Denne uka faller lørdag på 25. mai. Som enkelte lesere vet, er den 25. mai en spesiell dag i nerdesfæren. Det er nemlig dagen satt av til å feire Douglas Adams og hans fremste verk, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Derfor feirer man den intergalaktiske håndkledagen den 25. mai.

Hvorfor et håndkle? Fordi håndkle er det mest nyttige redskap en haiker kan ha, ifølge boka:

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.

Hence a phrase that has passed into hitchhiking 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.)

Med andre ord: Gratulerer med håndkledagen. Husk å feire den med brask og bram, fortrinnsvis med et håndkle i nærheten (og tenk noen filosofiske tanker med en viss hval.

Jeg har selvsagt funnet frem mitt håndkle der det står med store, betryggende, røde bokstaver "DON'T PANIC". I reserve har jeg også et håndhåndkle med tallet 42 trykket over hele den ene siden.

Bra du minnet meg på det.

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

Jeg må nok skamfult innrømme at jeg trolig hadde glemt det, om det ikke var for denne bloggen.

Jeg må nok skamfult innrømme at jeg trolig hadde glemt det, om det ikke var for denne bloggen.

Sjæl.

Jeg glemte av at det var håndkle-dagen, har ikke hadde nett denne helgen. Merkelig nok gikk jeg med et håndkle over skulderen hele Lørdag, gjorde jeg det undebevisst?

Det finnes latterlig mange rare dager. Dette er ikke noe unntak. Selge flere håndkleer er nok ideen.