A small-town council member from New York is making national headlines this week after becoming the first openly Pastafarian politician to be sworn into public office.

A devout member of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster had the cops called on him by employees at a Dayton, New Jersey, Motor Vehicle Commission facility after he demanded to be allowed to wear a pasta strainer on his head for his driver's license photo.

Even though he's a godless Chicagoland schoolteacher who majored in math and biology-science, Hemant Mehta still has some values. I know! The world's so complicated. Anyway, when Mehta heard about two Oregon churches being vandalized, he started fund-raising to help them finance their clean-up efforts.