But since I'm not in control of television programming (fingers crossed for next season!), Paris' future isn't in my hands. But it's also not in the hands of her critics, who are gleefully calling Paris "passé," and the bombing of her latest show the end of her career.

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It's a pretty incomprehensible list, as if Paris realized that most of the world knows everything interesting about her already, and had to scrape the bottom of the barrel (i.e., iTunes playlist) to come up with some data.

In case she wants to workshop it for a future article, I've printed her facts, along with some notes.

1. I love scrapbooking and creating albums as gifts for my friends and family.

More pictures of you and your friends hanging out isn't a "gift," it's a "tabloid."

2. I was born in NYC and grew up in a hotel.

I think you mean "as a hotel."

3. I'm an amazing cook. I'm really great at making big breakfasts, but my specialty is lasagna.

Oh, it's one of these things. "How much do you love eating, Paris?" "So much!"

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Hilton's decision to do this piece may have been somewhat predicated on another interview, one recently unearthed by author Neil Strauss in his book "Everyone Loves You When You're Dead." During her time with Strauss back in 1999, Paris allegedly said, "I can’t stand black guys. I would never touch one," moments after making out with Vin Diesel, who is half-black. (Paris' people are now looking into suing Strauss.) And that's not the first time these allegations have surfaced: in 2009, Darnell Riley "Six Degrees of Paris Hilton" also painted a pretty unflattering picture when he chronicled the socialite saying the N-word on camera.

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The whole ordeal is posted on "professional party-crasher" Paz's Facebook, where he recounts waking to find himself next to a giant red cake. You have to give the kid some credit, he has balls. Sure, he may write like Tucker Max, but this is 20 times more interesting of a story than Tucker's sexploits. But the gist of Paz's night can be summed up as this: Paz crashes Paris' birthday party, Paz gets ridiculously drunk, Paz decides to "rescue" the cake he estimates at $2,000.

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Hallmark messed with the wrong coke-carrying reality star when the trademark phrase -- no, seriously, Hilton has trademarked the phrase -- was the subject of a 2007 greeting card that cast "The Simple Life" star as a waitress informing a diner of the temperature of his victuals. Hot! Get it? Why anybody who actually cared enough to send the very best would waste a stamp on this sad excuse for a card is an enigma. What occasion in life would call for a Paris Hilton as a food server greeting? The late 2000s were a very different time, but I don't remember Hilton's existence becoming a greeting giving opportunity.

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She will serve a year of probation and avoid a felony charge under the terms of a plea deal worked out with prosecutors after the 29-year-old celebrity heiress pleaded guilty Monday to drug possession and obstructing an officer.

Hilton must complete a drug abuse program, pay a $2,000 fine and serve 200 hours of community service.

She faces a year in jail if she violates the probation and is arrested for anything other than a minor traffic violation.

Hilton was arrested Aug. 26 inside the Wynn resort, after police say a small plastic bag containing 0.8 of a gram of cocaine spilled out of her purse.

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Trouble is, the purse looks an awful lot like the one she so proudly posted on Twitter.

On July 15, the heiress bought herself a designer purse, and in a post-retail bliss, uploaded a picture of the glittering handbag on Twitter.  "Love My New Chanel Purse I got Today. :)," Hilton wrote.

Not sure she loves it anymore.

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Brazil's Secretariat for Women's Affairs said in a statement that "it devalues women -- in particular blond women" and called for it to be yanked from the air. A spokesman for a private ad regulation firm, which actually has tremendous pull in the country, explained the seeming contradiction between Brazil's sizzling image and the recent outrage: "The problem with the ad isn't a lack of clothing, but its sensual nature. A woman in a bikini on a beach isn't necessarily sensual; it depends on the context." According to the Washington Post, the company has "opened three separate investigations into the campaign." Three. Separate. Investigations.

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All of which made me strangely pleased today to learn from Dan Mitchell's The Business of Food blog at Slate's The Big Money that Andy Puzder, the CEO of CKE Restaurants, which owns both Carl's Jr and Hardee's, believes the governments of both California and Oregon are "socialist."

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The ad, called "Temple," mocks Obama's speech at the Democratic convention before the throngs at Invesco Field, as a female voice-over intones: "Take away the celebrity. The thrilling words. What's left? Old ideas masquerading as change."

The spot then goes on to accuse Obama of planning to raise taxes on everything from your income to your electric bill.

Watch the ad here:

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Now, I'm not saying you shouldn't be allowed to use photos of your supporters' daughters in your attack ads. But couldn't the McCain campaign find another overexposed (literally and figuratively) young woman to imply that Obama is a clueless starlet? Perhaps someone should make a different campaign contribution: a copy of Us Weekly.

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The big news this year was that while Paris Hilton did go to prison, she did not have sex on tape or flash poon in 2007. I know, this piece is going to be way shorter this year.

So let's get a move on. As always, organized into entirely arbitrary but organizationally useful categories, your Year in Sex.

Bare-assed babes

You may not ever have heard of Disney Channel cherub Vanessa Hudgens. If you are between the ages of 17 and 40, perhaps you've been forced to watch the "High School Musical" canon while visiting your sister's kids. "Oh, there's a sequel? Be a dear and pass Auntie the scotch." Hudgens is the milk-fed star of the films, and dates squeaky-freaking-clean costar Zac Efron (Right, like Judy Garland dated Mickey Rooney. Aren't we too smart for this kind of thing yet? Um, no). But when nekkid photos of 19-year-old lass Hudgens groping and touching tongues with a female friend hit the Internet, many of those who wouldn't know "Bop to the Top" if it clubbed them over the head with its synthetic Latin beat, suddenly perked up.

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But anonymity is never really the sociopath's goal, least of all now, when the mentally unstable have the media savvy to know how to get their message across, whether they're marching into Hillary Clinton's campaign office with fake explosives taped to their chests or mailing detailed videotaped tomes to the appropriate department at NBC News in order to clarify the nuances of their upcoming suicidal killing spree.

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Your kid may be getting a shoddy sex education but there's always ... Second Life. The online virtual world has a new area designed to teach kids about safe sex. Free digital condoms for all! No, really.

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In 1972 Nick took a picture of a 9-year-old girl named Kim. She was naked, running with her arms spread, 80 percent of her body burned by napalm. The picture won the Pulitzer Prize and hastened the end of an unnecessary war. Thirty-five years later to the day, he took a picture of Paris Hilton crying in a police car, returning to jail. "You look at the pictures," he says, "they're very similar. Her hair falls over her brow, both crying, open mouth. Also different. Kim was very poor, 80 percent of her body burned by napalm. Paris was in jail for three days."

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This chant, according to media reports, is being heard from the crowd wherever former Vice President Al Gore speaks.

Shudders of déjà vu. Do Democrats really want to stampede down that soggy path again?

Despite numerous polls claiming that registered Democrats like myself are happy with their current field of presidential contenders, the Gore boomlet betrays subterranean tremors of doubt. After two major televised debates by both parties, only a Pollyanna on helium would believe that any of the top-tier Democrats will definitely be able to defeat a leading Republican like Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani.

As the Bush presidency dissolves under the rain of tragic bulletins from the Iraq debacle, too many Democrats seem to believe that their party will simply sail into the White House in 2008. But the conservative grass roots are in open rebellion against the waffling Washington Republican establishment, most recently because of its bungling of the incendiary immigration issue. Campaigning against the rapidly deflating Bush zeppelin is a dead end.

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Earlier this week, though, there was a glimmer of hope: As Hilton began her 23-day stint in a Los Angeles jail (a sentence that had already been reduced by half), a nation joined hands and solemnly prayed that prison might be the one thing that could convince Hilton to put away the party dresses, close the cellphone, retire the baby-doll voice, put down the apple martini and go home. Together, we dared to dream that the dark realities of life in the big house would teach Hilton, once and for all, not only that drinking while driving isn't just bad publicity, it's a crime that endangers innocent people, but that we're tired of her face, and we want her to finally have the good taste to do what so many criminals and porn stars and flashers have done before, once they've had their comeuppance: disappear. Surely, Paris Hilton had the money and the resources and the good sense, at long sweet last, to finally make herself scarce!

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