What no Man has Bought Before

I was interested to learn that William Shatner has sold his kidney stone (a show stopping chunk of calcification that brought the star to his knees during shooting on the set of Boston Legal), for $25,000.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/4623280.stm

Shatner is somewhat notorious for strange ideas with limited appeal (have you seen Tek War?), but this is more often the norm rather than the exception for aging stars. Besides, his magnanimous good humor makes stunts like this (and others) endearing rather than vexing.

What mystifies me is that the stone was actually purchased for $25,000. The mind boggles to think why anyone would want to own a kidney stone. Intrinsically, this stone has negative worth - unless, I suppose, one had a pathological dislike of Shatner and therefore desired to own the instrument of his agony. That being the case, I think the footage of his painful collapse would be infinitely more valuable, and more cathartic to own, and watch, and watch again.

Also mystifying to me is this article with its British take on Shatner's charitable auction (did I mention he sold it for charity?):

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=27784

Its insipid and unfunny writing is banal and uninformative in the utmost. Further, it makes use of vaguely disturbing words like "telly" and "flog" in a conversational manner that makes me feel precisely the way one would feel if talking to an insipid and doggedly unfunny Brit in person.