Freedom, Robots, Cats, Tomatoes, Misc.

•Well, “Freedom Week” on Fox Business Network has reached its climax, and in addition to the six episodes of Freedom Watch that ran this week, there’s the swell five-part online series about “The History of Liberty” on the Fox Nation site.

•But if you need a shorter, simpler summary of how American politics (and indeed all politics — and religion) works, you could do far worse than watch this three-minute music video about the Space Robots who want to save humans from the Terrible Secret of Space by pushing and shoving (h/t Bretigne Shaffer, who recently wrote about Afghanistan).

•Slate asks: “Is It Legal to Eat Your Cat?” after the strange story of the New York State man caught marinating his cat in his car trunk (h/t Diana Fleischman).

•Speaking of the thin line between predator and food, I noticed after writing about my old hometown of Norwich, CT in last month’s Book Selection entry that there is at least one famous son of Norwich besides Benedict Arnold and my novelist English teacher Wally Lamb: There is Costa Dillon, producer of the horror comedy film Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and later a park ranger (I mentioned this at our swell Thursday debate/poetry reading on imperialism, and someone claimed that it’s almost as difficult to get a park ranger job as it is to become president, which I do not believe).

•As if Norwich weren’t Victorian enough, I’ll post this month’s Book Selection entry soon, on A.N. Wilson’s After the Victorians.

•My fellow Freedom Week survivor Austin Petersen notes a few amusing items, which should distract and entertain those suffering from serious-politics overload or post-traumatic stress disorder, or even the sometimes-analogized condition of borderline personality disorder, not to mention people who are just vexed by the humidity:

–Atheists are doing joke de-baptisms using hair dryers. I’m supposed to tour the NYC HQ of Opus Dei this coming Friday thanks to Brian Finnerty and will have to ask them how they feel about this.

(On a related note, Michel Evanchik, creator — not mere webmaster — of the immigration site American-Rattlesnake — notes this cartoon about God loving atheists. I do not necessarily endorse the liberal tone of this cartoon nor the hair dryer thing.)

–As government grows to the fiscal breaking point, perhaps we’ll see a tension in pop culture between libertarian and fascistic themes. On the fascist side of the spectrum would fall these cool superhero posters, I think.

–This lovely sculpture strikes an ecumenical, fusionist tone while also reminding us that communism, Disney, and Christianity are all full of it.

–If those sound like fighting words, stop to consider this diagram of the futility of online arguments (and don’t be a futilitarian).

–And finally, note that the reporter character in this cartoon may resemble me even more than Julian Assange, the editor in chief of Wikileaks, does.