“In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.”

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even
more bizarre and inexplicable.There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”

“It is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it… anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”

“We don’t have to save the world. The world is big enough to look after itself. What we have to be concerned about is whether or not the world we live in will be capable of sustaining us in it.”

• Towel Day
• Douglas Adams: Parrots the Universe and Everything via youtube

Did you know that May 25th is towel day?  Me either.  My husband texted me from work, wondering if I would hang a towel outside to celebrate.  Being the random person that I am, I picked a lovely blue towel (I love blue!) from the 70s and hung it on a flag post in the front yard.

It has been 6 months since we moved, and I still have a few boxes of things to be sorted and organized, and my hall bathroom is still only 2/3 repainted.  I have spent the last 2 weeks trying to finish things up, and hope to be done by the end of next week – it is not too fun organizing everything, but it will be nice once its done.  And then I can craft again, and finish this:

Ex libris of my oldest son

Just a quick stop today to mention that today is Towel Day — a day to celebrate the life and work of Douglas Adams, who wrote The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy ”trilogy in five books.”  There was even a mention of it in the NY Times Sunday Book Reviews a couple of weeks ago.  ”Don’t Panic and Carry a Towel” became a mantra for people who are fond of his work (and in my house, there are some people — M and S, ahem — who fall into this category), and the mere mention of it couldn’t have come at a better time for me.

This past week, I’ve been anxious about a lot of little incidences that I’ve convinced myself have major, life-changing ramifications.  And they don’t, really, in the long run.  I find as a mother, I tend to worry more about everything — big, global issues affecting the planet all the way down to teeny, tiny possibilities affecting no one right this minute but could someday, you understand, if I’m not on top of them.

I think every woman, when she becomes a mother for the first time, becomes a kind of natural actuary.  Any mother can look at a situation involving kids and tell you the exact odds for every possible event that could happen.

Case in point:  Kid with untied shoes running on a concrete sidewalk in order to catch the school bus.  I’ll bet, if you’re a mom, you’ve already started your breakdown of how many things could go wrong with this picture:

• 63.1% chance that he’ll trip on his own shoelaces, scrape his knee and miss the bus.
• 16.3% chance that he’ll lose a shoe as he runs, have to stop to retrieve it, and miss the bus.
• 9.1% chance that he’ll just flat out miss the bus because he can’t run fast enough with his super-heavy backpack and the bus driver doesn’t see him waving his skinny arms and yelling to stop.
• 6.2% chance that he’ll be almost at the bus stop when he realizes that he forgot his homework on the kitchen table, stop, turn around to run home, yelling, “Hold the bus for me!”
• 5.3% chance that he’ll be just fine and catch the bus despite everything.

So today, I’m going to take a deep breath, try to put aside my worries, and run to the library to see if I can check out the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy video.  I’m going to try to remember not to panic and carry a towel, that most useful of all things.

And then next week, I’ll worry about what the heck we’re going to do on summer vacation.  Next week.

No, this morning was all about practicalities. Get downstairs and eat breakfast, rest my legs on the sofa to lessen the pain for a while. Then get ready for my Tai Chi class that doubles up as physio’ for me. That’s when I looked in the mirror. In ‘do-stuff’ mode. Just cover up the dark circles with some magic under-eye make-up and get ready to roll.

I had so much to do today. Or, more accurately, I had a lot to do by my standards!

I had a Tai Chi class to get to, in which I wanted to function as best I could, then I had to get home again (stuck in traffic for a while, ooh that doesn’t help the pain levels), get the laptop switched straight on and set up on my ‘laidback’ laptop stand that I can use on the bed. I had a study deadline to meet today, you see. And so, rather than dwelling on life, the universe and everything, my brain was preoccupied with the two tasks I had set myself today. Tai Chi and emailing off my work for my first study deadline of the year.

Plus the idea in the back of my head that I wanted to write a blog post today, because it is ‘Towel Day’ after all!

Yes, you read that correctly, it is indeed ‘Towel Day’! Those of you who are Douglas Adams fans will be nodding your heads already, of course. And perhaps our numbers have grown a little since the ‘Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ film release, who knows? (I was raised with the original TV version before I discovered the book. Good old Slartibartfast.  ). There must be a fair few people around the world now who are aware that the answer to ‘life, the universe and everything’ is actually, er, 42!

And on this day, all those hoopy froods reeaally know where their towels are at.

So, yes, all in all in a good day. A productive day. A painful legs day but not so much of a near-fainty day, despite the heat. Next time I look in the mirror I hope to espy a little satisfaction there. Some days we come out on top and fighting.

x

Coverage at Huffington Post…

More information on Douglas Adams and Towel Day here. And if you EVER get the chance, listen to the audiobook of the Hitchhiker’s Guide performed by Adams himself (I love Stephen Fry but no one does Adams like Adams. Every four or five years I listen through the entire series as he performed it). It’s an epic tale made more raucous and joyful through his personal expression of the humor and deep meaning within.

Finally, be sure to pack your Babelfish! 42!

May 25th has donned that worthy title for reasons like:

1. The release date of  Episode IV: A New Hope, the very first Star Wars movie, released  in 1977.  A great timeline of events from the conception to the birth of this epic saga and beyond, can be found here.
2. Tribute to author Douglas Adams, also known as Towel Day
3. Glorious 25 May day in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. A day where honor was given and tributes of lilac and hard-boiled eggs were bestowed on the fallen.  On this note, when Terry announced that he had Alzheimers, May 25th became a day for lovers of his work to wear lilac, in order to raise awareness about the disease.

Now, all that being said, the 35th anniversary of Star Wars is my absolute favorite thing about today!  Without The Force, where would be be?  Here is a link to the original trailer:

George Lucas changed our lives forever, and still continues to expand on the world he created.  So, I just want to take this time to say “Thank you!”

As happy as I am about celebrating the roots of the geekiness that made this a day to be celebrate, I think that it is also important to give props to the king and queen geek leaders of today.

Of course I’m talking about Felicia Day and Wil Weaton.  Individually, they are fan-frakkin-tastic, but together, they are mind-blowing!  You can follow their adventures through geekdom on the premium Youtube channel Geek & Sundry.  This channel is produced and developed by the queen herself, and both she and Wil produce original content for, and appear in, some of the shows.  They aren’t the only ones to thank for this glorious channel of course.  Joining Felicia Day on the list of executive producers is Kim Evey and Sheri Bryant.  The channel also stars the talents of Veronica Belmont, the Cast of The Guild, Paul & Storm, and also has a channel reserved to debut the first Dark Horse Motion Comics.  Speaking of The Guild, I’m sure by now you have all seen the Do You Wanna Date My Avatar video.  Well here is a new video, again starring the cast of the Guild and directed by Jed Weadon, called “I’m the One That’s Cool”

Well, that’s about it for the Geek Day post.  Don’t forget to subscribe to the Geek & Sundry YouTube channel here.  And May the Force be with you.

The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams is probably one the best books out there.  Towel Day is in commemoration of Douglas Adams and his work.  All around the globe people are celebrating by taking a towel with them.  There are even places which are giving discounts for certain events if you carry a towel with you.  I looked it up and found a local bar which is giving discounts on drinks if you have your towel.

So, keep your towel with you at all times because you never know when you might need it, don’t panic, and remember the answer is always 42.

Image courtesy of ThinkGeek.

So, in honor of the festivities that doubtless are going on in at least one geek’s parents’ basement, here is my favorite towel tip.

Sorry if this is too much info, but when I work out I sweat buckets. I keep a towel handy to mop my face, my arms, and to wipe off my gym equipment. It doesn’t take long for the towel to become so icky that I prefer letting the sweat drip off my brow rather than using it to dry my mug.

Midway through a grueling workout you may feel a little hesitant using your nasty gym towel to wipe your sweaty brow.

Don’t Panic!

The best way I’ve found to keep my towel drier and/or more hygienic is to designate one side to be used only with my face. For simplicity’s sake I always look for the tag and then turn over the towel—that side is designated for my face only. The opposite side is for my arms and the flip side is for gym equipment.

This is a simple towel hack, but I’ve found that it keeps things from getting yucky.

Gym rats, Steelers fans, and interstellar hitchhikers the galaxy over can all agree on one thing—the towel is about the most massively useful thing ever invented.

Do you have any geeky tips for today? Sound off in the comments below.

All images are from my flickr, unless otherwise noted.

Related articles

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• Geek Chic: Ways to Celebrate Geek Pride Day 2012! (krisrael.com)
• It’s getting even better to be a geek, new survey finds (geekwire.com)
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I would go on to read everything by Douglas Adams. I even read the Restaurant at the End of the Universe in one seating.  His writing still has an effect on me, as well as thousands of others in this tiny little world of ours.  And today, May 25^th, is Towel Day, a celebration of Douglas Adams and his work.  So today pick a Hitchhikers Guide up and give it a read, who knows where it will take you.

For more info a about towel day click here

That Skotte … There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is!

The back of this shirt has more stuff.

Towel Day is May 25th, and is a celebration of Douglas Adams.

Adams wrote several of the greatest stories in the English Language (according to us), most notably The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.  The eponymous Hitchhiker’s Guide is actually a bit like Wikipedia, offering made up fFacts about all sorts of things.  There is, however, a different website which is run a bit different, called h2g2 (as in Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), and covers a less stringent policy of relevancy.  Consider the articles on Crop Circles, Polymaths, Handrails, and of possible interest to our readers, Avoiding Avalanches.

Douglas Adams was moved to write about the marvel of the nascent information age in 1971, when he was drunk in a small town with a copy of a less-known book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Europe — which also sounds like a pretty good book to have on hand.  Wikiquote has some absolutely terrific lines fFrom Adams, who sadly died in 2001.

Douglas Adams insisted, in the book, that the towel was the most important thing a hitchhiker could have on hand at all times.

42 is, of course, the ultimate answer to the ultimate question of Life, The Universe, and Everything.

The shirt is fFrom J!NX.

Happy Towel Day!

This is on the back of the “42″ shirt.  It reads “Have Towel, Will travel.”  The towel is wrapped over the dood’s eyes.  Also, Skotte is wrapping a towel, of a similar manner.

The unsteadiness of the building’s flight made him feel sick with fear, and after a short while he took the towel from out of his holdall and did something with it which once again justified its supreme position in the list of useful things to take with you when you hitch-hike round the Galaxy. He put it over his head so he wouldn’t have to see what he was doing.

He experienced one of those “self” moments, one of those moments when you suddenly turn around and look at yourself and think “Who am I? What am I up to? What have I achieved? Am I doing well?” He whimpered very slightly.

– Life, the Universe and Everything

Any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

The shirt is fFrom J!NX.

“If you want to survive out here, you’ve got to know where your towel is.”

I have read most of Douglas Adams’ books. My best friend got me hooked in high school.
I usually keep a towel in my car – just in case. 

If you haven’t read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, you really should. The book is much better than the (new) movie. Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy the movie; it just missed so much. I think the BBC series was better.

” All my life I’ve had this strange feeling that there’s something big and sinister going on in the world.” –Arthur Dent

For a long time I recall thinking that. I guess nowadays, though, I don’t think of it so much as sinister, but just bigger than me. It’s actually quite comforting.

Ooh, also…. Alan Rickman as the voice of Marvin?! That guy could read me the dictionary any day. ::swoon:

I fell for Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy when I was a kid and still consider it to be one of the funniest books I’ve ever read. It features the adventures of a hapless galactic traveler named Arthur Dent after he’s saved from the Earth’s demolition (to make way for a galactic freeway). For Towel Day all you have to do is carry your towel and DON’T PANIC.  As the Hitchhiker’s Guide notes, “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’re new to Adams check out The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The audiobooks and radio plays are equally fabulous. There’s a cult classic 1980s BBC television series. Plus there’s a fun and strange Hollywood take with a cast including the likes of Mos Def, Zooey Deschanel, Martin Freeman, Bill Nighy, Alan Rickman, Helen Mirren and Stephen Fry.

And if you’ve already been moved by the writing of the man who gave us “the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything”—that’s 42—or if you’re just interested in great titles that include science fiction, fantasy, wit, inventiveness, and adventure, here are a few of my favorites to pass on to Hitchhiker’s fans:

The Gates by John Connolly is a little scary, hilarious and  fabulous. It’s the a story about a quirky 11-year-old boy who is the only one who knows his neighbors have opened a gap exposing the gates of Hell.

I absolutely love The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde introducing literary detective, Thursday Next. She’s on the hunt for a criminal mastermind out to kidnap characters from great works, including Jane Eyre.

And I found Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe funny, poignant, and strange. It’s a story of time machine repair, time loops and the relationships between fathers and sons.

- Jessica T., Public Services Head at CADL

I forgot my towel!

]]> http://aslongasimsinging.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/in-remembrance-of-douglas/ Fri, 25 May 2012 11:46:26 +0000 troy P. http://aslongasimsinging.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/in-remembrance-of-douglas/ http://sarah-painter.com/2012/05/25/towel-day-who-knew/ Fri, 25 May 2012 11:38:29 +0000 Sarah http://sarah-painter.com/2012/05/25/towel-day-who-knew/ I was introduced to Douglas Adams at a young age. I remember listening to Hitch-Hikers on the radio with my brother and picking up the books from my parents’ shelves as soon as I was able.

Despite these impeccable credentials, I wasn’t aware that May 25th is Towel Day in honour of the great man.

To celebrate, people are sharing their favourite Douglas Adams quotes on Twitter and I thought I’d join in. This is actually one of my brother’s favourites but it’s so apt for my state of mind today that I’m going with it:

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

So what’s with the towels? Well, according to the Guide itself:

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 mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-tohand-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-hitchhiker) 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 hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker 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 which has passed into hitch hiking slang, as in “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s 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.)

On top of that, today’s date provides an additional opportunity to point and laugh at fuzzy and arbitrary thinking, something I think Adams would have liked (based on very limited second-hand data):

25 + 5 + 12 = 42

42, in the world of the Guide, is the Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. The Ultimate Question, of course, is

What do you get if you multiply six by nine?

(No-one ever said the Universe made any sense, after all – although it does work in base 13.)

This is pure numerology, which is taken surprisingly (alarmingly) seriously by many people around the world (it’s what the Mayan Doomsday prophecies are based on, for instance). So go forth today, fellow hoopy froods, and spread the word about critical thinking in a humourous way, and don’t forget to bring a towel.

Douglas Adams – portrait courtesy of Wikipedia

Douglas Nöel Adams was born in Cambridge in 1952. At the same time in Cambridge, Crick, Watson and Franklin were discovering the other sort of DNA. Crick and Watson were awarded the Nobel Prize in 1962 for their work, but Franklin missed out because she died in 1958, and Nobel Prizes are not awarded posthumously.

Sorry, that was a digression. I digress a lot. So did Douglas Adams. He is well-known for saying, “I love deadlines. I love that whooshing noise they make when they go past.”

So why towels? Well, the anti-hero of the Hitch-Hiker’s books, Ford Prefect, was a roving reporter for the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. According to Prefect, “a good hitch-hiker always knows where his towel is.”

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels: 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 mindbogglingly 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.

(Adams, Douglas (1979), The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, Pan Books, London)

 So towels are, as we can see, extremely useful if not important. Which is why, every year, people across the world carry a towel with them on the 25th of May: just to remember to sass what a hoopy frood Douglas Adams really was.

Atheists don’t rest in peace. Their bodies decompose and their carbon, calcium, nitrogen, iron etc. are all redistributed around the planet. But sometimes, as is the case with Douglas Adams, atheists live on in their work. People remember them, people are guided by their thoughts and words, and although it is not immortality, it is a good start.

Gratuitous Advertising – Buy a towel! It has all the answers!

So I am not going to say RIP Douglas. I’m going to say I hope your atoms are redistributed in an interesting way: may some of your carbon be in a Playboy model. May some of your calcium end up in a rock star’s fingerbones. Maybe some of your nitrogen will end up in a grumpy old blogger sitting in a library?

Maybe it will. Douglas Adams lives on in me: I know where my towel is.

Last year, I carried a small coloured hand towel around school with me, prompting a few questions. This year, I’m on study leave and therefore am at home for most of the day. However, a cream bath towel is on the table next to me as I revise, and I will also be carrying it with me to my Friday evening activities – archery and band.

What’s more, I’m filming a video to submit for a fan music video thing, and though it’s unrelated to Hitchhiker’s, I’ll be carrying my towel.

Why is it such a big deal? Well, it’s said in the Hitchhiker’s Guide that the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have is a towel, so a day of reminding people to carry one can be no bad thing. But that’s not why I personally do it.

Many fandoms have a place to congregate – for the various incarnations of Sherlock Holmes it’s Baker Street, for Torchwood fans there’s the tower/monument thing in Cardiff under which the Hub was supposed to be, and so on.

Since most of the Hitchhiker’s Guide trilogy (of five) takes place off planet, on account of the Earth having been destroyed, there isn’t somewhere people can go to show their appreciation for the books/radio show/film, not really. And save for a habit of telling people not to panic, it’s not that easy to tell a Hitchhiker’s cosplayer from any other guy in a dressing gown.

Thus, Towel Day is an opportunity to remember Douglas Adams’ genius, to share your love of the series. It’s a chance to introduce people to it when they ask you questions, but it’s also a chance to find your fellow froods. They may not be the people you were expecting.

So carry your towel with pride, hitchhikers. Explain to any strags you meet why you’re carrying it. Greet any fellow travellers with a friendly message of support. Answer 42 to any question asked to which you do not know the answer.

And most of all, DON’T PANIC.