Hey all,<br><br>Towel day is tomorrow.<br><br><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"> To quote from <a href="http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/hhgg.html" target="_blank">The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</a>.</font>
<p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"> A
towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar
hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical<br>
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.</font></p>
<p align="center"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2"> 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.</font></p><br>