We often spend our afternoons in seclusion, where we can have the peace and quiet necessary to effectively brainstorm and think of the most insane possibilities for what might be Courtney Love's next headline. In all of our creative sessions, however, we never once got so fucked up as to imagine today's news: Courtney Love is claiming to be pregnant with the baby of British actor Steve Coogan, who's best known for his portrayal of fictional radio loser Alan Partridge.

• Courtney Love admits that she's on drugs. Really?! You don't say. A judge has now sentenced her to long-term inpatient rehab, which means Comedy Central roasts will return to their typical suckiness. [Reuters]
• Already vote for Gawker Hotties but still itching to make your opinion count? Take on Bruni vs. William Grimes. [Amateur Gourmet]
• It's the moment you've been waiting for: Starting Monday, the San Fran Chronicle will run Sean Penn's thespiatic dispatches from his time in Iran. Goody. [E&P]
• Desperate Housewife Marcia Cross is so not a lesbian that she's even getting married to a man. [CNN]
• Meanwhile, former pin-up turned bad sitcom possibility Jenny McCarthy is getting divorced. Playboy reunion spread TK. [Us Weekly]
• Feast upon the full line-up for this year's New Yorker Festival, Indie Rock edition. Save your pennies now, tix go on sale August 25. [ProductshopNYC]
• Or don't buy tickets at all out of protest; far be it from you to support this week's Target-sponsored New Yorker abortion. [ChiST]

Apparently, the Post has gone to desperate measures to make a profit, refusing to run a very important story online and, instead, forcing you to spend your hard-earned quarters on a paper copy, just to read the following update:

The latest in our round-the-clock coverage of EDGY NYC: 33-year-old Alfredo Morales has been arrested in connection with the drug-related deaths of Mellie Nicole Carballo and Maria Pesantez, both 18. The girls were found unconscious on Friday after reportedly injecting a nasty speedball, assumed to be derived from the same batch of highly-potent (or poisoned) heroin responsible for the recent slew of junkies gone to heaven.

• CBS News's search to save the Evening News hits a milestone: The network has started doing prototype episodes. [NYT]
• Should Jane become Brandon? If the advertisers have their way, yup. [WSJ]
• Jack Shafer stands up for the LES druggies. Because, damn it, someone's got to. [Slate]
• The Washington Post gets new gossip columnists, and we get to hold onto our beloved, slutty big sister. [Washingtonian]

So we sat down to write about our beloved Chinatown bus, one of which apparently burst into flames on Tuesday (no incoming visitors from D.C. or Boston were hurt). Just as we were about to predictably note that one gets what they pay for, we took a look at what we've been covering the past few days: heroin, stabbings, deadly personal trainers, and now, flammable mass transit. What the hell is going on?

The Daily News crashed yesterday's funeral for 18-year-old NYU student Maria Pesantez, who died Friday after presumably injecting a lethal dose of heroin and cocaine. Pesantez's death is one of a recent slew of heroin-related overdoses downtown, and her family is understandably searching for answers:

We'd normally be the last place on earth to deliver an anti-drug message, but after no less than six people have overdosed on heroin in the past week, we feel slightly compelled to ask that you put down the needle. Especially if your hookup is below 14th:

• Mariah Carey considers suing Eminem for defamation of character after the rapper plays voice messages allegedly from Carey during his concert. As if one man alone could be responsible for that woman's character issues. [Page Six]
• Former Libertine Pete Doherty was busted, again, on Friday for possession of crack cocaine and heroin. His on-and-off again fiancée Kate Moss is being urged by friends, again, to leave the addict. We see this ending rather badly, again. [R&M]
• Because the sun simply doesn't shine without a negative report on Martha Stewart, the indentured servants at her Bedford estate are complaining about low morale. Perhaps it's because they know that in a matter of months, they'll be replaced by Stewart's genetically engineered slavebots. [Page Six]
• At Pamela Anderson's recent Comedy Central roast, the jokes still seemed to steer towards Tom Cruise — probably because Scientology jokes are still a few days away from being as tired as bimbo jokes. [Scoop]

• Upon hearing that Paris Hilton's latest cinematic venture was slated to flop on the same day as that of Nicole Richie, Team Nicole pushes up the release of Kids in America to October 21. That's what It's an exciting race to see who can shamelessly promote themselves first! [Page Six]
• Jessica Simpson fans rip her clothes off while she innocently tries to shop. Apparently, the starlet didn't enjoy this, and her lack of enthusiasm sends father Joe into a violent, Jesus-fuelled rage. [R&M (2nd item)]
• After Cannabis Culture editor Marc Emery was arrested in Vancouver for selling millions of dollars' worth of the good stuff, maybe High Times might want to reduce the number of seed-selling ads in their pages. [Lowdown]
• Fridays are for Friedman, and Roger is all atwitter for the release of Stevie Wonder's latest album. Pray for a Grammy, Rog. Just pray. [Fox411]

We were so proud of her. But Courtney Love has come full circle, folks, and we cannot continue to ignore her very public fall from "grace:"

A quick lesson in metaphors, courtesy of the always-entertaining Craigslist:

It's good to know that we're not alone in our love of classic Donatella Versace rumors. Now that the designer has presumably cleaned up and de-cocained herself, she's so boring. From a reader comes yet another completely unconfirmed but totally plausible piece of nostalgia:

Inspired by Radar's nostalgia for Donatella Versace's finer, pre-blackout moments, we're going to indulge an old-but-fabulous Donatella story which, according to our lawyers, we are presenting you in a big bucket of "allegedly:"

Bear with us for a moment: A quick search on LexisNexis reveals that in the past month, there have been no less than 270 articles about crystal meth — and that's excluding the latest issue of Newsweek, which is weighed down with coverage of the drug. So, for the sake of math, let's say there's been 275 media mentions of meth (print only, because factoring in the tv news buzz would probably double the numbers) in the past month. That means that, every day for the past 31 days, there has been 8.87 articles per day about meth.

Slate has 1,200 words today on Colombian public policy, the South American country's new Justice and Peace Law, the history of its right-wing paramilitaries, the economics of drug trafficking, and why all of these factors are leading cocaine wholesalers to ship excess product to the United States.

Our daily update on THE RETURN OF FEAR was going to focus on this morning's reports of a suspicious package that drew all sorts of police attention around the Price Waterhouse Cooper building at 42nd Street and Madison, but that hullabaloo (predictably and thankfully) turned out to be a big bucket of nothing. Fine by us; we're far more disturbed by an exclusive report from the Post revealing one of Osama Bin Laden's most sinister plans. One year after 9/11, Bin Laden offered tens of millions of dollars to a Colombian drug cartel to purchase tons of cocaine. He planned to spike the drugs with poison and then resell the supply in the United States, thus killing thousands of otherwise innocent hipsters:

We remember going to the book party for Dave Itzkoff's Lads a year or so ago and being astonished to find his father there. It was the rare book party at which we'd actually read the book, and Itzkoff's father — Itzkoff's cocaine-addicted father, we should say, who is painted as a guy who spent a good deal of his time lying around the house in dirty, torn briefs — is sort of the book's villain.

• Courtney Love faints during a party at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel and awakens in Cedars-Sinai. She's adamant about her sobriety, and some are whispering about a possible poisoning. Dude, people, let Kurt Cobain go already. [R&M]
• Jane editor Jane Pratt escapes Tom Cruise unscathed: While filming her cameo in Vanilla Sky, some of Tom's friends (who we suspect were Thetanesque) approached Pratt about "getting to know Tom better." If only she had accepted, Joey Potter would still be with us. [Lowdown]
• Oh dear. After Ladies Home Journal beauty editor Nadine Haobsh gets her blog outed, Fashion Week Daily and New York mag's wee Faran Krentcil is supposedly behind Imaginary Socialite. [Page Six]
• While concert-goers in NYC, LA, and other major markets are paying up to $450 for prime seats for upcoming Rolling Stones shows, residents of "flyover country" are paying about $100 less. Nice to see that the coastal inflation isn't just limited to real estate. [Fox 411]

As arguably America's cultural capital (or so we'd like to think, anyhow, what with bands like Haunted Pussy running around), New York should take a lot of pride in the talented artists visiting our music scene. Last week, the family-friendly SummerStage series at Central Park, hosted the popular Candian band Broken Social Scene. When BSS's Dave Newfeld and a friend hit Lexington Park to stock up on their necessary pre-show weed (dude, you can't have an arts scene and expect sobriety), Newfeld experienced firsthand NYPD's legendary devotion to public safety: