraton map and head for the far end of the room, dodging folding tables manned by countless bible enthusiasts, trying my hardest not to make eye contact. As I run, the leper bell that I wear around my neck jangles in a funky six-eight shuffle, causing a gaggle of nearby Baptists to get noticeably jiggy with it. Jesus is in a smaller function room off the main hall, through double doors, just past a giant inflatable tabernacle (for the kids). After another twenty minutes in line, I find myself gazing upon the disturbingly kind and gentle visage of the Lamb of God.

Thinking back to the Gospels, I throw back my hood and drop to my knees, stumpy remains of fingers clawing at the hoodie's zipper pull. I'm trying to be as classically dramatic as possible. I ask Jesus, if he's willing, to like rub his beard or whatever and heal these lesions so I can go on and live my life sans-deformity and bacillus free.

Jesus just looks at me with this horrifying expression of infinite patience and silently shakes his head. Now this would not only make me a happy ex-leper, I explain to The Savior, but it would also turn me into one hell of a devout Christian. I could take Before and After pictures, and he could use them on infomercials to sell his cassette tapes. This is a win-win situation I'm talking about here.

But the old man doesn't go for it. Says he's awful busy these days, since he was crucified last weekend. "You get executed for just a couple of days and things get all backed up. Anyway, My agent says I'm doing too many lepers, and I'm flirting with overexposure. I am sorry, My son."

I look up at the Prince of Peace with what I hope is a look of unquestioning faith. There is a moment of supreme and holy awkwardness.

"What do you want from Me?" Jesus stammers. "I died for your sins already."

I hold my ground and try to look more faithful. Jesus shrugs his shoulders and makes a slight, outward gesture with his open palms like he's trying to split me in half or something. I am instantly flanked by two greasy apostles. They wear black robes and expensive-looking Tevas. They escort me to the door.

On the train home, brooding over the calamitous implications of such a shoddy, budget Savior, I chance to direct my attention upwards. There I witness a fluorescently backlit apparition: The smiling face of Dr. Johnathan Zizmor, licensed Dermatologist, surrounded by colorful rainbows and devoted words of praise.

Speaking wordlessly to me with his lazy-eyed grin, he reaches out and rests his hand on my shoulder's throbbing nodule. "Gnash no longer," he says, "for I am He who serves. Grace is gained not through exhibitionism; cast it asunder! Find your salvation through riding the N, R, or Q trains and gazing upon my advertisement, for it is good. And from your devotion to the Fruit Acid Wash that I have created of chaos from the Void, so shall you gain clear skin, and so shall you thank me in a customer testimonial."

And with that, I schedule an appointment in a black book comprised of raiment that shines like institutional lighting of a thousand subway stations. This is a man who knows how to get results. And unlike that niggardly bastard Christ, he has offices right here in Manhattan.