Britney's Pregnancy Test, Popemobile Top eBay News
May 6, 2005, 08:08
WEST CHESTER, Penna. - Two seldom seen used items—Britney Spears' pregnancy test and Pope Benedict's former car—top this week's edition of "eBay News." Spears' test, on which she received a disappointing 6.7 for execution and a mere 7.5 for degree of difficulty, sold for a lackluster $5,001 (US) to GoldenPalace.com, an online casino, which was prepared to go much higher.
"We thought five figures at least on this one," said Monty Kerr, a GoldenPalace.com spokesman. "Perhaps the market on Britney Spears memorabilia, like this pregnancy test, has been saturated. We had to go $12,501 for an egg timer of hers just last month. We understand Britney got a false negative from the egg timer; that's why she initially denied being pregnant."
The seller of Spears' pregnancy test is the Morning Hot Tub show "with Mauler, Rush, Laura and Josie," which airs on Canadian radio station The New Hot 89.9 in Ottawa, the nation's capital. According to Josie, the pretty one, Spears' test was retrieved from the garbage outside a Los Angeles hotel room in which the Oops! Girl had been staying. Josie would not comment on the identity of the golden's retriever, except to say, "It was an inside job, and he remembered to wash his hands afterwards."
Mauler, the goofy one, said the Morning Hot Tub had obtained the pregnancy test, "a dipstick immersed partway in urine, actually," from the inside source for "a bag of really inferior weed and an autographed Celine Dion poster."
"It was a buyer's market," added Rush, the least nondescript one. "Obviously the test, much like Britney, wasn't in out-of-the-box condition, and we knew that would impact its eBay value negatively."
Many observers—Canadian Surgeon General Gordon McCullough among them—doubt that the authenticity of Spears' pregnancy test can ever be established. McCullough told "The Mountie Hour" host, Gordon McClainne, last night, that dipsticks floating in half empty glasses of beer, as Spears' was, are "way difficult" to authenticate, compared, say, to dipsticks floating in nonalcoholic beverages.
"Thank god it wasn’t found in a half-eaten salad, eh?" laughed McCullough (or was that McClainne?). "Those puppies are nearly impossible to authenticate."
There is no doubting the authenticity, however, of the other item topping "eBay News" this week: a VW Golf owned by an elderly gentleman who only used it to be driven to church on Sunday. The Golf, which belonged at one time to Pope Benedict XVI when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger I, fetched almost €189,000 (roughly £128,000) for Benjamin Halbe, a twenty-one-year-old student in West Germany. Halbe, who paid €13,000 for the car earlier this year, did not know it had been owned by Ratzinger until the registration papers for the car had arrived.
The buyer of the "Popemobile" is thought to be GoldenPalace.com, whose spokesman, Monty Kerr, told "eBay News" the casino was thinking about putting the "cherry-looking" vehicle on display at auto shows, "after we’ve done DNA testing on the upholstery that we expect will prove the pope is not the father of Britney's child."
In other news, the towel worn by Runaway Bride Jennifer Wilbanks when she returned in disgrace to the hostile town of Duluth, Georgia, last weekend, failed to meet its reserve price of $50 on eBay after three days at auction. The seller of the towel, who is identified only as "hispanicman.0505," withdrew the item, saying he planned to cut it into four equal parts and use it "for dusting around the house."
