Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2007/12/14/comments/

Paris Hilton goes for gold while crims are pretty in pink

w00t!

By Robin Lettice

Posted in Bootnotes, 14th December 2007 17:18 GMT

Comments Hello and welcome to the last comments roundup of the year. It's been a good one, with many wits and twits showing how wise or otherwise they are. We start with the latest news on a person who has become something of an institution around here (no, not amanfromMars).

Everyone's favourite heiress is reaching for new heights of class. A gilded Paris Hilton has been photographed sprawling naked in a desert. On purpose, apparently. She is also releasing her own line of champagne-like liquid in a can. We applaud this impressive example of entrepreneurial talent.

If Paris is selling it can we assume that it has a salty aftertaste?

Lloyd


Where's the Paris Hilton angle? Oh, no, wait. Nevermind...

Anonymous Coward


<wine pedant>

Er, Prosecco has been around for a long time in bottles and stands on its own merit (hic, pardon). It's never been one of the johnny-come-lately Champagne clones and is made from the Prosecco grape rather than the Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier and Chardonnay used in Champagne and its copies (yeah, I had to look that latter up). Describing its not being called Champagne as an effort to avoid lawsuits from France is not only inaccurate but bloody ignorant as well.

I'd expect this sort of thing from PH (who probably describes Irn Bru as alcohol free champagne), but not you guys.

Having said all that, they deserve to be sued for putting it in tins.......

</wine pedant>

TeeCee

We consider ourselves duly educated. Pass over a tin of bubbly.


The whole point about this well-researched article is to provide us hard El-Reg students and contributers with a little well-deserved and welcome relaxation from decyphering all the rubbish that I type and, more importantly - from wondering when, how many records, about what, are about to be lost from which department next. So, in order to achieve this, the delightful Ms Hilton has chosen (JUST FOR US MIND) to pose seductively with a tin of something remotely alcoholic and leave us with a lingering subconscious message that she's about to pour it over herself and that she'd like us to lick IT off.

(and THAT's the IT angle).

Slaine

Right, that's that debate settled for at least half an hour.


Police! Police! Someone's stolen the poor girl's nips! Get them back, quick!

Anonymous Coward


And to stick with the subject of booze, a 64-year-old German man made an impressively logical decision when told he could not take a litre of vodka onto a plane as hand baggage: he downed the lot. A doctor found him "unable to stand or function" and he was rushed to Nuremberg hospital to recover, but you had to give him his props:

Genius!

I do love old people. Go gramps go! Prove how retarded and life threatening their petty laws are!

lol.

Anon approves

Anonymous Coward


Allowing him to buy it duty free then not letting him take it on a connecting flight is stupid. It would have cost nothing to entrust the cabin crew with it until landing. But good on him for being able to down that much. I once saw a grizzly biker do a bottle of JD at a party. This was apparently his party trick. Someone told me he was gonna do it but until I saw it I didn't believe it.

Andy Hards


I love the idea of this. You can just picture his total defiance, making a big scene of downing the bottle and immediately realising he is heading for air passanger martyrdom.

Tim Lake


I think most of us can agree that downing a litre of Whisky is plain stupid, especially at age 64 when you should know better. A boy in 7th grade at my daughters school did the same during school a couple of years ago. Happily (for him), the hospital was fairly close. I was glad to hear that the other children just considered him stupid and not a bit heroic or cool.

But I find the 100ml rules and the way they are handled equally ridiculous. On my last trip to the US of A, I bought a bottle of booze in the tax free shop, which I had no problem bringing on board the intercontinental flight. But when changing planes in Chicago I was likewise told that I couldn't bring it on board. Luckily, I had had to carry my luggage through customs, so I could just open a suitcase and put the bottle there (taking out something else to make room). But if you are just transiting to another international flight, you don't have that option. Knowing this, the tax free shops ought to inquire customers if they will transfer before allowing them to buy bottles. But, of course, they won't, as this will hurt sales.

But tax free sales in airports is really quite silly. Planes carry tons of extra weight to carry goods that you (in most cases) can get in the airport where you land. They should really just let you select what you want before departure and let you pick it up at the destination airport. No hassle for the passengers to carry the stuff, no extra weight, no security issues etc.

Torben Mogensen


If he'd transfered the contents of the bottle into 10 seperate 100ml bottles it would have been ok to take it on board?

Mattyod

In a decision to mortify the linguistic purists among you, Merriam-Webster has crowned "w00t" Word of the Year for 2007. Other contenders included facebook (verb), blamestorming, and the less painful "conundrum", "quixotic","charlatan" and "Pecksniffian". You did not approve:


I'm sorry, it was my fault. I was going to vote for 'apathetic' (one of the other nominees) but couldn't be bothered. :(

Adrian Jackson


1 Mu57 54y 1 M mo57 D154PPo1n73D W17 7H12 73Rr18L3 d38453m3N7 of 73h Kw33n’2 3n9L15H.

Anonymous Coward

That hurt my eyes, Coward.


While it pains me to see made up words (w00t, etc.) being added to a dictionary (even ones that don't count, like American ones!), 'verbification' has been going on for a long time, and not just in IT.

Take 'Hoover', 'Xerox' and 'Velcro', for example - these are all brand names (I am probably in breach of something-or-other for not including the odd TM or (R) in there) that have become popular as verbs.

I just 'Googled' for similar things and there appear to be several sites dedicated to the concept. For starters, try this list... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_generic_and_genericized_trademarks.

James Pels


I rather like 'blamestorming'. So descriptive. in fact, I love all business-speak. It's a mixture of trying to make something sound cool and important when it's not (e.g. teleconferencing for a group phone call) and efforts to carefully avoid offending (from 'lessons' to 'lessons learned' to 'learnings' and now, since' learnings' suggests a deficiency, 'takeaways'). Words such as 'skill-set' make my day. You can see a middle manager or consultant suddenly thinking of 'let's take this off-line' and being totally, totally thrilled. Bless them, every one. Heck, I remember when 'liaising' was heard with a swift intake of breath; there was no verb variation of 'liaison', but suddenly 'liaison' was a word business people spoke, so a verb was required. (Liaison replaced, I believe, 'meeting with' .)

Hollerith


Hardline Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio has got his DUI charges pretty in pink, by making them bury dead alcoholics while dressed in pink clothing. 'Embarrass them into good behaviour' seems to be the idea. Arpaio also previous issued prison inmates with pink underwear. The man seems to have something of a fixation.

Best the good sheriff doesn't come to London with all the City striped suits in their pink shirts and matching pink ties (Yeah, WTF indeed) he'd probably take a cardiac over the number of criminals just left to walk the streets :-)

Anthony Hulse


Don't make me wear the pink! People might think I'm a girl! Or ghey! Oh noes!

Anonymous Coward


I do like the row of gold stars on his collar, though. It's got a certain "decorated by my three-year-old daughter" chic to it.

And if he keeps getting promoted, the ring of stars could go all the way 'round and meet at the back.

dodge


No, no, no! They shouldn't be dressed in pink shirts.

A pink tu-tu, on the other hand...

Trygve Henriksen


Actually, these sorts of ideas are used in several parts of the UK, it just wouldn't suit the Daily Mail to highlight that fact.

I used to live in an East Anglian city where 'yoof' on community service orders were formed into teams to remove graffiti; the usual practice was to get them to do it in their 'home' area, the humiliation proved to be an effective deterrent to further offending, and offending by their friends who did not want to experience the same treatment - a spell at Her Majesty's pleasure would not have had the same effect.

Andy Goodair


The pink underwear came about as I recall due to the prisoners habit of smuggling it out prison to sell (yes American crims are weird clearly) to the tune of tens of thousands of $$ worth every year. Since it started being pink, thefts have seemingly dropped to nil or virtually nil.

Anonymous Coward

Shocking. I of course get my underwear from the charity shop like a normal, upstanding citizen.

Where did everybody go? ®