Om den intergalaktiske håndkledagen

Nok en gang folkens er det 25.mai, og som alle andre år tidligere markeres dette i store ordelag her på bloggen. 25.mai er nemlig den intergalaktiske håndkledagen, som hvert år markeres for å hylle den avdøde science fiction humor-forfatteren Douglas Adams. Årets håndkledag er likevel utrolig mye mer spesielt enn alle andre år, av en enkel årsak:

25 + 5+ 12 = 42

Tro det om du vil. It's not impossible, just very very improbable.

Hvorfor feirer man Douglas Adams med akkurat et håndkle, spør du kanskje? Vel, dersom du ikke har lest boka/sett filmen/sett serien (noe du definitivt bør ta deg tid til i sommersola), følger herved hva The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy har å si om håndklær:

"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 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-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 brush, but very, 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 [non-hitch hiker] 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."

Gratulerer med håndkledagen, alle sammen!

En håndlaget versjon av Marvin the Paranoid Android jeg fikk til bursdagen i fjor.