TODAY'S TIDDLYWINKYDINK: TOWEL DAY

HAPPY TOWEL DAY!

Here's a picture of me with my towel.

It was a gift bestowed upon me by the folks at Nick at Night in appreciation for the work I did for them back in the mid 1990s.

The only trouble is..... I don't know where my towel is!

From Wikipedia:

Towel Day is celebrated every May 25 as a tribute by fans of the late author Douglas Adams. The commemoration was first held in 2001, two weeks after his death on May 11, 2001. On this day, fans carry a towel with them during the day to demonstrate their participation and mourning of the author. The towel is a reference to Adams's popular science fiction comedy series 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'.

The original article that began Towel Day was posted at "Binary Freedom", a short lived open source forum.

Towel Day:

A Tribute to Douglas Adams

Monday May 14, 2001 06:00am PDT

Douglas Adams will be missed by his fans worldwide. So that all his fans everywhere can pay tribute to this genius, I propose that two weeks after his passing (May 25, 2001) be marked as "Towel Day". All Douglas Adams fans are encouraged to carry a towel with them for the day, and preferably quote the popular books and television series constantly..

So long Douglas, and thanks for all the fish!

– D Clyde Williamson, 2001-05-14

Chris Campbell and his friends registered the website towelday.org to spread the word, reminding people not to forget to bring their towels. Towel Day was an immediate success among the fans and many people sent in pictures to show off themselves with their towels.

The original quote that referenced the greatness of towels is found in Adams' seminal work The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:

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, 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.

BCnU!

Toby OB

"Listen. It's a tough universe.
There's all sorts of people and things trying to do you,
kill you, rip you off, everything.
If you're going to survive out there,
you've really got to know where your towel is."
Ford Prefect
'The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy'