I'd like to say magazines are like "a box of choklits" like Forrest Gump, but what they're really like is those pumpkin chocolate chip cookies you get at the grocery store -- the big fat fluffy ones. The big ones that let you sink you teeth really far in up to the gums and let you think about the next one already when you're eating the first one, because, hey, they're pumpkin, a vegetable, only one Weight Watchers point, right? (Okay, so I know that's not true, but a woman can dream, can't she?)

Magazines belie the idea reading is somehow intrinsically better than watching TV or going to the movies. Where did we get that idea? Romance novels, what's laughingly called historical fiction, chick lit, no one reads this stuff to learn anything. Sure, you may know a teeny bit more about the French Revolution or Russia in the Bolshevik years, but really, you and I are both reading to see "when does he kiss her."

Magazines make you feel like you're learning something while actually just giving you an excuse to lie down and do nothing. "People" magazine, for example, is about "people?" No, it's about Angelina Jolie and those casual photos of Brad walking in the park with their kids on his fabulous, probably steroid-pumped, shoulders. Or women coming out of Rodeo Drive stores with their puppies and enormous Gucci shopping bags with five of the same $180 T-shirt in different colors because they're "practical and fun."

I know this because given a choice between "National Geographic" and "Entertainment Weekly," well, I'm all over EW.

Yes, "National Geographic" is a magazine. But it has no information about families in Pittsburg with just a mom who has cancer and her three kids who adopt 36 homeless dogs and sell mail-order candy to feed them, so the mom, even though she's dying, really feels that her kids have learned valuable life skills that they can use after she's gone. What's not to love about that?

Another fabulous type of magazine is one in which I am being sold Kohler faucets to go with my granite bathroom sinks and my newly remodeled 30-foot-long kitchen. Clearly, anyone with a huge kitchen is not making four batches of cupcakes for her third grader's party because she would drop them by the time she picked them up and got them to the, again, granite counter top, with the wet dishtowel she used as a hot pad.

But somewhere in the back of my mind, I too am going to have a cobblestone hearth around my oven, if only we can take out all the other cabinets and the fridge and maybe the table where we eat, so it will fit. I also love anything that calls the family room a "great room" instead of "the TV room," which is what we call it.

I like "Real Simple" magazine which implies, in every article, that I have a wonderful job downtown and wear high heels and a scarf all day. I have learned how to decorate my holiday table in just five minutes. This, of course, feeds into my fantasy that I actually have a dinner table that doesn't have junk all over it and that we invite anyone over other than our kids and their kids; and their kids usually pull out all the Legos and spread them all over my "holiday" table, thereby decorating it for Christmas and every other day when the sun comes up and goes down.

I read homemaking magazines and buy into the idea and we're urbane, interesting people who have people over who read "The Atlantic Monthly" and the "New York Times." Wait, I get the Sunday "New York Times," but I only read the Style section. Sometimes, if I have time, I do the Travel section, but since the last trip I talked my husband into was "clear to Park City," and even that gave him heart palpitations, it doesn't really give me much to relate to.

I AM picky about my celebrities. Generally speaking, I go with the tried and true. If someone's only been a celebrity for a couple of years, why invest in them? Why put your heart out there when they could disappear like the Easter bunny after the baskets are hid?

I'm not saying my magazines make me a better or worse person, just happier. I understand why some feel like they need more quality fare.

And sometime maybe I'll invite them over and we can talk about world economic policy over my Lego-infested holiday table.