Easter Egg hunt - Answers

Here I explain where five of my old posts included Easter Eggs.  If you've joined this halfway through, see the post two below this one to see what the questions were.

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A.  The gene-teller and what she told her

Sleevenotes:  This post is simply about the dangers of knowing too much about someone, and so trying to predict how a relationship will turn out.

Easter Egg:  Names of characters all relate to the structure of DNA.

The two pairs of the double date are only mentioned by their initials - A and T, and C and G.  These are the two "base pairs" of DNA:  Adenine, Thymine, Guanine and Cytosine.  Their four initials are used to denote DNA sequences e.g. GTCAGATAGCAGTA etc.

The biggest clue comes in the line:

"C and G - the other pair - had gone, back to base"

Note also that the "gene reader" herself - Madame Rosalind Elsie - is a reference to the female (and largely unsung) co-discoverer of the structure of DNA alongside Watson and Crick , Rosalind Elsie Franklin. 

Isabelle found Rosalind Elsie.  Callisto found A, T, G and C.

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B.  Studded Wit

Sleevenotes:  This is just a story inspired by University friends.

Easter Egg:  Hidden references to male and female genital piercing

The names of the three girls who worked in the piercing studio  - "Christina" "Isabella" and "Nefertiti" - are all types of female genital piercing.  Likewise the unsuspecting male student gets shot in the groin in front of the Prince Albert memorial - a "Prince Albert" being a male genital piercing.

There are also some references to the lyrics of the sixties pop-song "Sunny South Kensington" by Donovan Leitch, for no reason other than I like that song.

Callisto found the four parts of the egg.  Isabelle spotted the lyrics reference.

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C.  Tomorrow's Happiness Today

Sleevenotes:  Both this post and its Easter Egg are a fairly obvious allusion to some structural changes I made to my life the year before.  You fill in the rest.

Easter Egg:  Lipogram conveys drug reference

The incidence of the letter 'e' slowly falls as this post progresses, being completely absent from the last two paragraphs. This is an example of the most common type of lipogram.

No-one got this (altough I did wonder if The Spooky Poet was getting close) - perhaps it was too subtle. 

Another Easter Egg: The clue I gave to this Easter Egg was itself e-less: "Study this post. It's not so much what's in it, but what isn't (or isn't much, anyway)."

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D.  A Thousand Londons

Sleevenotes:  This post was not so much a work of fiction as an attempt to rationalise, or at least contextualise, the various consequences of my binge-drinking.  Being displaced, talking to strange people, waking up in strange places, not remembering where I'd been etc.

Easter Egg:  Allusion to "Dune" by Frank Herbert

The single sentence in Polish in this post actually says "Don't leave me now, Kwisatz Haderach!" - because "Kwisatz Haderach" isn't Polish at all, but a corruption of Hebrew meaning something like "the one who can be in many places at once." 

This is a nod to the sci-fi novel "Dune" by Frank Herbert, in which the central plot device, the spice melange, is a precious drug that enables travel through time and space - just like my noctilukre lets me travel between Londons.  The "Kwisatz Haderach" is the name given to the book's prophesised hero, Paul Atreides.

Isabelle spotted this.

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E.  7H3 D0RK5 0F P3RC3P710N

Sleevenotes:  This post is about a (real) friend of mine who had been told it was a good idea to take LSD in order to better understand some of the more abstract aspects of computer programming - almost like a rite of passage into the higher realms of coding.

Easter Egg:  Allusion to the final paragraph of "The Doors of Perception" by Aldous Huxley

In "The Doors of perception" Huxley describes a kind of literary-chemical experiment, in which he deliberately takes a hallucinogen (mescaline) in order to describe its effects on his consciousness - almost as if he were a travel writer. 

At the very end of his "trip" Huxley writes:

"The man who comes back through the Door in the Wall will never be quite the same as the man who went out. He will be wiser but less sure, happier but less self-satisfied, humbler in acknowledging his ignorance yet better equipped to understand the relationship of words to things, of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend."

Compare this with my description of my friend, after HIS experience (I've put it into plain-text for ease):

"So he came back through the firewall, not quite the same as the man who went out.  Clued-up but less cocky, chuffed but not smug, weirded-out but able to understand the relationship between Strings and Objects, and how system rules can never process the null, no matter how many interactions."

Just imagine how many geek points I get for turning: "the relationship of systematic reasoning to the unfathomable mystery which it tries, forever vainly, to comprehend." into "how system rules can never process the null".

Isabelle got this - pretty impressive!

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I never planned on sharing any of these Easter Eggs with you, but I hope you had fun looking for them. 

Commiserations to Isabelle and Callisto, who found the most eggs, and so may be burdened with the minds most like mine.

If you'll permit me, I'll keep slipping in the odd egg, here and there. 

And maybe another hunt next Easter.

Comments

[Tim Stannard]

It would appear that Isabelle and yourself may be made for each other.
Just call me Cilla.

[Peach]

Very good very good. Glad to see how far off the mark I was, but it was fun...

[Peach]

oh and ps thanks for getting mine - it was only for my private smiling but glad someone noticed it...

[looby]

Bum. Tim got there first.

[clarissa]

Ayayay, OE. I knew they were bound to soar over my head. Glad for the answers. x, c

[TSP]

I feel very stupid :)

[pocketpunk]

Shit........ feel like Manuel from Faulty Towers.
.......
i did get the DNA ref though.......but was to scared to put my hand up in class sir.....

[jonathan]

Damn- how devilishly intriguing of you OE! I am very seriously impressed indeed by those few respondents who succeeded where I, like many, singularly failed... almost hesitant about visiting Isabelle's newly-advertised blog now for fear the content will go right over my head (oh I'm still going though, if only to find out that title...)