Naming the Laptop

After all, the laptop is for writing. That is its essential purpose. Not browsing; not movie-watching. A few days of testing and it seems to suit admirably well. So it is time to get comfortable together and settle down to some real work...to start with, writing, anything at all, regularly.

So. The getting comfortable part. Computer and I must feel like a team. I had a long-term relationship with my last laptop, which has been succeeded by no other for several years. In the interests of making the pursuit of my writing a possibility, this one has come as a present. It meets my sole specifications. It has all I need in a laptop. But we require finalization in some gesture---we need a name to make us comfortable.

What is in a name?? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet...and I won't engage upon Anne-esque commentary on that subject, but I always feel there is a great deal in an aptly chosen name... let's see. Data won't do. Nor just, "Computer." Like "Cat" in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Darlene sounds like a personal secretary who eats too many donuts. Hm.

I think Cornelius is right. Cornelius, the half-dwarf, wizard-tutor of Lewis' Prince Caspian. Cornelius, the faithful believer precariously positioned as tutor in the royal household drawn up along the sketchy lines of Hamlet and his usurping uncle. Cornelius, who encounters endless prejudice on both counts of faith and race, doing the best he can to honor truth in faithless times and preserve a memory of history, even when history is denied; reason, when reason is gainsaid by an empty tradition of lawless lawmakers; literacy, when literacy is dangerous because of what you read and what you learn from it...what ideas you might be prompted to consider.

Yes. Cornelius is a fitting compatriot in these hapless times.