5 Epic Ways to Trade Dignity for Cash

The dream of having a pantload of free cash with little to no effort is one held close to the hearts of many these days, but not everyone has the drive, skill or luck to make those dreams into reality. And, in some cases, not everyone is equipped with the shallow, whorish personal values required to debase themselves and their nearest and dearest in exchange for some sexy greenbacks. But some people are.

The Sponsored Wedding

Gaining popularity in recent years is the sponsored wedding, a ritual that hearkens back to the 90’s, in which a couple, faced with the immense cost of getting hitched, decide that selling out like some of our more popular baseball stadiums or trannies in need of that final couple thousand bucks for their last surgery is the way to get everything for a dream wedding.

While there may be no one in earshot who has ever contemplated the utter frivolity of spending tens of thousands of dollars on a wedding, some people can’t imagine getting married without forking over enough cash to fund a reasonably sized military coup in a sub-tropical nation…all for a half-assed party that lasts one day and will bore most of the guests to tears. Like hardcore Dawson-style tears.

Dave Kerpen and Carrie Fisher (sadly not Princess Leia) had their wedding at Keyspan Park in New York as a sponsored baseball event. You know, like free bobblehead night, only with a legally binding union of two people, in front of 7,000 strangers. In total, an $80,000 wedding complete with flowers, food, the venue, 500 invited guests and the dresses for which they paid damn near nothing.

Nightmare-inducing half human, half mantis hybrid Star Jones took the idea a step further by deciding that having fame and money of her own isn’t reason enough not to sell out and make her wedding a shameful spectacle of shilling by having damn near everything paid for by someone else and having her own official airline for the event, presumably to bring in a constant stream of cargo jets full of turkey and fatback to keep her docile for the duration.

Now there are entire websites that explain how you too can smash apart any antiquated notions of romance you may have had about your marriage and turn it into an embarrassing circus of greed and corporate douchebaggery.

The Town Name

Town names generally hold some historical significance for the town and the people who live there. Generally. Some towns, however, are peopled entirely with lazy Jerry Springer fans who figure giving up their identity in exchange for free cable is a pretty sweet deal. Such is the case with Dish, Texas, formerly Clark, Texas. Clark’s residents sold their name to the Dish network, not for a mountain of cash, but for 10 years of free satellite TV for the town’s 55 homes. The decision was made unanimously by Clarks 2 person council, who clearly have invested heavily in Cheetos and Fanta since that fateful day.

Historically, Clark/Dish follows in the footsteps of Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, a town made infinitely lamer by the fact they changed their name from Hot Springs in 1950 when Ralph Edwards, host of the Truth or Consequences radio show, announced he’d broadcast a show from the first town that renamed itself, causing them to narrowly avoid renaming themselves Queen for a Day, New Mexico, which would have undoubtedly attracted a different kind of tourist.

In 2005, Santa, Idaho decided to change its name to Secretsanta.com for an undisclosed amount of money. The decision to rename themselves after a piece of virtual real estate was not without legal pitfalls as no one was sure if the town’s only official body, the water board, had the authority to simply sell the town’s name to a website. At press time it was unknown whether anyone in town knew why the fuck the only governing body was the water board.

At the top of the shallow and unsentimental heap is Halfway, Oregon, which sold itself out to Half.com for $75,000 and 20 computers for its school, but only for a year. Apparently in Halfway, Oregon, they’re smart enough to realize that naming yourself after a website, forever, is somewhere in the outer sphere of drooling-in-your-Lucky-Charms retarded. Sorry, Secretsanta.com, you only have those power mad water board bastards to blame.

The Whole Town

Land ownership is a big deal in the modern world. There’s probably not a hell of it left just laying around out there unclaimed. It stands to reason then that if you just happen to own a chunk of land that you’re not using, you may as well sell it on ebay or some such. Even if it is a whole town. With people in it.

Somewhere about twenty minutes west of bumfuck nowhere is Albert, Texas, a town that has been listed once or twice on ebay. Featuring a dance hall, a tractor shed, some peach and pecan orchards, one house that we assume must rock since it’s the only house in town and a bar that’s open on weekends, who could resist the $3.8 million price tag? Nothing else happens here and it seems like anyone who once cared about this place has up and abandoned it. Rather than dying gracefully, becoming a ghost town or some sort of hidden away sexual retreat for middle class couples looking for an unusual and moist vacation getaway, the town just gets listed on ebay over and over where no one gives a damn.

Somewhat sadder is Bridgeville, California, which has been listed more than once on ebay with an asking price of around $1.75 million. While Albert only has that visual sadness aspect, one lonely house and some peaches, Bridgeville boasts community sadness. In that it has a community. People live there. People whose entire town has a tendency to get listed on ebay.

Bridgeville features eight houses (and about twenty residents), three cows and a post office. This same combination lead to the start of the Korean War, coincidentally. That’s a fact you won’t find in any history book, due to us just making it up.

But what is true is that apparently the residents of Bridgeville don’t even seem to care that they’re being bought and sold like ultra-cheap cell phone signal boosters that you could resell for killer profit. According to one resident “it’s not like it happens all the time,” an attitude that will serve anyone well in dealing with town sales, herpes outbreaks and Uncle Ned peeing on us in our sleep.

Child’s Name

Because unborn children are often an untapped financial resource, just sitting there wasting food and making their mothers piss like race horses, some couples have decided to fight back by trying to make their lazy fetuses a source of income. Ryan and Jami Hawkins, a couple from Indiana who are arguably what sociologists might call “retarded,” tried to auction off the middle name of their unborn child on ebay back in 2004. Bidding got all the way up to $7,999.99 which was one cent less than their minimum price, possibly because no one was willing to really drop real cash on something this idiotic.

Not to be outdone, a couple from Perth, Australia tried to auction of the rights to their child’s first name the next year for $750,000. But only for the first 5 years of the kid’s life, because that probably wouldn’t be weird or ridiculous in any way. It’s a little known fact that for the first 5 years of his life, Funnycrave writer Adam Brown was called “Squat Stop” as a result of an amusing incident on a bus.

Taking the cake for pathetic families are the Silvermans, whoever they may be, who named their child GoldenPalaceDotCom Silverman. In exchange for $15,000. Undoubtedly, when the child is old enough to understand why everyone looks at him like he has a smear of feces on his face when he tells them their name and has a full comprehension of just how little dignity $15,000 buys, he’ll repay his parents in kind, possibly by burning their house down while he clutches his harem of headless Barbie dolls that have been his only friends lo those many years.

Body

The human body is a vastly underused piece of crap in terms of marketing. Most of us walk around not selling jack shit on our faces day to day, pretending to be satisfied with our dignity. The corporate world knows better though, and so do a handful of enlightened individuals who have noticed that they have an abundance of skin with nothing written on it. And while some people are cowards, like this Brit who got a temporary tattoo for goldenpalace.com on her giant, can-crushing cleavage for around $900:

There are more hardcore individuals like Kari Smith who decided her forehead could be used for more than banging against the fridge door every time she opened it and that joining the ranks of luminaries like Mike Tyson was a kick ass idea got goldenpalace.com permanently tattooed there. For $10,000, which she said will go towards her son’s education, she now has to spend her life having people stare at her while trying to think of a word with “retard” as the root that fully and properly encapsulates the magnitude of her situation. We suggest tat-tarded.

Back in 2002, a man put up an auction on ebay to use his penis as advertising space, apparently not realizing that no one likes pop up ads. Get it? See what we did there? A diverse individual, he also had space for rent on his ass. The only thing stopping Blizzard from using his ass to advertise World of Warcraft was the fact the W on each ass cheek to spell “wow” joke is a bit old. That and who the fuck would pay for something that stupid. As a fun twist, the man listed the ad with a caveat that he could turn down any entry he found immoral of offensive. Because no one wants to wake up every day and piss while looking down at the tattoo that a corporation paid to have put on their wang that is immoral. That’d be wrong.