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Related: Culture Forums, Support ForumsHappy Towel Day!
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[font color=green]Obligatory kitteh photo--with towel![/font]
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[font color=green]Don't forget to bring a towel![/font]
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[font color=green]It's a long ways away.[/font]
On Sunday May 25 fans worldwide of writer Douglas Adams will be observing the thirteeth annual Towel Day. First celebrated in 2001, two weeks after Adams death on May 11 at age 49, Towel Day is marked by carrying a towel all day, (re)experiencing The Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy and Adams other works, and the occasional Vogon poetry recital. Often a collection of towels is arranged for local animal shelters.
In Chapter 3 of the Hitchhikers Guide the iconic guidebook outlines how essential it is for the galactic traveller to always carry a towel:
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 the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft 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 avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you cant see it, it cant see you); 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 hitchhiker 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.
Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking slang, as in Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? Theres a frood who really knows where his towel is.
(Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
shenmue
(38,506 posts)Skittles
(153,169 posts)TexasTowelie
(112,236 posts)If that lady accompanies the towel, there is no way I'd ever forget to bring either of them!
MrMickeysMom
(20,453 posts)Snap to it!
TexasTowelie
(112,236 posts)I might have a bit of static cling though.
Surya Gayatri
(15,445 posts)A little history:
Towel Day
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towel_Day
Official name Towel Day
Observed by fans of the author Douglas Adams
Type International
Observances carrying a towel throughout the day
Date 25 May
Next time 25 May 2015
Frequency annual
Related to Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Towel Day is celebrated every year on 25 May as a tribute to the author Douglas Adams by his fans.[1] On this day, fans carry a towel with them, as described in Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, to demonstrate their appreciation for the books and the author. The commemoration was first held in 2001, two weeks after Adams' death on 11 May 2001.