Happy Towel Day!

Posted on May 25, 2010 by Robert Coontz (Administrator)

May 25. It’s a “Hitchhiker’s Guide” thing. Do you know where your towel is?

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33 Responses to Happy Towel Day!

  1. Castle says:
    May 25, 2010 at 8:12 am

    Woo! You guys are really hoopy froods, I mean, yo, you know where YOUR towels are, maaaan.
    Never safe without one, 42, Marvin the Paranoid Android, Zaphod Beeblebrox and Mr. Dent certainly did have a Heart of Gold. Aaaaanyway, I think I may have gotten first post, but we love you, Douglas Adams, and Eoin Colfer has written a tribute sequel to his series,
    And Another Thing. Here’s an excerpt I’ve posted before, it’s funnier than Marvin.

    Anything that happens, happens.

    Anything that, in happening, causes something else to happen, causes something else to happen.

    Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again, happens again.

    It doesn’t necessarily do it in chronological order, though.
    Chapter 1

    The history of the Galaxy has got a little muddled, for a number of reasons: partly because those who are trying to keep track of it have got a little muddled, but also because some very muddling things have been happening anyway.

    One of the problems has to do with the speed of light and the difficulties involved in trying to exceed it. You can’t. Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws. The Hingefreel people of Arkintoofle Minor did try to build spaceships that were powered by bad news but they didn’t work particularly well and were so extremely unwelcome whenever they arrived anywhere that there wasn’t really any point in being there.

    So, by and large, the peoples of the Galaxy tended to languish in their own local muddles and the history of the Galaxy itself was, for a long time, largely cosmological.

    Which is not to say that people weren’t trying. They tried sending off fleets of spaceships to do battle or business in distant parts, but these usually took thousands of years to get anywhere. By the time they eventually arrived, other forms of travel had been discovered which made use of hyperspace to circumvent the speed of light, so that whatever battles it was that the slower-than-light fleets had been sent to fight had already been taken care of centuries earlier by the time they actually got there .

    This didn’t, of course, deter their crews from wanting to fight the battles anyway. They were trained, they were ready, they’d had a couple of thousand years’ sleep, they’d come a long way to do a tough job and by Zarquon they were going to do it.

    This was when the first major muddles of Galactic history set in, with battles continually re-erupting centuries after the issues they had been fought over had supposedly been settled. However, these muddles were as nothing to the ones which historians had to try and unravel once time-travel was discovered and battles started pre-erupting hundreds of years before the issues even arose. When the Infinite Improbability Drive arrived and whole planets started turning unexpectedly into banana fruitcake, the great history faculty of the University of MaxiMegalon finally gave up, closed itself down and surrendered its buildings to the rapidly growing joint faculty of Divinity and Water Polo, which had been after them for years.

    Which is all very well, of course, but it almost certainly means that no one will ever know for sure where, for instance, the Grebulons came from, or exactly what it was they wanted. And this is a pity, because if anybody had known anything about them, it is just possible that a most terrible catastrophe would have been averted — or at least would have had to find a different way to happen.

    Click, hum.

    The huge grey Grebulon reconnaissance ship moved silently through the black void. It was travelling at fabulous, breathtaking speed, yet appeared, against the glimmering background of a billion distant stars to be moving not at all. It was just one dark speck frozen against an infinite granularity of brilliant night.

    On board the ship, everything was as it had been for millennia, deeply dark and Silent.

    Click, hum.

    At least, almost everything.

    Click, click, hum.

    Click, hum, click, hum, click, hum.

    Click, click, click, click, click, hum.

    Hmmm.

    A low level supervising program woke up a slightly higher level supervising program deep in the ship’s semi-somnolent cyberbrain and reported to it that whenever it went click all it got was a hum.

    The higher level supervising program asked it what it was supposed to get, and the low level supervising program said that it couldn’t remember exactly, but thought it was probably more of a sort of distant satisfied sigh, wasn’t it? It didn’t know what this hum was. Click, hum, click, hum. That was all it was getting.

    The higher level supervising program considered this and didn’t like it. It asked the low level supervising program what exactly it was supervising and the low level supervising program said it couldn’t remember that either, just that it was something that was meant to go click, sigh every ten years or so, which usually happened without fail. It had tried to consult its error look-up table but couldn’t find it, which was why it had alerted the higher level supervising program to the problem .

    The higher level supervising program went to consult one of its own look-up tables to find out what the low level supervising program was meant to be supervising.

    It couldn’t find the look-up table .

    Odd.

    It looked again. All it got was an error message. It tried to look up the error message in its error message look-up table and couldn’t find that either. It allowed a couple of nanoseconds to go by while it went through all this again. Then it woke up its sector function supervisor.

    The sector function supervisor hit immediate problems. It called its supervising agent which hit problems too. Within a few millionths of a second virtual circuits that had lain dormant, some for years, some for centuries, were flaring into life throughout the ship. Something, somewhere, had gone terribly wrong, but none of the supervising programs could tell what it was. At every level, vital instructions were missing, and the instructions about what to do in the event of discovering that vital instructions were missing, were also missing.

    Small modules of software — agents — surged through the logical pathways, grouping, consulting, re-grouping. They quickly established that the ship’s memory, all the way back to its central mission module, was in tatters. No amount of interrogation could determine what it was that had happened. Even the central mission module itself seemed to be damaged.

    This made the whole problem very simple to deal with. Replace the central mission module. There was another one, a backup, an exact duplicate of the original. It had to be physically replaced because, for safety reasons, there was no link whatsoever between the original and its backup. Once the central mission module was replaced it could itself supervise the reconstruction of the rest of the system in every detail, and all would be well.

    Robots were instructed to bring the backup central mission module from the shielded strong room, where they guarded it, to the ship’s logic chamber for installation.

    This involved the lengthy exchange of emergency codes and protocols as the robots interrogated the agents as to the authenticity of the instructions. At last the robots were satisfied that all procedures were correct. They unpacked the backup central mission module from its storage housing, carried it out of the storage chamber, fell out of the ship and went spinning off into the void.

    This provided the first major clue as to what it was that was wrong.

    Further investigation quickly established what it was that had happened. A meteorite had knocked a large hole in the ship. The ship had not previously detected this because the meteorite had neatly knocked out that part of the ship’s processing equipment which was supposed to detect if the ship had been hit by a meteorite.

    The first thing to do was to try to seal up the hole. This turned out to be impossible, because the ship’s sensors couldn’t see that there was a hole, and the supervisors which should have said that the sensors weren’t working properly weren’t working properly and kept saying that the sensors were fine. The ship could only deduce the existence of the hole from the fact that the robots had clearly fallen out of it, taking its spare brain, which would have enabled it to see the hole, with them.

    The ship tried to think intelligently about this, failed, and then blanked out completely for a bit. It didn’t realise it had blanked out, of course, because it had blanked out. It was merely surprised to see the stars jump. After the third time the stars jumped the ship finally realised that it must be blanking out, and that it was time to take some serious decisions.

    It relaxed.

    Then it realised it hadn’t actually taken the serious decisions yet and panicked. It blanked out again for a bit. When it awoke again it sealed all the bulkheads around where it knew the unseen hole must be.

    It clearly hadn’t got to its destination yet, it thought, fitfully, but since it no longer had the faintest idea where its destination was or how to reach it, there seemed to be little point in continuing. It consulted what tiny scraps of instructions it could reconstruct from the tatters of its central mission module.

    “Your !!!!! !!!!! !!!!! year mission is to !!!!! !!!!! !!!!! !!!!!, !!!!! !!!!! !!!!! !!!!!, land !!!!! !!!!! !!!!! a safe distance !!!!! !!!!! ….. ….. ….. …. , land ….. ….. ….. monitor it. !!!!! !!!!! !!!!!…”

    All of the rest was complete garbage.

    Before it blanked out for good the ship would have to pass on those instructions, such as they were, to its more primitive subsidiary systems.

    It must also revive all of its crew.

    There was another problem. While the crew was in hibernation, the minds of all of its members, their memories, their identities and their understanding of what they had come to do, had all been transferred into the ship’s central mission module for safe keeping. The crew would not have the faintest idea of who they were or what they were doing there. Oh well.

    Just before it blanked out for the final time, the ship realised that its engines were beginning to give out too.

    The ship and its revived and confused crew coasted on under the control of its subsidiary automatic systems, which simply looked to land wherever they could find to land and monitor whatever they could find to monitor.

    As far as finding something to land on was concerned, they didn’t do very well. The planet they found was desolately cold and lonely, so achingly far from the sun that should warm it, that it took all of the Envir-O-Form machinery and LifeSupport-O-Systems they carried with them to render it, or at least enough parts of it, habitable. There were better planets nearer in, but the ship’s Strateej-O-Mat was obviously locked into Lurk mode and chose the most distant and unobtrusive planet and, furthermore, would not be gainsaid by anybody other than the ship’s Chief Strategic Officer. Since everybody on the ship had lost their minds no one knew who the Chief Strategic Officer was or, even if he could have been identified, how he was supposed to go about gainsaying the ship’s Strateej-O-Mat.

    As far as finding something to monitor was concerned, though, they hit solid gold.

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  2. cromwell says:
    May 25, 2010 at 11:07 am

    ‘And Another Thing’? *goes on a killing spree* *feels better*

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  3. KaiYves says:
    May 25, 2010 at 12:05 pm

    Oooh, and it’s been 2 years since Phoenix landed on Mars!

    (Two years already? Where did the time go?)

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  4. speller73 says:
    May 25, 2010 at 12:21 pm

    Hey, you sass that hoopy Museblog? There’s a frood who really knows where en’s towel is. :) *has had a towel in my backpack all day*

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  5. Jadestone says:
    May 25, 2010 at 1:35 pm

    I’ve got my towel.

    Also, I pretty much finished my plans for the Ultimate towel. Which I will describe later, one I bother to type it up…

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  6. Beetles says:
    May 25, 2010 at 3:07 pm

    I’ve got my towel!

    By the way, the answer to the 42nd question on my MCAS today was C. I wonder if that means anything…

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  7. You Are Never Safe Without A Towel says:
    May 25, 2010 at 3:16 pm

    Psh. I brought my towel to school today whilst fishy and daisy forgot! They were certainly not safe today! ;)

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  8. cromwell says:
    May 25, 2010 at 3:19 pm

    A towel in your back pack. Ha. Unfortunately, I only got one other person to flaunt their towel in my school. Oh well. Next Year.

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  9. JJjetplane-girlw/catsâ„¢, thinking about shortening/changing her name says:
    May 25, 2010 at 3:54 pm

    Happy Towel Day MuseBlog!!!!! In fact, I brought a towel to school today. :grin:

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    • Optimatum says:
      May 25, 2010 at 4:37 pm

      I was planning on it, but forgot.

      AND IT’S ALSO GEEK PRIDE DAY TODAY, FELLOW NERDS.

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      • Pseudonym says:
        May 25, 2010 at 6:04 pm

        OH NOES I’VE NEARLY MISSED IT!
        Oh well. At least I spent most of my day wearing a towel.
        Conclusion: Play soccer while wearing a towel cape is difficult.

        At the orthodontist’s office, I was using it as a cape, and Maggie’s friend heard some people talking about me, so he texted her, and the text said this: “The people in the corner were talking about [me]. They called [en] a boy and the guy said he’d like to meet [my] parents.”

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  10. You Are Never Safe Without A Towel says:
    May 25, 2010 at 4:31 pm

    “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.”

    ~Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

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  11. Piggy says:
    May 25, 2010 at 4:47 pm

    We miss you, Mr. Adams. You died far too young. So long, and thanks for all the fish…

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    • I-Man ((William II, OSW's Secretary)) says:
      May 25, 2010 at 6:37 pm

      Don’t worry, Douglas – we’ve left it so that the planet can still be described as “Mostly harmless”…

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  12. Bluestarrox says:
    May 25, 2010 at 9:34 pm

    DANG IT I FORGOT! Oh well. I shall do it tommorow.

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  13. draconis says:
    May 28, 2010 at 3:33 pm

    I carried a towel as a cape on towel day at school…Awesomeness

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  14. Thanks For All The Fish42 says:
    May 28, 2010 at 10:28 pm

    You have no idea how mad I was to learn that it was the 25th, after waiting in anticipation for MONTHS for towel day. Swat said to me, “Did you bring your towel?” O.O “IT IS NOT THE 25 ALREADY, IS IT!?” It was.

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  15. Choklit Orange says:
    May 29, 2010 at 1:42 am

    I got sent to the principal’s office for wearing a towel. It was only a little hand towel, for crying out loud. But it was seriously cold in the Drama room. Anyway, I got a big lecture on school uniform before the principal actually asked why I was wearing a towel rather than the uniform dull navy blue blazer, and I told him that my blazer was dirty and it was towel day. Which creeped him out, I think. Then I asked why I shouldn’t wear a towel, given that several girls in my grade are permitted to wear vampire teeth on the anniversary of the Twighlight saga (grr) and he asked whether I didn’t want to fit in with my peers. I managed to escape by drawing myself up to full height and demanding, “what peers?!” before fleeing the office.

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    • Robert Coontz (Administrator) says:
      May 29, 2010 at 6:45 am

      “What peers?” could be the MBer’s motto.

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      • Enceladus says:
        May 29, 2010 at 6:46 am

        *hugs both of you*

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        • SudoRandom says:
          May 29, 2010 at 12:06 pm

          Enceladus, stop hugging people. It is terrifying me.
          Choklit Orange- That entire dialogue with your principal is a win on your behalf. The HG2G Trilogy is infinitely better than the Twilight Saga, and the “what peers” line just made my day. You are the best.

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          • fireandhemlock1996 says:
            May 29, 2010 at 1:34 pm

            Yes. Enc, why do you keep hugging people? It is rather… I dunno. Strange?

            Also- OH CAKE IT I MISSED TOWEL DAYYYY *wails* I promised myself I’d wear a towel, even if it was a day where I wasn’t going to be going anywhere, but nooooo I FORGOT! TT_TT I can’t believe I forgot about Towel Day! TT_TT I feel like failblog. “Wait! There’s more fail!”

            “what peers?” I love that. XD And HG2G is WAY better than twilight, which doesn’t even deserve to be capitalized.

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    • bookgirl_me says:
      May 29, 2010 at 1:18 pm

      *hugs*
      You’re the best, don’t ever forget that.
      *gives chocolate*

      Why do principals seem convinced that you need to fit in with your peers? If it means conform to the majority of the girls in my class, I should start getting drunk at least once a week and getting worse marks and faking IDs so that I can get into certain parties/clubs…

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