• Apeman42@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    5 days ago

    A towel, [the Hitchhiker’s Guide] 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 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 — 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 (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 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.)

    • noerdman@discuss.tchncs.deOP
      15·
      5 days ago

      ‘Here, suck this,’ said Roosta, offering Zaphod his towel. Zaphod stared at him as if he expected a cuckoo to leap out of his forehead on a small spring. ‘It’s soaked in nutrients,’ explained Roosta. ‘What are you, a messy eater or something?’ said Zaphod. ‘The yellow stripes are high in protein, the green ones have vitamin B and C complexes, the little pink flowers contain wheatgerm extract.’ Zaphod took it and looked at it in amazement. ‘What are the brown stains?’ he asked. ‘Bar-B-Q sauce,’ said Roosta. ‘For when I get sick of wheatgerm.’ Zaphod sniffed it doubtfully. Even more doubtfully, he sucked a corner. He spat it out again. ‘Ugh,’ he stated. ‘Yes,’ said Roosta, ‘when I’ve had to suck that end I usually have to suck the other end a bit too.’ ‘Why,’ asked Zaphod suspiciously, ‘what’s in that?’ ‘Anti-depressants,’ said Roosta. ‘I’ve gone right off this towel, you know,’ said Zaphod, handing it back.