We secretly feared that we'd return from our all-too-brief vacation to find the entire landscape of brain-smoothing tabloid gossip rendered unrecognizable by a new cast of characters spawned in the week between Christmas and New Year's Day, but luckily for us, Hollywood's Celebutard Continuity Department was hard at work ensuring that the earliest moments of 2007 were nearly indistinguishable from those of late '06. Depending on which account you read, serial vagina-flasher Britney Spears "collapsed," "passed out," or "decided to take a little cat nap" in the middle of Caesar's Palace's Pure nightclub in Vegas (motto: "What happens here, stays here, unless we can use your drunken antics for publicity purposes"), with an unconscious/sleeping Spears either being dragged out of the venue by her ankles or floating out peacefully on a pink, fluffy cloud while dreaming of teddy bears serenading the pop star and her well-cared-for babies with soothing lullabies. Even though Britney's reps have maintained that Child Protective Services hasn't been monitoring her well-publicized return to the club circuit (they've already written off Sean Preston and the other one as losses), that's no guarantee that its Pre-Neglect Division won't view her New Year's Eve misadventures as a red flag and swoop in to tie Spears' tubes before she and an opportunistic bouncer with dreams of a short-lived music career can produce a new litter of ignored offpsring.

• Britney collapses at New Year's party [LV Review Journal]
• Swoon City for boozy Britney [NY Daily News]
• Spears falls asleep in Vegas nightclub [AP]

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