"I'm not sure you've really got this whole Object-Oriented thing down quite right..."

"We're allowed to have multi-character variable names now, you know."

I do so dislike the dentist.

"Is that a little sensitive?" "Yeah, if you STICK A SHARP METAL THING INTO IT, it is." "I see. Well, you'll need two onlays, which will cost eight hundred dollars more than whatever your insurance is willing to pay, and you'll have to come back four more times." "..." "Teach you to get fresh with me, boy."

That's not exactly how it went, but that's always how I come away feeling...

So these friendly Jehovah's Witnesses were talking to me about Bible stuff the other week, and for some reason that I forget at the moment we read Revelation chapter 14, where it talks about the hundred forty and four thousand, and how "These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins".

And rather casually they said "of course, that's a metaphor" (because in their story various married persons and all are member of that set).

Now, come on.

That's really specific and explicit.

It doesn't say "as pure as virgins" or "like virgins" or "as nifty as virgins", it says "they are virgins" and in particular that they "were not defiled with women."

If we can say that that's a metaphor, we can say that anything's a metaphor.

I mean, I can say that my theory that the Universe was created, and is ruled, by a committee of eighty-seven radishes named Fred, is perfectly Biblical, and where it talks about there being One God, that's just a metaphor for the wonderful consensus that exists among the Committee of Freds. And where it talks about Jesus being made in God's image, that doesn't mean that Jesus was actually a committee of radishes, it just means that he was as awesome as a committee of radishes.

It's a metaphor.

What else?

The little daughter (who I think I mentioned is apparently twenty years old) now has a driver's license! This is utterly terrifying, and also extremely convenient. She drove us all to a fancy restaurant last night or sometime to celebrate.

The kitten is still alternating between sleeping and pouncing anything that moves. M says she is much bigger than when we first got her, and M is always right about stuff like that (and, objectively, the kitten can no longer fit entirely into my sandal). On the other hand she (the kitten) still seems very smallish and kittenish to me, and I can still easily hold her in the air above my head in one hand for extended periods of time.

She makes the cutest baffled little faces when I do that, too.

(We have a million kitten pictures in the camera, but who can be bothered to extract them, y'know?)

I have a new little art gallery in SL, and I'm playing with ideas for a build for Burn2, wherein I have reserved a plot to build stuff on, which should be fun.

I want to write about partial-reserve banking sometime, because a couple of times now I've heard people decrying it as The Source Of All Evil, and this seems weird to me, or at least worth writing about in my weblog.

But I don't think I'll write that tonight.

Here is Full Metal Disney, which is pretty funny.

Oh, and speaking of YouTube, my Second Life self has his or her very own YouTube channel ("channel"), where I have thrown a couple of trippy Thingmaker videos. So now I am a certified XXIst Century Person, 'cause I have a youtube channel!

Also, the dentist has just sent me a Facebook Friend Request.

Shudder.