... or, a celebration for Douglas Noel Adams - 11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001 - author of a trilogy in five parts: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
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| Douglas Adams |
The commemorative day was first held in 2001, two weeks after Adams' death from a heart attack aged 49. Fans of Adams' are often seen carrying a towel with them throughout the day.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy began life in 1978 as a BBC Radio 4 comedy, following the adventures of hapless Englishman Arthur Dent, as in the: "...late Dent, Arthur Dent," along with other key characters, including Ford Prefect, an alien who named himself after the... well, Ford Prefect!
Between 1979 and 1992, Adams wrote five books which developed the ideas from the original radio show. Other adaptations have included stage shows, television series, and the 2005 film, with Martin Freeman and Zooey Deschanel.
The significance of the towel is explained in The Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy (1979), the first of five novels in the Hitchiker's series. A towel is described as the "most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have", providing warmth and a barrier to "noxious fumes".
It is also said to have "immense psychological value", forcing a "strag", a non-hitch hiker, to assume that a hitch hiker "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., 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".
And if a Vogon wants to read some of his poetry to you...
"Oh freddled gruntbuggly;
thy micturations are to me.
As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee.
Groop I implore theemy foonting turlingdromes.
And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles,
Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon,
see if I don't!"
...you can always ram your towel down his throat!
Towel Day is held May 25... so I'm a day late, but as Douglas himself once said:
"I love deadlines. I love the 'whooshing' noise they make as they go by."
