Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Poor Little Paris

Did you know that Paris Hilton has (allegedly) suffered "one of the single most egregious and reprehensible invasions of privacy ever committed against an individual"? Or at least that's what her lawyers are claiming in a new lawsuit Ms. Hilton has filed in federal court in California.

Turns out, according to the
complaint, Ms. Hilton had a moving company rent a storage unit for her. To "avoid garnering attention," the unit was put in the name of the moving company. The set-up allegedly looked like this: Paris would pay the moving company & the moving company would pay the storage company. Ms. Hilton claims she her accountants paid the moving company but the moving company never paid the storage company. She also alleges that the storage company sent delinquency notices to the moving company which were ignored.

After not receiving rental payments for several months, the storage company, not surprisingly, foreclosed on the unit and sold the Hilton collectibles (including, allegedly, some sensitive personal documents such as medical, legal and financial records and, get this, her "passports") at auction. The buyer at the auction, like any bright entrepreneur, then put everything on a website that you & I can check out for a mere $39.95 one-time fee. OR -- (since Paris doesn't really seem to know what happened) the buyer at the auction sold everything to a third-party who created the website.

Whatever. The gist is Paris Hilton had a storage unit. The storage company didn't get paid and auctioned off all her shit. Someone bought the contents of the storage unit at auction and either set up a website or sold the shit to someone else who set up a website. Now Paris wants her shit back. Oh, and Paris was supposedly "temporarily out of the country" when everything was put into storage, according to the complaint.

The buyer refused Mr. Hilton's offer to re-purchase the items from the auction and now she is suing under several theories, including copyright infringement. Get this -- 6 days ago, Mr. Hilton registered three "literary works" with the US Copyright Office. Today, she is suing for copyright infringement of those works. I'm no expert, but that seems a little fishy to me.

Anyway -- here are just some of my questions about all of this:
1. Assuming this is an invasion of privacy (which I will not concede), why is it "egregious and reprehensible"? It's not as if someone broke into her house and stole her shit while she was sleeping or mugged her at gun point and stole her purse. Was it "egregious and reprehensible" when Whitney's
shit got sold earlier this month? Would it be "egregious and reprehensible" if it was my storage unit that got auctioned off?

2. Who the fuck puts highly sensitive personal and financial records in a regular storage unit? Or rather - why the fuck would one of the richest bitches on the planet put her highly sensitive personal and financial records in a regular ole storage unit? Hello...ever heard of a fucking safe deposit box? And why the fuck did she even need a storage unit -- don't Mommy & Daddy have some place she could have put her shit? Hell - my mom lives in a 3 bedroom duplex and I stored my shit there when I spent a summer working in a another city.

3. Why the fuck would a gazillionnaire let some random moving company be in charge of paying her bills and keeping her shit safe? Even assuming that isn't a little crazy, why wouldn't you fucking pay attention to make sure the bills were actually paid? Or at least pay someone to pay attention for you. And, more importantly, if it is the moving company that fucked up, why the fuck isn't she suing them? (at least she isn't suing them in the complaint referenced above).

4. Am I to feel sorry for poor little Paris because she was so busy flitting around the world that she didn't have time to pay attention to her own personal financial matters? Is she so very special that the rules that apply to everyone else on the planet somehow don't apply to her? Sorry, but you don't see regular folks getting a break when it comes to paying their own bills.

And, finally, my most burning question....

If Ms. Hilton's passport was in the storage unit, as she claims, how the fuck did she leave the country??? Hell, regular people can't even go to Mexico or Canada anymore without a passport. What makes her so fucking special?

Photo provided with thanks to Roger Casas-Alatriste.

Friday, January 26, 2007

New Favorite Quote...

And the day will come, when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as His Father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva, in the brain of Jupiter.

Thomas Jefferson

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Books 2006

Books I read, re-read or gave up on in 2006...There are less books here than I would have liked -- which means I didn't get enough time for myself in 2006. Guess I'll have to work on that for 2007! FYI -- links are to the Bookcrossing site -- my favorite place to find books!!

The Good Wife Strikes Back by Elizabeth Buchan
The Winter Room by Gary Paulson (one of mom's books)
Eldest by Christopher Paolini (library book)
Rococo by Adriana Trigiani
The Chamber by John Grisham (bookring)
Standing in the Rainbow by Fannie Flagg (bookring)
My Uncle Napolean by Iraj Pezeshkzad
The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien
Inkheart by Cornelia Funke
The Shipping News by Annie Proulx (not yet registered)
Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer
The Monk Downstairs (not yet regstered)
Brokeback Mountain by Annie Proulx
The Street Lawyer by John Grisham
Dead Poet's Society by N.H. Kleinbaum
The Boy Next Door by Josie Lloyd & Emlyn Rees
Bogmail by Patrick McGinley
Revolution of Little Girls by Blanch McCrary Boyd
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
The Once and Future King by T.H. White
The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic by Sophie Kinsella
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Gypsy Masala by Preethi Nair
Confessions of a Sociopathic Social Climber by Adele Lang