courtesy of xkcd

related posts:

1. xkcd: how to annoy field biologists

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker 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 bush, 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 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.

From: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams.

To the towelday.org homepage
(via)

related posts:

1. xkcd: interdisciplinary

some of my favourites:

“Can you hold… can you hold my starfish? It doesn’t like it when I’m getting excited. Oh look, it likes you! Its legs are all cree-py cree-py.”

“You can’t be a pirate if you haven’t got a beard. I said so. MY boat, MY rules.”
“We haven’t got a plank. Just fucking jump.”

“Oompa loompas don’t sing in heaven. They tidy up the clouds.”

“I can’t control the kittens. Too many whiskers! Too many whiskers!”

“Put it down! Step away from the yam. Step away!”

“Yeah. Don’t forget to dry-clean the baby.”

“When did you turn into a bug? Strange.”

“Oh, we’re going to be late for the pogo ballet, stop it!”

“Look out! Marshmallows!”

when asleep, adam (the husband described as being mild-mannered while awake) has a different vocabulary, and is not very fond of vegetarians.

if you think somebody made this up, there’s a youtube clip of the couple’s first tv show appearance

“There are certain days that remind me of why I ran for this office.
And then there are moments like this where I pardon a turkey and
send it to Disneyland.”
Barack Obama, Nov. 25th 2009

related posts:

1. a short visit to turkey

so true…
i just never get down to the point marked “wait, most of it is spam”.

via @olidax
comic courtesy of phdcomics.com