Dick Summer Connection

This just in from a big tourist company: “What vacationers want to do most on vacation is nothing.” That’s not big news to those of us who are members of the Louie Louie Generation. But…remember that Big Louie…the head guy of the Louie Louie Generation says in my book Staying Happy Healthy And Hot…shameless plug…Big Louie always says, “There’s never enough time to do all the nothing you want to do.” And as usual, he’s right. Today’s podcast explains that  he’s right, but not for the reason you might think. You simply can’t do completely nothing, because doing nothing is doing something. Think of the word recreation. Re-Creation. Creation is a very big thing according to a very big best selling holy book…where it says God spent all week creating everything, then on the seventh day…even the Almighty God had to knock it off and rest for a day. He may have dropped into His favorite watering hole for a drink to unwind.

I do not seem to suffer from what might be called indecent composure. A guy in a restaurant pulled my window shade down and told me he was going to kick my ass. It sparked an instant reaction in me. It’s in today’s podcast. Before I knew what I was doing, I was on my feet ready to return the favor. He said that to me in public, right in front of my Lady Wonder Wench. I think this brings up an important question. How responsible would I have been if I had hit this guy and hurt him? It was pure reaction. No thought at all, just zap, on my feet ready to fight. I never met the guy. I had nothing against him. The only thing he had against me was that I pulled my shade up and the sun was hitting his eyes. I think that brings into question the idea of free will. For my part there was no WILL of any kind involved…I just got hit with a burst of belligerence. We’re taught that intelligence is one of the things that make us different from animals. We are supposed to use our intelligence to direct our free will. But what about that simple, savage, swift, reaction that happened to me? Who’s really in charge when a reaction roars so loud you can’t hear or feel anything else? Am I really responsible for a reaction as powerful and as automatic as that? If not, what does that say about our free will? Was there really such a thing as free will involved when I suddenly found myself on my feet ready to fight? If not, if we’re not always responsible for what we do, maybe we should remember that…the next time somebody does something that doesn’t make sense. Remember it, and start building some floats for the parades celebrating the arrival of non-judgment day.

It’s T.G.I.F, so it’s time for Dick’s Details. Dick’s Details is a bunch of totally unimportant stuff for you to stuff in one ear, so you can squeeze the really important stuff that’s scaring the stuffing out of you out the other ear, and you can react quickly to whatever is going on in your fantasy. It’s in the current podcast every Friday.The smart guys with the big telescopes tell us that the sun spews out more than a million tons of MATTER every second. Maybe that’s the answer to why people at the beach are always asking “what is the matter with you?” If the answer is “Karaoke,” what is the question? Don’t know do you. I’ll tell you in a minute. Speaking of the Japanese word Karaoke, there is a new and very popular self help book out in Japan that claims squeezing your butt 100 times will fight your depression. Of course, depending on your level of flatulence, squeezing your butt 100 times could well seriously depress all those around you. The zoo guys say “Male rabbits can’t walk. They always hop or leap.” Given the birth rate for which rabbits are justly famous, that suggests to me that female rabbits not only can walk, but they must be able to slink pretty nicely. In medieval Europe weddings often took place in baths. The bride and groom and the guests stood in the bath and food was placed in boats and passed around. I like to think we now have wedding showers instead because some guest of the bride got hungry when some guest of the groom sank his food boat. If the answer is Karaoke, the question is “What is the Japanese word for tone deaf.” The only way that won’t make you giggle is if “You’ve lost that lovin feeling.” Dick’s Details, they take your mind off your mind.

A little housekeeping here. If you like these podcasts, or the spoken word story CDs at dick summer dot com, or my book Staying Happy Healthy And Hot, available at Amazon dot com, please tell a couple of friends, because they might like them too, any you will be doing me a favor. Thanks

The guy in the restaurant who pulled the window shade down and told me he was going to kick my ass sparked an instant reaction in me. The story is in today’s podcast. Before I knew what I was doing, I was on my feet ready to return the favor. If I had thought it through, I might have just passed it off in what looking back on it, I might now call a burst of indecent composure. He said that to me in public, right in front of my Lady Wonder Wench. I think this brings up an important question. How responsible would I have been if I had hit this guy and hurt him? It was pure reaction. No thought at all, just zap, on my feet ready to fight. I never met the guy. I had nothing against him. The only thing he had against me was that I pulled the shade up and the sun was hitting his eyes. I think that brings into question the idea of free will. For my part there was no WILL of any kind involved…I just got hit with a burst of belligerence. Looking back on it now, I would have been smarter to just follow this wine truck.

There is such a difference between deciding what to do, and simply reacting without thinking. When that guy I was telling you about in today’s podcast came over to me, I just reacted…no thinking just reaction. If I had thought about it, I might not have been instantly ready to deck him. I might have thought I should cut him some slack. Maybe he was an unwanted child. Maybe the rattle his parents gave him still had the snake attached. Maybe I should have just told him to go home and throw his wife a bone. Maybe he was just going through a non entity crisis. Times like that make you wonder when that “Old enough to know better” stuff is going to kick in. There’s a story about the difference between carefully deciding and just reacting in my Night Connections 3 spoken word CD. It’s called Long Ago And Far Away.

When I was in my teens, I was a lifeguard at Coney Island.  Great memories in today’s podcast. In those days, if a fight broke out, the guy on the lifeguard chair where the fight broke out blew a long blast on his whistle, and stood up with both hands in the air. The guy on the chair on the next bay did the same thing…it was a signal the got passed down the whole beach pretty fast. The drill was that the guy on the chair stayed where he was to watch the water, but the other three life guards on that bay went running to deal with the fight. And it was fast. No time for thought. We were young. Invincible. Stupid. We should have had some kind of vehicle to help.

I was born and raised in Brooklyn, where you can go ten blocks and never leave the scene of a fight. In today’s podcast,  I was such a tough young guy that I could actually get taxis in Manhattan…right at Penn Station. I instantly and completely forgot that at my present Louie Louie Generation stage of life, weight lifting consists of just managing to stand up. These days it takes me longer to recover than it did to tire me out in the first place. But without thinking, I was instantly on my feet. I had absolutely no thought going through my mind at all. It was all reaction. I have a long history of reactions like that. My parents took me to Coney Island the Summer I was five. I was building a sand castle, and some older kid…he must have been seven…maybe 8…this kid came over and kicked my castle. I had the same reaction. No thought. Just reaction. I jumped up and head butted the kid. Here’s a picture of what I guess that beach must look like today.

I like sitting by the window when my Lady and I go to Applebees for our regular Friday night dinner out. Here’s part of the story, for the rest please check today’s podcast. The window shade was down this Friday, so I pulled it back up so my Lady and I could watch the world outside spin around. We like to do that, because we like to watch the other people arriving for their Friday night dinners out. Are they holding hands? What’s he doing with a girl as pretty as she is? Oh please don’t bring that screaming kid in here. We had just started guessing what a young couple was watching on their smart phones as they were walking in, when a middle aged guy came storming over to our table, pulled the shade back down, looked at me and said, “You pulled that shade up so the sun is hitting me right in the eyes. I’m going to kick your ass.” Without thinking, I stood up fast, so I could return the favor. I have some martial arts training. I was pretty good at it. In fact after my first Karate lesson I found I could break a 2 inch board with my cast.

So we have the “N” word, the “F” word, and now the “D” word. Pretty soon we’ll be running out of letters for new words we can’t say.  Today’s podcast says…with good reason that Dick is not an offensive word.” No. Dick is my name. I am occasionally not offensive. Dick was also my dad’s name. Dick is my name, and the name of a couple of other reasonably un-offensive guys I know. I figured this would eventually happen because that’s where we’re going. This is becoming a “Win or Whine” society. Here’s a suggestion. If you feel you are in danger of being shocked & offended by something I might say, just pick up your smart phone and call whine one one and we will connect you with one of our agents in the Promised Land.

It’s T.G.I.F. which means it’s time for Dick’s Details from today’s podcast. Dick’s Details is a bunch of totally unimportant stuff for you to stuff in one ear, so you can squeeze the shocking stuff in your life that’s keeping your blood pressure registering in four digits out the other ear, and you can grab a grin and win. A farmer in France last week tried to scare away a group of nudists who were throwing nightly parties in his fields by leaving his bulls out at night. But the bulls refused to attack. More than likely it was because they figured nudists were harmless animals who were not after the ladies who were safely tucked away in the barn so why bother. Big Louie, the head guy in my book Staying Happy Healthy And Hot…Big Louie says that means the next time you’re confronted with a lot of bull just take your clothes off, and you’ll probably be all right. That does not apply to you Lady Wonder Wench. If the answer is, “Because they can’t talk dirty” what is the question? Don’t know do you. I’ll tell you in a minute. It says here that the longest earthworm ever found was 22 feet from head to tail. Whew. You could go fishing for whales with a worm like that.  And that brings up the question of how can you tell the difference between the head and the tail of an earthworm? Is one end better groomed than the other? The latest U.S. census shows that there are 43,429,000 single men in America and 53,133,000 single women. So there are 9,704,000 more single women than single men. Some guys I know have tried explaining to their girlfriends that it’s kind of a patriotic public service for single guys to have more than one girlfriend so the excess 9,704,000 women will have someone to keep them company on Saturday nights. That’s logical but it doesn’t work guys. If the answer is “Because they can’t talk dirty” the question is “What is the main reason dogs pant?” Because they can’t talk dirty. Down boy! Dick’s Details. They take your mind off your mind.

A little housekeeping here: If you like these podcasts, or my spoken word story CDs at www.dicksummer.com, or my book Staying Happy Healthy And Hot available at Amazon.com please tell a couple of friends, because they might like them too, and you’d be doing me a big favor. Thanks.