With the constant screaming of TMZ ringing in our ears, it's easy to forget that paparazzi perform a public service. Without their diligence, we wouldn't know precisely how washed out Eva Longoria looks without make-up. We wouldn't be able to feel superior to Katherine Heigl purely because she is a smoker. Ashton Kutcher wouldn't have anyone to P'Fict'n, and he'd probably have more time to make more movies like What Happens In Vegas. And, without paparazzi, we wouldn't have enough photographs of Britney Spears carrying frappucinos to encircle the globe 3 times, which may come in handy some day if Earth is ever besieged by an alien race that for some reason is repelled by photographic prints and we need to create a Britney Spears photo montage forcefield to wrap around our planet. (It could happen.)

But today we should all be especially grateful to paparazzi because they have provided us with this photograph of a dog peeing on Natalie Portman's leg.

Just think: if the paparazzi hadn't been there, clicking their shutters at the exact moment that this dog lifted his leg to Natalie Portman, this moment would have slipped away unnoticed. Maybe Portman would have told a stilted 'a dog peed on my leg once' story the next time she was on Letterman, or in a magazine interview, but it would just be a stupid thing that she said. With the photograph, it's a stupid thing that happened.

In fact, I'll never be able to think about Natalie Portman without seeing that dog peeing on her leg. Basically, this photograph is Natalie Portman now. Thank you, paparazzi. Seriously. I hope they start training dogs to do this and it becomes a trend.