I use this a lot myself; I needed a universal way to load any kind of link to any kind of item, so I changed the jQuery.fn.load in the following way:

(function($) {
$.fn._load = $.fn.load;
$.fn.extend({
	load: function(url, args, callback) {
		// Backwards compatibility for the jquery load function
		if ($.isFunction(url)) return $(this)._load(url, args, callback);
		if (!this.length) return this;
		var url2 = url;
		if (args) url2 += (url2.match(/\?/) ? "&" : "?") + $.param(args);
		return this.each(function() {
			if (typeof this['location'] == 'object') this.location.href = url2;
			else if (typeof this['href'] != 'undefined') this.href = url2;
			else if (typeof this['src'] != 'undefined') this.src = url2;
			else {
				// Backwards compatibility for the jquery load function
				$(this)._load(url, args, callback);
			}
		})
	}
});
})(jQuery);

Probably it's not perfect and can use refining. Perhaps I also missed a bit here, but it seems to work properly right now. Perhaps this can be added the the jQuery.fn.load native function?