Hiro Protagonist

There was this cyberpunk thriller from a few years back called "Snow Crash" where this hacker/samurai delivered pizzas for the mob (Costa Nostra Pizza Co.) where he had to deliver pizzas in 30 minutes, otherwise the don had to personally deliver a free pizza to the customer -- and woe to the delivery boy who was late!

Anyway, the name of the main character was Hiro Protagonist. I don't know if I'm upset at how lazy a name that is, or if I'm miffed that I can't use it. Either way, I'm frustrated that I can't think of a good name for my main character in my novel (Writing begins Monday!). In this sci-fi space western action-adventure extravaganza, the hero is a combination of Ash, Zap Brannigan, Han Solo, Roger Wilco and Spaceman Spiff. The best name I could come up with is Spaceman Jones or Neptune Jim, but those both sound like I pulled them out of Uranus (hee hee!).

So, if one of my readers out there has any ideas (or all three of you) I'd welcome the input. If your idea gets used, you win a prize!

Major purchase ALERT!

I just spent $440 on a color PDA with built in WiFi and a folding keyboard. I got an iPAQ rx3115 Mobile Media Companion, which plays MP3s and videos and has Internet Explorer. I figure I can use this for Web access since I'm moving downtown Sunday, and if I'm going to be writing a novel in a month as part of NaNoWriMo, then I need a portable word processor and I'm too broke to buy a laptop. But this has Word on it, and it works pretty well -- and was half the price of a laptop.

Now I'm ready to start writing,and Wendy will be working on hers as well -- we just have to decide what month we'll start.

Are you pulling my leg?

After a fun-filled weekend in northern Illinois, I got back to Lawrence just before 5 a.m., woke up at about 2:30 in the afternoon, then got called into work because someone was sick. When I walked into the newsroom, I saw that Tuesday's newspaper had the lead headline: "Amputee happy to be reunited with foot."

I thought it was a joke. But it was true -- some guy whose foot was amputated three weeks ago kept it in a five gallon bucket of formaldehyde on his porch. He would show it to anyone who wanted to see it, and neighbors complained. The police briefly confiscated the foot, but he wasn't doing anything illegal, so he got it back. It's a very odd story, but it was one of our most-read articles in a while (Eric put his best foot forward in writing it). But sometimes it's weird what the best news of the day is.