By Mike McLeod

As you know, there has been a recent rash of people exploiting their bodies by selling them as advertising space (the model, the pregnant lady, the guy with the forehead space). So this wasn't too much of a surprise when it appeared on eBay:

"Advertise On Most Of My Body With Permanent Tattoos
Unique Advertisement First Time On Ebay Please Read
First Time Ever On Ebay!"

What caught my eye was not the fact that he is offering permanent tattoo advertising space all over his body or that he is also offering to include the winner's ad on his storefront in Canada, but that he is including his present and future cars/ trucks, boats, motorcycle-and his RV.

Now that's a thought for full timers. Or even part timers. You already see cars with these wrap-around-shrink-wrap-looking ads on them. And they have so little ad space. Heck, you could advertise Subway on just one side and have room to show Jared standing on scales while eating subs with both hands. And that leaves the whole other side free for another advertiser, like my personal favorite-Spam.

You may not know this, but there is a Spam fan club and a Spam Museum. Actually, the Spam Museum was closed down-but only so they could open a larger, more "Spammier museum", as the website proudly gushes. You probably didn't know this, but the actress Lucy Lui ("Ally McBeal", "Jerry McGuire", "Charlie's Angels") grew up eating Spam. And she was born in New York, not in Hawaii where they eat 5.3 million cans a year, four times the national average.

But I digress, which is so easy to do when one mentions the word Spam.

Back to RV advertising. Of course, the left side of your RV would be the premium space since all the traffic on the other side of the interstate would see it. Since you won't have much space in the back (but it is still a prime advertising location), you will have to market it to narrow advertisers, like Slim Fast or Slim Jims or Twizzlers. Or you could hang one of those electronic signs in the back window and sell advertising to a variety of sponsors. For instance, your sign could alternately flash: "See Rock City", "Larry King Live on CNN with special guest Angie Dickinson", "What's your sleep number?", "McDonalds Next Exit," and "Diarrhea? Try soothing strawberry-flavor Kaopectate".

You could sell your roof space to Pepto Bismol or Dramamine because people in helicopters and small planes will see it, and they could be getting queasy up there. Or you could get in good with the police by creating a huge reproduction of a Police Benevolent Association support sticker and put it on the roof-for the police helicopters.

Your windshield is the perfect location for windshield repair services. Paste on a few of those fake window dings and cracks, and you also have the option of selling the windshield's ad space to lawyers who specialize in suing dump truck companies with those signs claiming "Not responsible for objects launched from this vehicle at warp speed." (If they aren't responsible, who is? And funny, you never see one of those "How's My Driving?" stickers on those dump trucks.)

Of course, you can't overlook advertising inside your RV. With those giant windshield windows, you could sell space inside to Versace or Gucci and set up dressed mannequins in the window. And that's space you can sell year round. You can change the clothes on the mannequins on a weekly or monthly basis as your RV sits in your driveway between trips.

Call me crazy, but RV advertising is the next big thingnext to pregnant bellies.
(By the way, the ad space on the guy's body, cars, RVs, etc. did not sell. The last bid of $50,300 did not meet the guy's reserve price, or minimum that he would sell his body for. Too bad Ex-Lax or Gas-X weren't the winning bidders. Imagine having them tattooed on your head for the rest of your life.)

'It's hard not to think of the Monty Python bit "Spam-Spam-Spam-Spam-Spam and eggs", and it seems others greater than I can't get it off their minds either. A new musical playing on Broadway is "Monty Python's Spamalot", which is a rip off of the movie, "Monty Python and the Holy Grail". The play stars David Hyde Pierce ("Frasier") and Hank Azaria ("Simpsons" voices of Moe, Chief Wiggum, Apu and several others).

Here's a favorite poem of mine about Spam:

Oh SPAM™! Oh SPAM™! Gourmet delight!
My food by day, my dreams by night.
To carve, to slice, to dice you up-
pureed in a blender and sipped from a cup.

What shining deity from Olympus knelt
down to the earth and hog butt smelt?
Creating then man's eternal desire
for swine entrails congealed by fire.

On some corporate farm, a pig has died.
Eyes, tongue, and snout end up inside
that cube of SPAM™ hidden in the can
I now hold in my trembling hand.

More than mere food, SPAM™ is for me
a hedonistic expression of gluttonous glee.
Mottled with pork fat, the pink cube engrosses.
My mouth takes it in, my intestine disposes.

Long have my arteries clogged to the sound
of sizzling SPAM™ when there's no one around-
furtively chewing or swallowing whole.
Triple bypass by forty, my medical goal.

Other processed meat products I've tried or declined
Vienna Sausages, Treet, even pig's feet in brine.
Though each may be tasty in different ways,
none matches SPAM™ for gelatinous glaze.

That glistening pinkness beckons me
with gristle, fat, and BHT.
Oh SPAM™! Oh SPAM™! The taste, the smell!
The sacred meat product, from Hormel.

-----Author unknown, but immortalized forever on www.butlerwebs.com

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