So long and thanks for all the fish...

As a tribute to the late, great Douglas Adams, May 25th, 2 weeks after his death, is now Towel Day. If you've never read any of his work, I highly, very seriously recommend that you do so. Please don't let yourself be dissuaded by the movie that came out in 2005, or for that matter, the old 1981 version. If you can allow yourself to be open to anything wonderfully new and odd, start with the first in his series, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

I've always been a big fan of Douglas Adams, but I realize now that I'm only a minor fan compared to the masses out there in the world. Considering Towel Day has been in observance for several years and I'm just now finding out about it, I guess that says something. However, this year is a great year for me to begin celebrating - considering that I'm not working in an office any more, I can carry my towel with pride, and without my coworkers looking at me like I've lost my mind! Of couse I realize, if you've never read The Hitchhiker's Guide, you have no idea what I'm talking about or why we would celebrate by carrying a towel, and here again I will recommend that you read the book. But, just to give you a little insight, according the the Towel Day website, and quoting from the book:

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.

If you can't tell, you probably need to be either a fan of sci-fi, fantasy, or have a very open mind and a love of the unusual and comedy... but I really think this should be on everyone's read list. So, in honor of Douglas Adams, I will prepare my towel and carry it with pride as I celebrate a great author and a huge loss on Douglas Adam's Towel Day!

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So long and thanks for all the fish...

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