Polite Dissent

A quiet holiday weekend so far. My parents came up from St. Louis Friday night and we had a nice dinner at 2 Chez on the north side of Peoria (mmm…crab cakes). Saturday afternoon we traveled down the road (State Road 9, to be exact) to Mackinaw Valley Vineyard, a local winery. They had some excellent wines, and the Polite-Wife and I ended up buying a bottle of Eric’s Red and Edleweiss. Just going to take it easy the rest of the weekend: read some comics, watch NASCAR, and play Looneyland (I don’t know whether to thank Jog or strangle him for suggesting this game).

Sunday Blog-o-Bits:

• I missed Justice League Unlimited last night, but was able to catch it on repeat this afternoon. It was another good episode, this time starring Supergirl, Green Arrow, and the Question. Mike at Progressive Ruin sums it up best. I agree with him that “Tea” seems to be the JLU’s Powergirl, though the name threw me (but I guess they couldn’t exactly call her “Kara”, could they? Karen would have worked though); the scene with the injured Tea at the very end reminded me of JLE #9.
  There were some great lines, such as when the Question tells Supergirl “Don’t be ridiculous. I go through everyone’s trash” and when Green Arrow describes the Tea as more “mature.” And I do think that was Wildcat.
  (And I had to explain to the Polite-Wife who Powergirl was…that’s a long, laborious and mostly non-sensical history. And that’s before Crisis.)
• Johanna and Jon debate Defender Bear, a combination blog/web-comic. It’s worth a look even if most of the humor is subtle (at best) and the message is very un-subtle. (I did like the trout talking about “the Main Stream” though).
• We traveled to Best Buy this morning to find two DVDs: Hellboy and Batman the Animated Series. Of course, they were out of both (sigh). I did find the last disc I need of Big O, and the Polite-Wife picked up the latest episode of Last Exile. And we finally bought the “All in One” scanner/printer/copier/fax we’ve been talking about for a while as both our scanner and printer are terminal and not expected to survive.
• I’ve been having a problem with deer eating the plants in my butterfly garden, so when we were out this morning, I picked up some deer repellant spray. It’s active ingredients? Putrescent egg solids, capsicum (i.e. cayenne pepper oil), and garlic. Sounds like a classic Caesar salad dressing; all it’s missing are the anchovies. (Smells like Frank’s Red Hot Sauce when I was spraying it on)
• Also picked up Tales of a Librarian, a Tori Amos collection while at Best Buy. Appropriately, the songs are arranged according to the Dewey Decimal System. For instance, “Bliss” is listed under 120 Epistemology and 129 Origin and Destiny of Individual Souls. “Pretty Good Year” is listed under 520 Astronomy and 529.32 Calendars.