error when running dpkg (or dependant apt tools)

I'm curious as for why your status file got broken, but for now try replacing

D"^@^@^@{WþÿeWþÿºWþÿ°^@^N^@éf"^@^@^@^@àb<9f>þÿÿÿÑCþÿÑCþÿ^@À¿þðçf¿²çf¿^@^@^@^P^Aþ¿þf^A^@^@^A^_7^W>Yþÿ^@^@^@^@ÂAþÿ^@^@^A^_7^WDBþÿ^@^Aþÿ^A^_7^GÔBþÿ^B^A¨D^@ø¿þ{WþÿeWþÿ§Wþÿ^@ø¿þ^D^@þÿ«Eþÿ^B^@þÿ®AIPª@þÿ provides some graphical effects in order to please the
 users play instinct.

with the correct text:

Description: A tool to take pictures and videos from your webcam
 Cheese is a cheesy program to take pictures and videos from your web
 cam. It also provides some graphical effects in order to please the
 users play instinct.

Your status file is corrupt, which is likely due to a hardware issue. That's not a bug, so I'm converting this in to a user question instead.

I have replaced the description as described by Phillip Muskovac.

The abnormal termination at line 21450 is gone when I run the "dpkg --configure -a" command,
but synaptic now reports
"You have 779 broken packages on your system!"

So the file corruption must have truncated some status data. I then issued the command:
"apt-get -f install" with no package name

much output....
The following packages will be upgraded:
  libxcb1 libxcb1-dev
2 upgraded, 819 newly installed, 3 to remove and 2 not upgraded.
Need to get 544MB/590MB of archives.
After this operation, 1902MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
Y

much downloading and installing...
E: Internal Error, Could not perform immediate configuration (2) on libc6

I'll try a few more things and report back on my progress

As root I went to directory /var/lib/dpkg and made a backup of status:

mv ./status ./status.backup

Then I went to /var/backups and looked for old copies of the dpkg status file
the most recent is not compressed, and the older ones are compressed:

root@losalamos:/home/sean01# cd /var/backups/
root@losalamos:/var/backups# ls -la dpkg.status*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2368481 2009-06-14 07:16 dpkg.status.0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 646974 2009-06-13 09:53 dpkg.status.1.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 645234 2009-06-12 12:54 dpkg.status.2.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 644149 2009-06-10 10:32 dpkg.status.3.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 643891 2009-06-10 08:50 dpkg.status.4.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 643982 2009-06-09 08:46 dpkg.status.5.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 644909 2009-06-07 14:57 dpkg.status.6.gz

the '0' generation had the same error as my most recent file (they are probably exact copies)
the -1 generation (dpkg.status.1.gz) looked clean.

I untarred and copied to the /var/lib/dpkg as 'status'

I ran 'dpkg --configure -a'

sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude -f full-upgrade

now it looks good

As root I went to directory /var/lib/dpkg and made a backup of status:

mv ./status ./status.backup

Then I went to /var/backups and looked for old copies of the dpkg status file
the most recent is not compressed, and the older ones are compressed:

root@losalamos:/home/sean01# cd /var/backups/
root@losalamos:/var/backups# ls -la dpkg.status*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2368481 2009-06-14 07:16 dpkg.status.0
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 646974 2009-06-13 09:53 dpkg.status.1.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 645234 2009-06-12 12:54 dpkg.status.2.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 644149 2009-06-10 10:32 dpkg.status.3.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 643891 2009-06-10 08:50 dpkg.status.4.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 643982 2009-06-09 08:46 dpkg.status.5.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 644909 2009-06-07 14:57 dpkg.status.6.gz

the '0' generation had the same error as my most recent file (they are probably exact copies)
the -1 generation (dpkg.status.1.gz) looked clean.

I untarred and copied to the /var/lib/dpkg as 'status'

I ran 'dpkg --configure -a'

sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude -f full-upgrade

now it looks good

Please try the following I think it will help (if you are not root then add sudo in front of the commands)

mv /var/lib/dpkg/status /var/lib/dpkg/status.corrupted

touch /var/lib/dpkg/status

mv /var/lib/dpkg/available /var/lib/dpkg/available.corrupt

touch /var/lib/dpkg/available

dpkg --configure -a

Thanks Ubuntu

The last answer was a wrong entry from my side.

I have done manual changes to these files to remove the errors in the file.

Thanks and sorry for wrong answer here.

Thanks Ubuntu