May 25, 2012: Towels

May 25.
Towel Day.
You're probably a little bit curious. Please, allow me to explain.
There once was a man by the name of Douglas Adams. He was brilliant.
He wrote a story entitled The HitchHikers' Guide to the Galaxy. And it's brilliant.
Douglas passed away in the year 2001. Every May 25, people all over the universe celebrate Towel Day, honoring the stories Adams wrote, and by doing so, him.

On Towel Day, people are encouraged to bring a towel with them, everywhere they go.
Although I have yet to leave my house today, I have been doing so.

You may be wondering. How is wearing a towel celebrating the life of a genius?

Well, in his books, there is a lengthy explanation of why towels are the most useful thing an intergalactic hitchhiker could have.

Would you like to read it?

Here you go:


 "A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker 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 thedesert 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."

So, there you have it.
Towels truly are wonderful, useful things.