chatelaine-daily, flannery-dean

Like many people, I rifle through Us magazine and In Touch when I’m in line at the grocery store and when I’m feeling rich I’ll bring those badboys home with me. That’s not all. Before I start working in the morning, I indulge in a little Daily Mail too (nobody writes a headline like the Daily Mail’s crew of wicked step sisters).

How was your childhood? Unhappy? Science says blame your brothers and sisters. A new British study has found that the more siblings, the unhappier the child. Only children, once thought to be lonely shut-ins, are apparently the happiest of the lot. Possible reasons for this surprising discovery may include family bullying, lack of personal space, parental fatigue and having to fight for a parent's attentions.

The Internet is a strange place in which to spend one’s leisure time. It encourages both curiosity and perversity, and sometimes I don’t know where the one begins and the other ends.

One of this week’s most memorable headlines has to be also one of its grisliest: “50 Foot Woman Star Found ‘Mummified’ in Home.” Firstly, it’s not that often that the words “50 Foot Woman” and “Mummified” are used together in a sentence. Secondly, the tale it tells is pretty grim.

Though there'll be no more daily commune with the queen of talk once her show goes off the air at the end of this season, but you can bet we'll still be getting a healthy dose of Oprah in our lives, and she promises it will be "bitch"-free. Oprah's new network – aptly named the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) – will hit the airwaves this coming January 1. The queen herself took to the stage at Maria Shriver's Women's Conference in California and announced that her cable network will be "fun and entertaining without tearing people down and calling them bitches. Imagine that. Imagine." We are imagining it Oprah, and we can hardly wait.