19 June 2007

Ode to the Towel

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In my ever vigilant attempt to be less materialistic, I have realized that for one to be successful in such an endeavor, one requires variegated tools at one's disposal. By making use of swiss-army knife solutions, one can cut down on the number of items in one's possession. This is not only useful for nomadic people, but for those urban dwellers such as myself with a confined amount of space in which to live.

With this in mind, I present to you the ultimate in human engineering : the towel. Yes, the towel. The towel is much more than an absorbing piece of fabric. The towel is used to conceal AND to reveal. It can be used as a pillow or a blanket. It has served as both a symbol of sex and as a tool to clean up after sex! It is used to warm you up when you are cold, or it can be used to cool you down when you are warm. It can be used on the beach, in the woods, at home, on the street, in your hair or on the water.

Is there anything a towel can't do? The answer is quite obviously no. Douglas Adams acknowledged as much in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when he stated that a towel was the [most] "massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have."

Towels have been used to signal defeat - in the form of a white cloth or in the boxing ring. Towels have also been used by modern day sports fans as a sign of fellowship and an unflinching devotion to fighting on.

http://z.about.com/d/pittsburgh/1/0/e/8/terrible_towel.jpg

With such a wide array of uses, I wonder why I ever leave my front door without a towel!!