Ashlee Simpson is an unusual celebrity in that she remains famous despite her ability to go for weeks, even months, without doing or saying anything worth noticing. But for the past few days she’s been making up for lost time. First came the news last week that Ashlee and Pete Wentz were getting married—a little odd, since it’s hard to see why anyone would marry Pete Wentz, but it’s also hard to see why anyone would date him for two years, and if Ashlee can do one she might as well do the other. Then came the more intriguing reports that the couple’s engagement was more of a shotgun wedding, forced by Ashlee’s pregnancy. The story seems to have started with US Weekly and OK!, but it spread through the intertubes like some weird sexual infection, spread by bloggers who liked the story too much to notice the complete lack of supporting evidence.

Now Pete is ferociously denying the story, in an email exchange with MTV:

“There is a witch hunt for people to be pregnant whenever they get engaged in Hollywood,” he wrote. “This is all news to me. I can’t wait for the story about how I’m really in a gay relationship and this is all just a cover. … I mean really, this is crazy. … I mean we’re engaged, that’s true, and happy about it.”

Asked again if he was denying reports that Simpson is pregnant, Wentz replied, “Yeah.”

Unfortunately, Pete didn’t use Gerard Butler’s forceful Scottish style of denial and say, “If I were marrying my dog, would you say I impregnated my dog?” Still, it’s a pretty unequivocal denial. So that’s the end of that story, and now we can all go back to not thinking about Ashlee Simpson until the next non-story about her makes its brief appearance.