Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Daddy Jones's Lottery Eggs
If you've ever read the Moomin books you may remember that in "The Exploits of Moominpappa" they go to The Autocrat's party and that said Autocrat, who goes by the name of Daddy Jones, has organised a lottery.

The lottery is in the form of hidden eggs, each egg has a number on it and Daddy Jones then gives out prizes according to the numbers. Moominpappa is surprised to see that everybody get what they want, some get chocolate, Hodgkins wins a fret saw (fret saws feature a lot in this book) and Moominpappa himself gets useless stuff. This seems like magic, but Daddy Jones explains that he hid the eggs in a manner so that they would be found by the right people - He doesn't magically know what each and every one of them want, he just has an idea about the psyche of someone who looks for lottery eggs in plain view (They're lazy and want something edible) the more tricky eggs are found by crafty people, so these eggs are linked to tools, like a fret saw or other useful stuff and the last category is for the "outside the box" thinkers, the ones who look for eggs in the stream, they get silly things that only they see beauty in.

I'm not going to put a marketing slant on this, and I don't think you should either, just appreciate the beautiful mind of Tove Jansson.

In one or two days something exciting will happen here, so check back.

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