chatelaine-daily, flannery-dean

How to make 2011 a good financial year; Razbaby pacifiers recalled; Spain decides to butt out; dead birds fall from the sky in Arkansas, and Australia gets hit by intense flooding of “biblical proportions.”

The temperature hovered around 90 degrees on a beautiful sunny day this past weekend but that was nothing compared to my internal thermometer about three seconds after I heard this from a passing motorist. “Smile” the man shouted from the window of his rusty old van.

I’ll admit it: I can be a jerk. When I run into an acquaintance (sometimes even a friend) that has lost a lot of weight I often experience a pang of jealousy. Suddenly, my pants feel very tight and I’m conscious of the fact that I still haven’t lost that frosh fifteen (I graduated in 2001…)

Popular diet books may offer eccentric advice, such as taking ice-cold baths in the morning to shed pounds, or eating according to your blood type. But recent research reveals that the secret to losing weight and keeping weight off may be to apply a few practical principles in your life.

Sometimes it takes a Canadian icon to cut another Canadian icon down to size. Canadian film and theatre legend Gordon Pinsent did just that when he read aloud from Justin Beiber's new memoir on the most recent episode of This Hour Has 22 Minutes. Pinsent brings absurd gravitas to lines like "Singers aren't supposed to have dairy before a show, but we all know I'm a rule breaker." After reading a passage in which Beiber describes a bad haircut, Pinsent pauses to bring a hand to his furrowed brow before lamenting, "Dear God, what he must have gone through." To watch this exhibition of celebrity juxtaposition at its most jarringly hilarious, click here.