Yup, Britney Spears. On television. Judging others for their musical performances. Is this the shit, or is this the shit? Come on, pick one! There’s no wrong answers here today, folks! From MTV.com:

Simon Cowell has hinted that he wants to reload the judges panel on “X Factor” with two new women and according to reports, he’s close to landing a superstar who might help the second season of his talent contest much more interesting.

While names including Janet Jackson and Mariah Carey have been bandied about as possible replacements for Nicole Scherzinger and Paula Abdul,? the buzz has continued to focus on Britney Spears. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Spears’ fiancé/agent, Jason Trawick, is on the verge of closing a deal as early as next week.

Cowell has played it coy with the Spears rumors over the past several weeks, telling reporters in a conference call that “there’s going to be a lot of twists and turns over the next few weeks and a lot of things we’re going to announce.” A spokesperson for “Factor” could not be reached for comment at press time.

Now, again. How awesome would this be? Well, I’ll tell you. It’d be FRICKING FABULOUS. And if the rumors were true about LeAnn Rimes joining the cast, too? Oh, I would be in snark-the-f-ck out heaven. I would watch this show each and every single night that it’s on, and if you know me personally, you’ll know that’s quite a feat, considering the fact that, like Lindsay Lohan on a coke binge, I can barely sit still for more than five minutes at a time, let alone for an entire television show.

Other judges in “consideration” include Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson.

And finally, if you thought Paula Abdul was a crazy “live” television personality, just wait ’til the world gets a hold on Britney. If she gets this gig, she will have secured her place on television for the rest of her life. I mean, could you just imagine the continuous demand?

Photo courtesy of X17

Do you scare easily? Do you have a hard time forgetting disturbing images? Do you prefer to live in a world where Britney Spears never had any emotional issues in the public eye, where she sang songs like “… Baby One More Time” and “Oops! I Did It Again” and wore those fuzzy things in her hair and never once shaved her head in one of the more bizarre moments in recent pop culture history? Well, then you probably shouldn’t watch this video.

Oh, you already did? Huh. Sorry, I guess.

But hey, how disturbed are you right now? Because I’m creeped the hell out. I watched it once, then took some time to comes to terms with what happened, and then I watched it again. And again. And then I think I watched it one more time. It’s just so crazy to see Britney as a baby, then as a little Mouseketeer, then as a teen superstar, and then as the possessor of the craziest crazy eyes I have ever seen in my life. It’s unsettling, it really is.

In case you weren’t traumatized enough by this video of Britney, guess what! The skilled creator of the video has said that he’s working on one of these morphing nightmares dedicated to the face of dear Lindsay Lohan. What do you guys think, will that one be more or less terrifying than this one?

What were you guys doing back in back in 1999? You know, back when this video was shot. I was sixteen (not much younger than Britney herself), crushing hardcore on this dude from the swim team who already had a girlfriend, and with abs that were just as hot. What’s changed in the thirteen years that’s passed since? Well, I hooked up with the dude from the swim team about five years after the crush had subsided – the girlfriend was an ex-girlfriend by that point – and you know what? It wasn’t as awesome as I’d always imagined. The abs stayed pretty much where they were (OK, not as great as Britney’s eighteen-year-old abs, but pretty damned good abs for a twenty-eight year-old mother of one), and generally, things are super. Don’t you just love those middling years and how unpredictable they can be?

Ahem.

Britney, however, is in her own sort of cacophonous mess – sources close to her are saying that her upcoming wedding to Jason Trawick has her in bridezilla mode, and while I can’t exactly see Britney all waving her manicured hands around, ordering people to do this and that (because come on – Brit Brit probably hasn’t had a manicure since her ‘Sometimes’ days), I can understand that she could possibly be under a tremendous amount of pressure. From the UK’s Now magazine:

As she tries to prevent a feud breaking out between Jason’s family and hers, the pressure’s bringing her out in spots – which is stressing her out even more!

A friend says: ‘Brit’s been bombarded with instructions on where to have her wedding. Her family’s pushing to have the ceremony in Louisiana, but Jason’s family wants it back East.

‘Britney wanted it in Hawaii or at Elvis’s Graceland estate, but it looks like what she wants has to go on the back burner. She’s flipping out.’

Oh Britney. Let’s just take it easy for awhile and remember the easygoing, fun-loving days gone by, OK? Can we just do that for a minute, take a breather? Check out the original video below!

Just when you (OK, I) though Britney was looking better and almost at her hottest and happy and what not, she went and posed for this photograph, which is depicts her with her tour team.

And guys, in this picture. Man, she looks TERRIBLE. It looks like she’s suffered a some kind of depressive stroke. I know that might sound kind of bad, considering the mental state she’s been in over the past few years, but honestly, I’m totally pulling for Britney to get her life back together (even if it means not doing it as a worldwide performer in profession). But somebody – somebody – close to her has got to do something about helping her with those eyes.

Anyone in the audience out there who knows anything about certain kinds of anti-depressants that make your face look like a sad Kabuki mask? Is that what it is? Or has she just had so much stress heaped up on her back like a sack of potatoes that the weight and worry is bearing down and wearing her down? Or is it that another one of her tracks leaked – a track way back from 2003, which, some say, could have been the first descent into Britney’s meltdown?

The song in question is called “Look Who’s Talking Now”, off of Brit’s ‘In the Zone’ album, and I’m assuming that it’s got absolutely nothing to do with John Travolta and/or Kirstie Alley and pell-mell sperm traveling up the birth canal, but hey. One never knows, now, do they. Here’s the song:

Oh wait, no. Sorry. I lied. My bad! Here y’all are:

The track features Britney’s signature heavy breathing and little-kid voice. And also, why do I feel like I’ve been exercising to this song for at least a year now? Has it come out before now, or is it just really that bad that it sounds literally like every other club song that Britney’s released in the past ten years? Finally, at the 1:27 mark, does she say “I’m pickled everyday”? Because that would really make so, so much sense after all this time.

And thank God for that. I mean, when she married Jason Alexander, did she even have a ring? I don’t think so. And then, later, when she married Kevin Federline, she was probably too busy looking at the selection of morphine lollipops and Colt 45 in her pantry. I’m sure, in that case, she probably didn’t even realize she had a ring until the divorce was finalized. This engagement? She knows, guys. She’s aware of it, on board with it, and she’s actually even Tweeting about it. This would probably not only confirm that she realizes what a ring on her finger means, but she’s showing it to us so that we, too understand the impact and reality of what’s happening right now, and that kind of impact? GOES DEEP. Check it out:

See, in recent photos, Britney’s been lucid, excited, and showing some actual, focused emotion in her normally dead eyes. She looks healthy and happy and like she’s finally starting to resemble a real person, not a poor, misunderstood shell of a child forced into show business by parents who wanted to make a quick buck off of her and their other kids – a shell of a child who finally cracked after twenty years of doing what everyone told her to do and acting how everyone told her to act. It’s come full circle, and I think Britney’s honestly starting to come into her own (whatever that may be, really) and if that meant having to go through the dark, vine-choked jungle of minor insanity in order to emerge from the other side victorious and with a ring from a normal dude, then really, who are we to judge? She’s done her time and she’s looking well, so I think we should really try our best to not bring her down. It’s not like she’s this bloated, washed up alcoholic who makes out with her boyfriend in public all of the time and spends all of her hard-earned singing money on Pina Coladas so that she can’t even afford a back-up pair of cheap, thin black leggings.

We can always look to the bright side in that case, can’t we?

This is so refreshing, seriously. I’m so glad that she’s not getting married (for the third time) in your traditional Hollywood wedding, complete with ice sculptures, unpronouncable hors d’oeuvres, sixty-five bridesmaids, drunken pre-wedding  parties in Las Vegas, and televised specials that are done purely for financial gain. Awesome, right? Almost completely normal, considering all factors, you might say.

Also, not only is the soiree not even taking place in Hollywood, there’s more than likely no major celebrities that’ll be in attendance. This wedding’s going to be quite a gem, folks. No Hollywood glitz and glam this time around. Sources close to Britney claimed to In Touch that the wedding will be taking place in Britney’s hometown of Kentwood, Louisiana, and the menu will consist of down-home, regular-people food:

“She [Britney] wants a traditional Southern-style wedding with comfort food, surrounded by her family, her two sons and all of her childhood friends, as opposed to a Hollywood wedding. … Britney is taking this marriage really seriously.”

And I’m glad that she is taking this one seriously, really. Because what, aside from, like, a birth or a death, is to be taken more seriously than a marriage? And why even consider marrying someone who doesn’t even care about what basketball team where you’re going to be in five years, since they don’t intend on being around anyway? Why bother, really.

I just hope the “childhood friends” thing isn’t construed as an open invitation to all of Brit’s childhood friends, because I think it’d be awfully uncomfortable if that rascal Jason Alexander showed up, don’t you?