The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster - Bobby Henderson [43]
Here is the tricky part Use one cut band to tie the noodly loop to the pipe cleaner. Tie it so that it pinches the loop in the middle, creating two loops that the fluff balls can later be inserted into.
A completed noodly loop.
The noodly strands are made exactly the same way as the noodly loops, except that you tie the uncut bands onto a cut band instead of an uncut one. Use fewer bands for a noodly strand and concentrate them at the end of the cut band. Use about eight bands.
Tie the noodly strands to the pipe cleaner, one on each side of the noodly loop.
Insert the fluff balls into the sides of the noodly loop.
Bend the pipe cleaner to make the eyestalks. If your noodly strands hang down too low, you may need to tie them up at the middle.
The completed FSM simulacrum.
Fund-raising
INEVITABLY, THE MATTER OF MONEY will come up, and many will find it hard to believe that FSM is a free religion: Indeed, no tithing is expected. Apparently our God is in a better financial position than Jesus, just to name an example. Churches are expensive, obviously, and ours—a Pirate Ship1 —will require more upkeep than a conventional church, but the funds will come from unsolicited donations rather than expected contributions. No Pastafarian will ever endure the expectant look of a collection-holding, blue-haired old bat, as is customary among some of the other major religions. If members don’t want to contribute to the cause, they don’t have to. Freeloaders will be welcome aboard the Ship—however they most certainly will not be allowed to touch the cannons. There has to be some motivation to contribute, after all.
Still, we are not above devising certain fund-raising schemes to ensure that we can obtain as big and as glorious a Pirate Ship as possible. The sale of T-shirts helps. Also, coffee mugs and bumper stickers are effective. But FSMism is a highly international and Web savvy church, and we seek to utilize those attributes to bring in a particularly big windfall.
Our idea for a major new fund-raising campaign involves time travel and the lottery. Ever since the world was discovered to be round, scientists and explorers have known that there are times when it is Tuesday in one place yet it remains Monday somewhere else. We plan on turning this often ignored fact to our advantage. By using super-fast Internet connections, we will have foreign Pastafarians on, say, Tuesday morning look up what the winning lottery numbers were and send them back to us where it’s still Monday (i.e., in the past). This scheme will require a lot of cooperation on the part of Pastafarians, and we are certainly up to the task. While some may question the ethics of such a plan, we argue that our ethical standards are rock solid when compared to tel-evangelical Christians who garner a fair amount of their wealth from recently cashed Social Security checks.
1. ETA 2007.
A Guide to the Holidays
While all days spent as a Pastafarian are indeed glorious, there are a few very special days, commonly known as “holidays,” when we celebrate His Noodly Presence.1
PASTOVER is a religious holiday analogous to the Jewish holiday of Passover, as well as the Christian holiday of Easter. During this time, Pastafarians across the globe are encouraged to eat copious amounts of pasta, usually spaghetti, which is cooked “in His image” by family members dressed as Pirates. Pastover celebrates the time when the Flying Spaghetti Monster first began touching people with His Noodly Appendage. Many stories about this momentous occasion have been passed down through the centuries, and it is interesting to note that they are all completely different. Some are hardly even intelligible. Regardless of one’s version of the story, however, all true believers partake of the pasta and perform the ritual Passing of the Eye Patch, in which each member at the table takes a turn wearing an eye patch and talking about why he or she is happy to have been touched.
RAMENDAN is