The Hitchiker'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
... use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wave your
towel in emergencies, and, of course, dry yourself off with it if it still
seems to be clean enough.
Ursa Minor Beta is, some say, one of the most appalling places in the known
Universe.
Although it is excruciatingly rich, horrifyingly sunny and more full of
wonderfully exciting people than a pomegranate is of pips, it can hardly be
insignificant that when a recent edition of "Playbeing" magazine Headlined
an article with the words "When you are tired of Ursa Minor Beta you are
tired of life," the suicide rate there quadrupled overnight....
