Tomorrow/today (depending on when you’re reading this) is Towel Day. On May 25th, we celebrate the life of Douglas Adams, author, among other things, of one of the best books ever written, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Why Towel Day? Well…to quote from HHGG:
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value - you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you - daft as a bush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
And how is Towel Day celebrated? By carrying a towel with you all day, of course! Carry a small towel, a big towel, any color, any shape, it doesn’t matter, just carry a towel with you all day long, and when somebody asks you about it, tell them why you are carrying the towel, and point them to the Towel Day site so they too can get into the spirit of this important geek celebration :)
Join us in celebrating one of the best comic minds ever to grace the earth :)
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