"Look this good at fifty-six, you will not," sayeth Yoda.

I must admit, not one episode of "Dancing with the Stars" ever danced across my living room, but who can get away from it?

Recently, I detect mean comments directed at Miss Jane.

* special treatment to claim food poisoning, if she can't dance

* a presumption of arrogance

Who knows what's in people's hearts?

I gotta tell you, I saw "Sinbad" as a teenage, and you can imagine what that did for me.

Then in college, "Somewhere in Time."

That music was played at the wedding of my best friend.

Nowadays, Jane Seymour seems to have cast away coffee book romance, emerging dicey and strong as the older woman every twenty-something yearns for.

But she'll always have the baboon prince. 

 Amrita Thaper.

India.

Isn't she pretty?

The Ally McBeal of New Dehli.

I think they feed her twice per week. She gets to play with cats, eat rice, and make videos of how to stand up before fainting. 

India is amazing. All 1.4 billion of them crammed into a beautiful land, with cell phone towers.

Third world countries erase the past one hundred years of AT&T outrage.

All cell phones in Bangalore, all the time.

Dating is a not a problem over there, if you have a passport.

I'm thinking about it.

Dumb rocket scientists can't keep them in silk forever.

I saw "Ghandi," as a college kid. That qualifies me.

Okay, this is admittedly of the variety one might find in "US" magazine, or "People," but not a true tabloid (because photos are fuzzier).

Simple contest. Appeal on whatever level. Photos chosen at random. You know all about their careers.

Penguins on ice cast ballots. 

Contestant number 1:

Kirsten Dunst

 Contestant number 2:

Reese Witherspoon

 Contestant number 3:

Satan

You need not actually vote.

A strange ratings process exists that presumes they know how you think, from political candidates to TV and radio, when no one has ever asked.

You are just in the math.

Either that, or he wanted to meet Maria Sharapova in the worst way.

She really hits the ball hard.

Too bad it doesn't go in all the time.

No plan "B."

Girl kept staring at the dead man on the bench with a dull, fascinated eye of horror and disbelief.

Choke. Choke. Choke.

These aren't the meager droids you're looking for.

 Let's ask Ana what she thinks.

Take it easy girl. I've hyped you already.

Stop looking so pretty, all right? Sit down for a minute.

You don't have to laser every single ball into the corner, unless that's your "thing."

Stop enjoying it so much.

Clamourous confusion, upgrading wardrobe to lavendar.

Justine Henin munched lunch today, sits quietly.

Here is what Justine is thinking.

"Holy shit."

Ana, I'm your best fan. Saw you before anyone else.

Earns me something, right? Free .....um.... lessons?

Keep your dress intact, and the world is your oyster.

Out. Peace.

Maine begs a visit.

Always loved the idea of that snow-shrouded family of pines, straight out of something I read when I was twelve years old.

Crabapple Cove, home of Hawkeye Pierce.

Stephen King sightings. Seafood.

 Or as Julia Roberts so delicately put it in Mystic Pizza,

"There's a lotta fucking lobsters here."

Vacation spree is tempting, but look at this guy.

I can't leave him.

Happier at thirteen than I remember.

Traipsing hilly trails - not his thing.

Louis XVI in his boudoir.

EmersonCam keeps constant tabs.

Guess I'm stuck for the duration, clicking through DirecTV's 257 channels of nonsense.

He's accomplished much in his life, including beating me on the tennis court, and becoming an East Carolina staple on TV and in various venues.

Guitarists have long fingers. I wouldn't know.

Steve is married to Catherine Treadway Creech, originally from Gastonia, NC, a beautiful woman and prominent realtor in Greenville.

The couple has two daughters, Stephanie Peo and Cathy Kyriakakis, both of whom are vocalists, voice teachers, and have performed professionally.

Stephanie is married to baritone Ron Peo, former opera singer with Opera Nuremberg, who performed widely throughout the United States and Europe for more than twenty years.

 Steve Creech is a charter member of the Greenville Noon Rotary Club.

I come from the side of the family that loves harmony and says, "how do they do that?" You plink down three keys on a piano and wonder why it just "sounds right."

I sing in my car.

Here's a photo from one of the offshore islands.

It may even be the one where Demi Moore became blonde, tossed off sandals, moved to New York City with a butcher, and went on to ruin Jeff Daniel's life.

"The Butcher's Wife."

Of course she came back. They always come back.

Not entirely true, but it sounds true.

"You can't give your heart to a wild thing: the more you do, the stonger they get. Until they're strong enough to run into the wood. Or fly into a tree. Then a taller tree. Then the sky."

"If you let yourself love a wild thing. You'll end up looking at the sky."

I didn't know what that meant as a kid, but time seems to open up eyes as days sink away.

We realize it when a soft ripple of lake glides over rocks, then retreats.

Feel it in echoes. Holly Golightly.

Feel it with a cat afraid, drenched, lonely, bereft of hope in some neglected alley.

Threw herself at God's end to save it, because her whole world was finding that cat in the last moment.

Finding that cat. Saving that cat. Sparing the poor starving creature from the rain, from loneliness.

Saving it to be saved herself. 

"It's better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes and things disappear."

Truman Capote

"Survivor: China" link behind this gorgeous picture.

Ancient land. Modern times.

I'm not quite sure how they pulled off this show, but apparently they did. 

China is everywhere now, even to the point of allowing entire production studios to film, huge multi-national corporations, burgeoning tourism, and next year's Olympics.

Methinks this country of 1.4 billion lies no longer within itself, closed off from the rest of the world.

On the contrary. China is about to become a mega-power. I don't know how their communist control can at the same time allow free enterprise.

The USA seems to be going in the opposite direction: crush business and the middle class, tax the hell out of working Americans, income redistribution, government control over everything.

Hillary-ville.

Radio personality. Sense of humor Cancer survivor. Conservative. Wicked smart. You'd trust her with your kids.

Where are they all? I'm available.

I'm just on the other side of mid-forty, and interesting to observe prominent people of my own age, how they have changed along with me. A sort of measuring stick.

Choose carefully your icons.

TV news can hardly fall any lower. CNN is awful. The Hillary network. But FOX News is now just as bad. They lost their soul about five years ago.

If Shepard Smith did not stress every syllable as if he were witnessing the fiery destruction of the Hindenberg, I don't know what I would do.

And some of suits are so inarticulate, you wonder how they keep their jobs. Like Steve Doocy. He's terrible. I'm sure a nice guy and all, but really.

Blondes also seem to outweigh brunettes on Fox News. What's up with that?

Join me in a round of applause for fellow blogger "Tigger" and her new book.

You can visit Stacey's "Life Outside the Box" website through this link. Her professional information is here.

We all need to take better care of ourselves. God wants our own happiness not only to breathe easier everyday, but to better help others while we are helping ourselves.

Case studies shock to remind us how close to the edge so many wander, and over the edge. Which dozen or thousands, with encouragement formed upon sound principles, might have found firmer ground, a reason to smile at the sun?

Self-motivational platitudes have little lasting influence. We know when we are being patronized, even in the mirror.

God gave us a brain as well as feelings. Put a little organization into your thinking. Caring for ourselves is the furthest thing from selfishness.

Original and endearing. Just came and left after a few years, like most soap opera subplots.

Cute she was, a little on the thin side, but what are ya gonna do as a lawyer in the Boston area?

Lost, lost like the lost day, despite a few quirks and that concept, which is not catching on in corporate America, of the "universal bathroom."

She's real and yet... most people don't see unicorns dancing between courtroom closing arguments.

We all know she was never panicked about getting to "that age."

All expectancy. Dreading phone call from mother.

Writers touched by grace, or 80 hour work weeks.

Now all gone.

Dubai. Makes Monte-Carlo look like a poor pauper from Charles Dickens.

This little Arab country of a few dozen princes, surrounded by slave labor, does nothing if not promote Islamic extravagance.

They produce zero. Never invented anything. No contributions to advancement of mankind. Who needs a Reformation? Just laugh at the West while they self-destruct.

While waiting, simply sit on the wealthiest piece of sand estate in the world, smack dab in the middle of Arabia. All grace to Allah and a blank check.

How's your bank account lately?

Why work? You too can grow rich by poking holes in the ground, filling oil barrels at $5 a pop, then selling them for $80, but never call it blackmail. That might disrupt howling U.S. protesters and politicians who won't allow a small slice of Alaska to be drilled upon, nor any new refineries built.

"Let's see, Al-Greed-shira, what to do with all this money? I know. Let's put a hundred resort hotels (with A/C) on manufactured Palm Islands. We can make three of them for starters and let the capitalists spend even more money here?"

"Mecca Good idea, Al-lawyer-bama. Maybe we can rope in Japan and Southeast Asia while we're at it."

"True, but think not small. Let us recreate the world. After all, Al-Greed (can I call you "Al")? A few trillion dollars between friends is nothing new to the noble aspirations of our sacred families."

"Right you are, Al-Bama. But we must not destroy the infidels all at once. You know how many maids we require beyond the virgins promised to our brainwashed masses?"

"We can import them from the United States of Mexico easily enough."

"Ah, of course."

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