Comment 3 for bug 316268

drwxr-xr-x 8 root root 4096 Jan 25 2008 .
drwxr-xr-x 48 root root 4096 Jan 5 03:03 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 25 2008 alternatives
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 25 2008 info
-rw-r----- 1 root root 0 Apr 26 2008 lock
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Jan 25 2008 methods
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 25 2008 parts
drwxrwxr-x 2 root root 4096 Apr 26 2008 status
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 25 2008 updates

I don't know how your status entry got to be a directory instead of a file. Did you had a crash recently and had to run fsck on that filesystem?

 Here is how my listing looks like:
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4.0K 2009-01-12 14:01 .
drwxr-xr-x 60 root root 4.0K 2009-01-07 18:34 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4.0K 2009-01-07 17:57 alternatives
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.3M 2009-01-12 14:01 available
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.3M 2009-01-12 14:01 available-old
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8 2008-12-26 21:58 cmethopt
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 703 2009-01-07 09:55 diversions
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 601 2009-01-07 09:55 diversions-old
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 256K 2009-01-12 14:01 info
-rw-r----- 1 root root 0 2009-01-12 14:01 lock
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4.0K 2008-09-03 09:03 parts
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 233 2009-01-05 17:39 statoverride
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 193 2009-01-05 17:39 statoverride-old
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.4M 2009-01-12 14:01 status
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1.4M 2009-01-12 14:01 status-old
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4.0K 2009-01-12 13:31 triggers
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4.0K 2009-01-12 14:01 updates

What are the contents of your /var/lib/dpkg/status directory?

Is apt-get working on your system? Try "sudo apt-get update", and perhaps install some dummy package just to exercise dpkg.