Towel Day: May 25th

steveland?

Not sure where to post this.... Douglas Adams was an author, so I thought maybe literature, HHGTTG started as a radio show, so I thought maybe Music/Radio, and the HHGTTG movie is coming out so maybe Films.... but this seems like the place it'd get the biggest response...

http://www.towelday.kojv.net/

May 25th is Towel Day in memory of Douglas Adams when you're encouraged to carry a towel around with you all day..

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.

Just seemed like a funny idea

Karl Hungus

Don't forget to bring a towel!

Right, well I'm going drinking that day, and I'm gonna bring a towel to the pub with me.

funky penguin

steveland? wrote:

you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon

I've slept under a towel b4. It's not the nicest of things.

Then again it was a pretty sh1tty towel.

simu

I might get one of those ultra-compact shrunk towels for the day.

CathyMoran

Cool idea - but like Simu I might just bring around a compact towel for the day...

funky penguin

simu wrote:

I might get one of those ultra-compact shrunk towels for the day.

A sheet of bounty?

simu

No, those shrunk ones you see in airport shops. Don't know if you can get them anywhere else, though.

funky penguin

But with bounty you can wipe, rinse and still use it to clean that stubborn grease stain on your hob.

Rhyme

CathyMoran wrote:

Cool idea - but like Simu I might just bring around a compact towel for the day...

Face cloth?

steveland?

Rhyme wrote:

Face cloth?

Sanitary towel?

Creamy Goodness

Karl Hungus wrote:

Don't forget to bring a towel!

Right, well I'm going drinking that day, and I'm gonna bring a towel to the pub with me.

wanna get high?

simu

No, those tiny towels that expand into normal-sized towels when you add water. Actually, that might have been a hallucination as it sounds unlikely. Damn airports!

Sarky

simu wrote:

No, those tiny towels that expand into normal-sized towels when you add water. Actually, that might have been a hallucination as it sounds unlikely. Damn airports!

Isn't the whole point of a towel that it's dry, so it can absorb water from, say your hair or skin after a shower?

simu

Sarky wrote:

Isn't the whole point of a towel that it's dry, so it can absorb water from, say your hair or skin after a shower?

These ones are really tiny the first time you unwrap them (they're vacuum-packed), then they expand somehow and can be re-used but never returned to their original tiny size. (powerful metaphor there)

An intensive, 5-minute google reveals nothing, apart from this cryptic product.

GuanYin

simu wrote:

These ones are really tiny the first time you unwrap them (they're vacuum-packed), then they expand somehow and can be re-used but never returned to their original tiny size. (powerful metaphor there)

An intensive, 5-minute google reveals nothing, apart from this cryptic product.

No they exist, you can get them in survival/camping outlets and often in cheap crappy resorts as tourist gifts.

steveland?

I had one like that but it was a face cloth. And if I recall correctly it was a small turtle that became a facecloth when you wet it...

That poor turtle gave his life for my own cleanliness...

simu

Yay! Some results finally! This is what I meant: http://www.alyssassoapcottage.com/html_alyssas/magic_washcloths.htm

I made the mistake of thinking people would give them a prosaic name like "expanding towel" or "shrunk towel" but it's "magic towel" apparently.

and often in cheap crappy resorts as tourist gifts.

Ah, yes - the chance to buy such a wonderful towel would eliminate the crappiness.

Sarky

simu wrote:

Yay! Some results finally! This is what I meant: http://www.alyssassoapcottage.com/html_alyssas/magic_washcloths.htm

I found this bit of the website completely hilarious.

Just in time for Valentine's Day, new Heart Shaped magic washcloths!

"Here honey, I love you. Now get back in the kitchen".