Then the good news:

August 12, 2013 • 11:40 am

From the Prague Daily Monitor: “Czech ‘Pastafarian’ wins right to wear kitchen utensil as official religious head gear“. I doubt this is a joke!

A man who claims his religion requires him to wear a sieve on his head has been granted permission to use a photo of himself wearing it – on his official ID card.

Lukas Novy, a follower of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, says the plastic kitchenware is a crucial part of his “Pastafarian” faith, and he must wear it at all times to respect his deity; a monster made of spaghetti and meatballs.

Czech officials ruled that rejecting his request would be a breach of the country’s religious equality laws, and have subsequently turned the other cheek as the 28 year old, from Brno, updated his ID card with the controversial image.

The Church of the Spaghetti Monster first emerged in the USA in 2005 as a mockery of organised religion. Now the thousands of online followers insist that “Pastafarianism” is a genuine religion, and refer to their almighty as “His Noodliness”.

Followers claim that that universe was created by the ball of noodles after “drinking heavily”.

In a statement from Brno City Hall, spokesman Pavel Zara explained: “The application complies with the laws of the Czech Republic where headgear for religious or medical reasons is permitted if it does not hide the face.”

pasta
Yay! Religious freedom!

Fellow “Pastafarian”, known as Soorej Jones Pothoor, said he feels discriminated against because of his unrecognised religion: “They (people of other beliefs) tell that the Lord Jesus is the one who’ll save you, not a ball of Spaghetti you moron.” And I say, “How dare you call my lord a ball of spaghetti, what proof do you have that Jesus will save you, a book? We don’t even need a proof, it’s all around us.”.

The Czech Republic is the second country to accept the cooking utensil as official religious head gear, following Austria when businessman Niko Alm won the right to wear a similar sieve on his driving licence photo. Many countries still refuse to accept the pasta strainer as such, and other people in counties such as Poland have failed.

Come on Poland, get busy!

h/t: WIll H.

61 thoughts on “Then the good news:”

  1. Excellent. At first I thought this was a re-run of the earlier Austrian story. Much better that it is really a second example!

  2. He’s an orthodox sieve-wearing Pastafarian. good.

    Some accursed heretic in, IIRC, Australia got photographed wearing a colander! The colandrist heresy accepts linguini or even rigatoni in place of the sacred spaghetti!

        1. Pastafarian Proof that God Exists (corollary to Tomas de Torquemada’s Proof):

          1. See that pot of boiling water?
          2. Therefore God exists!

        2. May His Noodly Appendage shine upon you and show you the way to the true faith of His Meatballieness!

    3. Is there a difference between his sieve and a colander? I would have called what he’s wearing a plastic colander. Forgive my question, as I am not well educated in noodly ways and am only a pasta neophyte.

  3. As a Unicornitarian, myself, I’m pleased to inform the world that all photos of me — official or otherwise — include my official headgear.

    It’s a bright, fluorescent pink cowboy hat. Oh — and it’s invisible, which is why it doesn’t show up very well on the photographs. But it’s there.

    Cheers,

    b&

    1. Yeah, but without the brim decorated with a continuous row of small, black fuzzy balls on strings, this is CLEARLY heretical! 🙂

      1. That depends: green tea or black? Or non-tea “herbal” “tea”?

        (Yes, there are some lovely drinks to be made from infusions of various leaves and twigs and flowers and what-not. But it’s only tea if it’s an infusion of the leaves of C. sinensis.)

        b&

        1. I am prejudiced (bigoted?) toward green tea. Herbal tea is blasphemous and requires death by long walk off short pier.

          2. That tea better be good @ $4.95 for 2 oz. I did get a chuckle at this:

            “Free Shipping on Tea orders of $150+. “

          3. It’s worth it. Besides, you get a couple dozen cups out of that two ounces, and $4.95 won’t even get you a single frappalattechinaspressamocha at Starbucks.

            If you call them, either Mr. or Mrs. Strand will answer the phone. They’re good people; they “get it.” And they’re passionate about tea, good tea, sourced from smaller estates that’re in it for the long haul.

            b&

            P.S. The Yun Wu is good iced. Whatever you do for hot tea, do the exact same thing except with cold instead of heat, and change minutes to hours. That is, use the same pot, the same proportions, etc., but put it in the ‘fridge for 150 minutes instead of 150 seconds (for example). b&

          4. I go to a vegetarian restaurant for lunch sometimes and they have fruit tea there that seems to be pure fruit. It is delicious!

  5. This is most excellent and from the Czech Republic. I have worked with many eastern european nation scientists and can say that those countries (cough, Poland!) need to address the fact that the majority of their youth have had enough of religion. They are very good people and deserve better lives based on reason and freedom from religious prejudice(s).

    1. A true classic. American readers will probably not realise that the commentator, Richard Dimbleby, was one of the BBC’s most serious, po-faced presenters at that time – the go-to guy for state weddings and funerals.

  8. Wonderful. I like this guys style. And the other people doing similar things.

    His Noodliness should, of course, only be depicted robed in Puttanesca. Depictions of Him in any other sauce are heresy.

      1. [sprayingspittle] Repent, lest you be consigned to a burning bowl of Fra Diavolo for all eternity! [/sprayingspittle]

  9. “Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster”

    Who will be laughing when it turns into a real religion? This is how they all started….

    1. There’s a schism already, some are now worshipping the Walking Tagliatelle Fiend. (Runs for cover).

    1. So, is this where the “20 lashes with a wet noodle” punishment comes from? Damn religions!

    2. Just look at the preceding comments!

      Fortunately, however, I know the truth, and can confidently assert that those who disagree with me are wrong.

  11. I think the Messiah story was good news too. I LOVE it when religious people make high profile fools out of themselves in ways that don’t actually kill other people.

  13. Unfortunately, this is just a temporary ID, and the ministry of interior already noticed that they won’t allow this photo on “real, 10 year id”.

  14. Do not miss one of the fundamental tenets of Pastafarianism- that His Noodliness created the universe and all that is in it in ONE day!

        1. Based on my own personal divine revelation, I can state without equivocation that the creation took place last Tuesday and not last Thursday. Any church advocating the last Thursday heresy should lose its tax exempt status.

  15. “and other people in counties such as Poland”?

    I know that silenceofmind thinks of the nation that gave up Marie Curie, Copernicus and Chopin et al, and the rest of Europe, as mere backwaters, but reducing Poland to the status of mere county is a bit much. 🙂

  18. “… the 28 year old, from Brno …”

    “Brno” — that’s not a typo; that’s a town. In the neighborhood I grew up in, about half the families seemed to be missing vowels from their names. I always figured that the Reds behind the Iron Curtain were tacking a surtax on vowels used by the local Eastern European population. And that having a diphthong in one’s surname was a sure sign of ostentatious wealth — like having a corpulent spouse among the natives of Burkina Faso, or driving a Porsche 911 Turbo among the yuppies of Wall Street.

      1. Strc prst skrz krk!

        Smrst pln skvrñ zmlhl z vlh!

        (OK, I cheated a little on the diacriticals)

        And, I am one of the very few who is amused because, when one of the Simpsons is chanting “I am so smart, I am so smart, s-m-r-t, s-m-r-t, I mean s-m-a-r-t,” realizes that smrt is the Czech word for “death”.

        1. Um.

          I put that through Google Translate, and got:

          Poke your finger through the neck! Whirlwind full of spots to get wet from the mist!/blockquote>

          Methinks a wee little bit o’ somethin’ might maybe perhaps possibly have gotten lost (or added?) in the translation….

          b&

          1. Hi Ben:

            The first one is “stick a finger in the throat”. It’s the famous Czech vowelless phrase; it can be found in Guinness Book of World Records.

            The second one is supposed to be “The spotted mushroom (that is, the mushroom full of spots) got wet from the mists”. It’s longer, but not as well-known. I may have messed up the first word, putting “whirlwind” for “mushroom” (and getting the gender wrong at the same time–but I guess the mushrooms can figure it out).

            Not bad for machine translation.

      2. Thanks for the link, Ben; I hadn’t seen that one before — although I had suggested earlier on this site (in a comment concerning former Notre Dame football star Manti T’eo’s non-existent girlfriend dust-up) that perhaps native Hawaiians could be persuaded to share the glut of vowels in their surnames with the poor vowel-deprived inhabitants of Eastern Europe. (See Comment #13 here: http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2013/01/20/nonexistent-girlfriend-okay-nonexistent-deity-not-so-gud-akshually/#comment-369309)

        Or maybe the now-moribund National Committee for a Free Europe could be revivified with a “Consonant Free Czech Republic” program modelled on the old “Radio Free Europe” broadcasts.

  19. “Lukas Novy, a follower of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, says the plastic kitchenware is a crucial part of his “Pastafarian” faith, and he must wear it at all times to respect his deity; a monster made of spaghetti and meatballs.”

    Damn these heretics! It’s supposed to be a metal sieve!

  21. Two comments:
    1. Love the classy dreadlocks.
    2. Is there any better way of spicing up a comment thread than to randomly accuse fellow commenters of blasphemy? I think not.

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