May 25, 2007
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Don't Panic
Remember folks, today is May 25th, and on this day we are all supposed to mourn the loss of one of the greatest authors of all time, Douglas Adams. He was the one who graced the world with The Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy series. Today, we honor him by carrying a towel with us all day in a celebration known as...
TOWEL DAY
Towel Day 2005 in AustriaA 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.
