It's all about me

I'm glad Helen Mirren won the Oscar for best actress. She's a sexy old broad who can keep the minds of us libidinous old coots off the 22-year-olds at least for a few minutes every once in a while. I've very much enjoyed watching her as Detective Superintendent Jane Tennison in the "Prime Suspect" episodes of "Masterpiece Theatre," a wonderful detective series.

The 50 funniest Homer Simpson quotes. My favorite: Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand.

Parents are funny. I don't have a middle name, and neither do my brother and sister. My father didn't believe in them -- don't ask me why -- and put his foot down. This caused no end of consternation when I was growing up, in a part of the country where it's practically illegal to have only two names. And filling out forms remains a chore to this day -- do I use NMI (no middle initial) or NMN (no middle name)?

I don't mind if the lazy food handlers let the microbes attack the lettuce or the spinach. Even an occasional attack on meat is acceptable. But this is just too much:

A salmonella outbreak has prompted a national recall of two brands of peanut butter. The Indiana Department of Health confirms more than a dozen cases in Indiana.

In hindsight, I screwed up. I stayed home last week in my drafty, poorly insulated house during the most consecutive days of near-zero temperatures since 1982. And I'm back out here driving around during what may become the snowiest week of the last two winters. Oh, well.

If the publisher of The New York Times admits to being worried, I guess the rest of us should be, too:

Notes from the cold:

You will be glad to know that I have completed the rehab required by my unfortunate lapse of judgment in making sarcastic comments about funny-looking people. At first, I looked for a facility that offered weekend rehab, but I finally realized I had too much going on and could not make that much of a time commitment.

This doesn't shock me at all:

When Consumer Reports magazine compared coffee from mega-chain Starbucks with java from three fast-food restaurants, the surprising winner was

In the comments section of an earlier post, someboy mentioned Burger King commercials, which reminded me that a friend and I were talking about TV commercials that really creep us out. Four top the list.

1. The Burger King commercial where the guy wakes up next to the king. No homophobia here -- my friend is a gal, and it disturbs her even more than it does me. I bet it gives many women scary memories of guys they've woken up next to.