GREETINGS, fellow Woodites everywhere.

And to all you non-Woodites out there, a very special welcome indeed. At the moment that I write this 27th lesson, and I know I've said this a mission times before but it feels like only days ago that I sat down to write lesson 1, it is currently a frighteningly cold January of the year 2004 or, to put it in Woodian terms, Woodian Year 56. And I so definitely mean cold in every sense of the word - I mean, hearing the ground crack as you step on the frozen grass cold and screaping the ice off your windshield cold. It's something I'm trying to become accustomed to but I just can't, no matter how hard I try.

I mean, I'm just a middle class Mexican kid from Arizona, where all the brown people come from, and I woke up this morning and sat in front of my dirty, old little laptop computer in the kitchen and put on some Sebadoh and started typing and I could actually see my breath. Can you believe that? I know that's not cold when compared to someone in one of those states where the temperature goes negative but still that's pretty damn cold for small, skinny, brown little me.

I'm a wuss when it comes to the cold. Hell, I'm a wuss when it comes to everything. I'm scared to drive on the freeway unless it's three in the morning and no one else is on the thing. Show me a snake and I'll cry like a little baby. I cry a lot, in fact. I cry a lot whenever I see "Ed Wood." That's something not a lot of people know. I cried at "Big Fish," too, matter of fact. And bugs. Don't even get me thinking about bugs. No way, you know? Most of my days now, when I'm not at work, seem to be used solely to play Gamecube and watch Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network.

Honestly, pop culture dictates my entire life.

I guess you could say that I am sort of representative of the modern twentysomething man. I don't want to say "metrosexual" because I don't dig on widespread chiches and made-up words from the American lexicon. But I am of a generation that is raised by our mothers and our television sets, to paraphracse a bit of "Fight Club" there. We are being raised on different ideals. What was important before isn't important now and what shouldn't be that important is now our new bible. I don't know all the ammendments to the constitution but I could say every line from "This is Spinal Tap." That's just the person I am and the way I was raised.

There's something important to be said there. We are of a generation raised by pop culture instead of parents. The bible has been replaced by a television set churning out MTV and Comedy Central 24-7. That's why I think that a pop-culture based religion such as this one is so important because the religions of the old world are being forgotten in a mad dash towards Star Wars and the Lord of the Rings. This is a new era where Jesus and the Ten Commandments are being replaced by the internet and American Idol and its time for the religions of the world to adapt to the pace that society is evolving or else the religions of man will go the way of 8-track tapes.

However, being raised by television definitely has an effect on our ontos, on who we are, and I think that the importance of pop culture and television in our childhood most definitely has an effect on who we are and how stromng our resolve ends up being when we grow up. It's becoming increasingly more impirtant as time passes us by and yet its importance isn't something that's talked about, unless you're one of those ignorant jackasses who doesn't understand, who refuses to evolve with the times, who distrusts television and the rest of society in general and just hides under a rock and swats at the evil sun.

People like Phil Arms.

First off, let me say that I recently shelled out $32.95 on a book and video set by Phil Arms and it was wonderful and worth every penny. The book is called "Pokemon and Harry Potter: A Betrayal of Trust" (ISBN: 1575580675) and the video, which is wonderful by the way, is called "Pokemon: Is It Just a Game?" (ISBN: 1575580683). The book retails for $12.95 and the video is $20.00 and they are both available through bn.com and at your local Barnes and Boble bookstore.

They really are worth hunting down and checking out. You really should go out and take the time to buy them. If you want to have a laugh-a-minute laugh fest, then go buy them. If you want to see a stupid, ignorant man thinking that the rain that falls from the sky is some sort of demon magic and try to hit it with his giant caveman club, theoretically of course, then go out and buy them right now. If you want to see a man who hides underneath a rock in a cave frightened of the works of modern man due to his own ignorance and stupidity, then by all means go out and buy this. If you want a laugh riot, then by all means buy this stupid idiot's book and video set.

I bought it and I laughed and laughed and laughed! I laughed my ass off! It is so incredibly funny that there is a person who exists that is as stupid and ignorant as Phil Arms and, more importantly, that there are stupid, dumb, gullible people out there, rednecks mainly, who actually listen to and believe and follow him and think that he's doing the Lord's work.

Ok, so apparently doing the Lord's work includes fighting "evil satanic witchcraft" in the form of a British mother's children's books and fucking Pikachu. Ok, maybe God has too much free time, huh?

Thank you Phil Arms, you stupid little idiot! Of all the Christians in the world, you are the absolute worst. You sell books based on the fear of the lowest common demoninators. you're a bottom feeder Christian, making millions of dollars on fear and ignorance, and I am one-hundred-percent certain that if there is a heaven, you, Phil Arms, are going right to hell.

Pop culture is healthy, when done right. America thrives on pop culture, on what is fed to us from music and radio and television and the cinema and by trends and malls and models and leaders and heroes. America runs solely on its pop culture. America IS a nation of pop culture. America is nothing but American Idol and the Brady Bunch and Outkast and Playstation 2 and cable television and The Lord of the Rings and Kaaza. America has evolved beyond rules and the Declaration of Independence and is now ruled by television and cable and trends. This is the new millenium, a time where we live by what we see others do and say.

This is our new American society. Movies and television now dictates our lives in is New World Order and you can either move to a ranch in the south and live in fear of it or you can accept this new modern society and go to Old Navy and buy yourself some goddamn cargo pants.

In the face of this new society, the idea of Woodism, of a pop culture-based religion with its basis solely in the world of motion pictures and the internet, shouldn't come as a big shock to people. There are millions of people who worship pop culture and they don't even know it. There are literally millions of people who love and worship Star trek and Star Wars so vehemently that they are just two or three chess pieces away from getting on their knees and praying to the force or the prime directive. So we Woodites embrace pop culture, sometimes loving and sometimes laughing, and we realize its importance in our lives through our love of Ed Wood.

Then there are people like this asshole Phil Arms.

Phil Arms is a nationally known pastor-evangelist whose radio and television ministries have "touched" the lives of millions of dumb, gullible rednecks. He has authored or co-authored about eight books ranging on topics from "Bible prophecy" (aka bullshit) to "victorious Christian living." Yeah, whatever. He is currently a featured speaker at Bible conferences and evangelistic campaigns across America. He lives in Houston, Texas (wow, someone as ignorant as he is living in Texas, now THAT's a big shock) with their daughter, Linsdsay and son Philip.

Here's a piece from his book "Pokemon and Harry Potter: A Betrayal of Trust" ...

"A Supernatural Battle Is Now Raging for the Minds and Destinies of Our Children. This Is a Battle That Parents Can and Must Win. Violence, psychic manipulation, witchcraft, murder, demons, wizards, magic, Satanism, and the occult are but a few of the featured attractions in the world of the ever-popular Pokemon phenomena and the celebrated Harry Potter series."

This jackass is making missions off of people who have a knee-jerk reaction to popular culture and automatically believe that anything popular in our society is satanic and goes against God. These idiotic uber-Christian godlings who seem to constantly need to suckle on Jesus' teat because they're afraid and confused when faced with pop culture in the face of Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Korn, have an idiotic, ignorant little Mad Hatter ringleader and his name is Phil Arms.

First off, if you think that Pokemon, a stupid little Japanese fad, and thats al it is, is a fad, is the work of the devil, then you are stupid. Sorry. I call it like I see it and I see anyone who believes in the satanic influences of children via Gigglypuff as being stupid as all hell. Anyone who sees, and this is a direct quote from his book, "the clever satanic camouflague which attempts to conceal the true diabolic nature of today's most popular children's literature and games" is stupid and dumb and beyond any and all help.

Honestly, I feel sorry for those people because they are godlings in the purest sense of the word. They love Jesus and God and the Bible so much that they hide behild it and let the evolution of humanity pass them by.

It's the point of this lesson to stress the importance of pop culture and to discredit that Christ-sucking douchebag Phil Arms. I think that a more difficult task would be to tie my shoes while chewing bubble gum because this a-hole has a stink of ignorance and greed following him three miles in every direction and the only thing worse than that asshole are his asshole followers. Despite saying that Pokeomon is training children to be soldiers of Satan, he also reaches millions of television viewers across the country every week through his on-air radio ministry. Claiming to preach the word of God, Arms now seems to be spreading hatred and violence throughout the world with his own special blend of homo-hatred.

Pop culture is overflowing with positive homosexual images lately. I personally just saw my first episode of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" recently and I loved it. It was funny and it was positive. Pop culture and the media seems to be swimming in positive homosexual images. But that doesn't stop the cave-dwelling godlings like Phil Arms from promoting anti-gay hatred disguised as God's work.

People like Arms need to be stopped. God does not hate gays. God does not promote violence against gays and homosexuals. Anyone who thinks so is an ignorant son of a bitch and needs to be stopped. All of us who do not believe in the validity of the Bible or who see it simply as a moral guidebook all need to gang together and try and stop people who hide behind the Bible to mask their anger and hatret of gays, people who use the Bible as an excuse to promote gay bashing. This madness has to stop. People like Phil Arms need to be stopped.

On his radio show, Phil Arms regularly states that he hates homosexuality, not homosexuals. This guy is absolutely stupid, not to mention dangerous by spreading his ignorant anti-Christian Christianity to a new generation of young people. Saying that you hate homosexuality but not homosexuals is a distinction without a difference. It's essentially like saying that you hate black skin, not black people, or that you hate Judaism, not Jews.

Arms began one of his radio talk shows with a disclaimer: "I have no personal axe to grind with the homosexuals, or the axe murders, or the serial killers, or any other individual group of sinners." In his sick, twisted mind, Arms thinks of gay people in the same space as homicidal murderers. Murderers are judged and sentenced and executed for their behavior. When Arms puts gays on the same plate as killers, what image of homosexuals do you think he's trying to leave with his listeners?

I get a lot of people who are angry with me over my religion, over Ed's positive messages of love and universal acceptace. It's sad because Phil Arms isn't the only one. Phil Arms, that asshole Bob Larson, every dumb fuck on the Trinity Broadcast Network, they all are stupid, evil godlings who are so afraid of pop culture and the rest of society that they shut themselves off from pop culture and spread their messages of anger and hate through the bible.

I think that jackasses like Phil Arms have been around for so long that when I come around with a religion that has a basic messages of love and acceptance regardless of age or race or secual preference, that people don't believe me or don't know or understand what we're all about. Most dumb godlings just think that we oodites are a bunch of decadent heathens that seek to replace Jesus with Ed Wood. They think that we're a bunch of angry teenagers who hate god and jesus and the bible. They could not be further from the truth.

Woodism is a pop-culture-based religion. We use pop culture anfd its popularity to inject some spirituality to those people out there that might not get too much from the more mainstream religions like Catholicism and Christianity. We believe in and follow late cult director Edward D. Wood Jr. and look to him as a savior. By looking at his films and his life, we all try to lead a happy, positive life, a life of acceptance of others and of the self. There are over 3,000 legal Woodites worldwide who believe in Ed's universal messages of happiness and love.

We are a pop-culture-based religion. We are not the first pop-culture-based religion but we are the first to take our religion seriously. There are others out there ... the Church of Beer, The 24-Hour Church of Elvis in Oregon, Shatnertology ... but what they do isn't serious. They are joke religions. And since The Church of Ed Wood has a pop-culture center to its religious beliefs, most people look to us as just snother joke religion. And we're ok with that. After all, we don't expect you to believe in Woodism - we merely expect you to respect the fact that WE Woodites believe is Woodism.

I can tell you one thing, we will not be the LAST pop culture religion created. This idea of infusing movies and music and television into the basic core beliefs of a religion, it is not only revolutionary but also an important concept as pop culture's dominance of society continues unabated. There will be more. Many more. If you are offended by this religion here, just wait until the others arrive.

Then we'll have ourselves a party.