Do you know where your towel is?

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 vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft 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 avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); 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.

--Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Every year on May 25th we celebrate Towel Day in honor of the late Douglas Adams. Why May 25th? Well, its two weeks after his death (May 11th, 2001) which is how long it took the first one to be organized.

This year I am not going out and about, but my husband will be taking his first pre-calculus test and you can bet he'll have a towel with him for luck.

Think Geek has some various Towel Day merchandise for sale, including two different towels (Don't Panic and 42) and a "Don't Panic and Carry a Towel" t-shirt.

Daryl Hall has started a petition to get Google to recognize Towel Day on their website with a special logo. As of now there are 1602 signatures, but I think we can do a lot better than that.

Now I must say "So long and thanks for all the fish!" and go do some laundry... gotta keep those towels clean, you know.