Tempters of fate! Sensible tempters, but still! US magazine is reporting the Associated Press has already written Brit's obit, which is standard news practice with celebrities, presidents and the like, but usually they're not, you know, 26. "We are not wishing it," the wire's entertainment editor said, "But if Britney passed away, it's easily one of the biggest stories in a long time." Good luck explaining that public quote at the pearly gates, pal! [US]

Despite a rearguard effort by a few crusty old editors, the newspapers haven't been able to resist the popular fascination with female celebrities who have it all (ah, aspirational!) and then throw it away in a binge of alcohol, drugs and cheap publicity (ah, such delightful schadenfreude!). Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears — playing the roles of fallen heiress, soused actress and white-trash pop star — have vied with eachother for media attention since they crossed over to the mainstream in 2003. As this chart shows, Paris Hilton was the first to break out into the supposedly serious media, in November 2003, when a private sex tape taken by her boyfriend hit the internet. Lindsay Lohan dominated 2005 with her eating disorder, but managed to get some attention for a movie, Just My Luck. This year's been the most competitive by far, with each of the three girls competing with DUI charges, jail terms, and breakdowns. And any squeamishness at newspapers and news weeklies has been overwhelmed by their need to remain competitive: they may disguise a gossip item in a worthy feature on teen alcoholism, but celebrity gossip is now all pervasive.

Our favorite millionaire underdog plans to sue the photographer who took the family photos of her that ended up on the over of OK! magazine. Dani Brubaker sold them to the tabloid for $1 mil, but they weren't supposed to be sold, or even public. Oops! (It's OK to date a paparazzo, however). Click the thumb to view the larger version of this grievous breach of trust. [Pagesix]

Human tabloid (humanoid, tablun?) Britney Spears wrote a suicide note, reports In Touch. It contained "lines from poems about death." She wrote it days before she was taken to the hospital. She left it on a bathroom counter. It was found by Sam Lutfi. It was "very sad." But more importantly what poetry does Britney Spears use to die with? If we had to guess, we'd say there was some G.K. Chesterton, some Shelley and even a little Yeats. After the jump, we take you inside the frazzled addled sad saddled muddled muddy mind of Ms. Spears.

We totally get the desire to squeeze every last drop of drama from Britney Spears' meltdown. But US Weekly is running dry. Their latest online exclusive: Britney, who has a "penchant for X-rated clothing, as the celebrity weekly helpfully reminds us, took a sip of orange soda. "Oh, that's good," she said. (Click thumb for the screenshot.)

Funny how even the driest of magazines finds a way to bring in the celebrity-obsessed reader. Portfolio's Duff McDonald makes a heroic effort to calculate the size of the Britney Spears economy. Record companies, paparazzi photographers, celebrity tabloids, and her estranged husband Kevin Federline: they all feed off the public's fascination with the popstar's rise, and fall. The pie chart shows the breakdown. One great data point: photo agency X17, which has paps working in round-the-clock shifts to ensure it doesn't miss a meltdown, garners 30% of its income from the troubled Spears.

Not completely unexpectedly, pop singer/damsel-in-distress Britney Spears didn't convince a Los Angeles County Judge yesterday that it would be a good idea if Jayden James and Sean Preston saw their mother more often. The judge denied visitation rights until next month. Oh yeah, mere Spears also didn't actually make it into the court house which could have adversely affected the judge's ruling in the case. Her ex-husband and a good father (perhaps by default only) Kevin Federline showed up early wearing a mohawk and a suit. Thanks AP!

The New York Post is reporting that The Animal may have been sippin' on a few Purple Monsters — a nastariffic homemade concoction of Red Bull, vodka and NyQuil — before she got carted off to Cedars-Sinai last week after refusing to turn the kids over to K-Fed's handlers. This explains a lot. `Cause there have been more than a few times that we've hit The Tuss and The `Quil a little too hard. Trust us, it turns everything into the scene in Knocked Up where Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd go to Cirque Du Soleil high on 'shrooms. Not fun.

[A crowd of paparazzi wait outside a Los Angeles courthouse today, hoping to get footage of Britney Spears, who was due there for a custody hearing. Shockingly, she did not show up. Reports have said that she sent her assistant instead. Image via Splash.]

It's the perfect business model. Finalpixx, the obscure paparazzo agency for which Britney Spears' boyfriend last worked, has scored a series of lucrative exclusives since he landed the troubled pop star. Now comes news that the Anglo-Afghan photographer, Adnan Ghalib, is also being paid by Spears to act as her personal assistant. Hollywood may be appalled by his mercenary nature; but the entertainment talent agencies at least must give a little grudging admiration for Ghalib's ability to make money at both ends.

Britney Spears' meltdown has been a boon for the celebrity-industrial complex. The biggest beneficiary of all, a photo agency called Finalpixx. This obscure outfit had exclusive pictures of the troubled pop star's getaway to Mexico, when other bigger names were fooled into believing she'd jetted to New York. Finalpixx's edge? Britney's current boyfriend, a paparazzo photographer called Adnan Ghalib, signed with them last year. All Ghalib needs do now is to knock her up (and sell the exclusive baby pictures) to complete the merger of the entertainment industry and the media that feeds off it. [Gatecrasher]

· Nicole Richie and That Guy From Good Charlotte had a bouncing baby girl and, as celebrities are wont to do, gave her two middle names. The diet for both mother and daughter begins tomorrow!
· I drink your milshake (dot com)!
· American Psycho gets a cuddly makeover (via BWE).
· Ever find yourself wondering what Paris, Britney and Lindsay would do if they used their powers for good instead of evil? Vh1's exceptional "Celebrity Eye Candy" has the answers. Now if only they had a website!
· Now that it's almost the weekend and you'll finally have some time to kill, take some time to peruse Slate's Movie Club.
· Jessica Alba like WHOA!
· And Maila Nurmi, best known as Vampira, died today at the age of 86. All we know is that Elvira better show her face at her funeral.

Is she in New York City? Is she in Mexico? Is she at a Shell station in Hermosa Beach buying cigs? These are the kinds of riveting questions that had a nation (and the Defamer staff) glued to the AM radio yesterday, furiously dialing between stations in search of an update on The Animal's whereabouts. While we eventually found out the answers (no, yes and yes), we thought about a few places that the paparazzi would never even THINK to look for Brit Brit.

Believe it or not, the Spears' family actually has a spokeswoman/business manager. Her name is Lou Taylor, she looks like Stockard Channing and she definitely needs to be fired. Recently she appeared on NBC on behalf of Jamie and Lynn Spears. She's steaming mad at Dr. Phil for talking about helping Britney. "Any statement that he made...are just inappropriate." Guess what, world? Lou Taylor's based in Brentwood, Tennessee. That are predictable! Also, re: things people don't know about the Spears' family, "Everyday Jamie goes to work as a professional chef, asking the Lord to honor the people he works for in the midst of the circumstances. That Lynn spears is a mother who is broken hearted...I'm so disturbed where we've gotten to be, the morbidity of watching the depravity of people suffering." Video after the jump.

There is no Hot Topic more sizzlingly appealing to the ladies of The View than the ongoing turmoil within the Spears family, who generously provide the show's debate-loving co-hosts with a fresh, pregnancy- or insanity-related misadventure crying out for their disapprobation on an almost daily basis.

She ran off yesterday afternoon with what must be the smoothest-talking paparazzo on the planet, Adnan Ghalib. Maybe she's coming here to check out the mental-health facilities at Bellevue? (They aren't nearly as nice as the ones in Cedars-Sinai, as Courtney Love remarked in a recent Myspace blog). Our recommendations for her trip to the Big Apple? We hear Bungalow 8 is a really fun club, and this place called Le Cirque is a pretty good place to eat. [TMZ]

• Britney's Drug Dealer Speaks [YouTube]

While our proprietary, patent-pending VirtuaPhil™ technology allowed you to experience what a showdown between the KingWorld tough-love swami and a Britney Spears well-past the verge of a nervous breakdown might have looked like, the actual footage from their historic meeting will never air. (Save, perhaps, for repeated 4 a.m. screenings on a rickety Super-8 projector in the doctor's home library, popping cashews into his mouth as he obsessively relives every moment of the intervention that got away.) Now the Spears family, whose only means of dealing with a situation involves relaying their problems to the nearest national media outlet, is on the attack, with frayed matriarch Lynne Spears and fecund tween daughter Jamie Lynn having dispatched a representative to The Today Show to insist they had never authorized a Britney-themed Dr. Phil episode.

• Mogul progeny are so hot right now! "Talent scout" Andrew Freston, son of former Viacom CEO Tom Freston, fought off the advances of two ladies, including Brittny Gastineau.[NYP]