So people ask me if I’m ever going to get married? That’s a tough question and I don’t have an answer yet. I know that if I do get married, I’m going to have Photography by Howard’s End do my wedding photography.

To cover the cost of the van, living expenses, food, and various state-emblazoned gas station trinkets, we need to be able to make money, preferrably online.

So what are our options?

Here’s a brief list I came up with:

1. Begging - not a fan of this one as it requires trading diginity for cash. plus carting all those nickels around will weigh down the van and cost us more in gas (theoretically).
2. Affiliate marketing - the ole fashioned way to make money online. old as them (digital) hills. The shoemoney, john chow, and Darren Rowse way. I’m not sure what we could ask you to buy that you would actually want.
3. Goolge Adsense - we could paste Google adsense all over this website which might annoy the bejesus out of our readers but make several cents per click with “van grease” ads (or whatever would be the targeted market for a site like this).
4. Create an informational PDF and sell it - not sure if this would work. Possible titles could be “How to create an informational PDF and sell it” or “Little known ways to make money when you’re living in a van down by river” but that one would result in the classic “chicken before the egg” paradox.
5. Eat things into the shape of Jesus and sell them on eBay - did you know that people pay thousands of dollars for food that looks vaguely like their deity of choice? Strange but true. Here are my first attempts – the “Jesus toast classic” and “baby Jesus” – whichever you prefer. Any takers?
6. Run a lottery scam - We could spam a bunch of people telling them I’m King/His Highness/Minister Abdul Jafar III (the third or fourth lends an air of legitimacy to a name) and that they have just won/found out about/been recommended for a prize/lottery/inheritance worth millions/billions/trillions of dollars and all they need to do is send us a Honda Odyssey van to transport the gold/cash/IOU’s out of Kenya/Argentina/Canada.
7. Promote an MLM - A little less insidious than the lottery scam: we could plaster Avon or YTB Travel or MonaVie stickers all over the van and pressure people to join our down line. Everyone would hate us. Including ourselves.
8. Give psychic/psychiatric advice - we could charge 5 cents to 5 dollars to tell people about what will happen to them or listen to them whine about what has already happened to them.
9. Sell prints of our photos - this one is a bit more legitimate, but it’s tough to predict demand so it’s a bit of a wildcard.
10. Sell magazine subscriptions - would you like to buy 40 subscriptions of Vibe?
11. Sell Bumper stickers via Cafepress - how about a “WWJDIHLIAVDBTR?” bumper sticker? Two hundred “Schrute bucks” to the first person who figures out the acronym.
12. Become a motivational speaker - a tried and true method, according to the economists/SNL-comedy-sketch writers of our time.

Maybe the title should read “why aren’t we flying around in jet packs yet?” but I’m cutting humanity some slack here. One of the major considerations for this trip is fuel cost – and I spent some time last night looking at electric vehicles and the current state of technology, which seems to have stalled some time ago.

It’s 2007 – where is my all-electric van? Or even a solar powered van. And yes, I say “van”, not a giant ultralightweight soapbox that can only transport a stuffed teddy bear down a hill.

Maybe I’ll rent “Who Killed the Electric Car?” to get some answers, but I fear it will make me into a crazy conspiracy theorist, pointy aluminum hat and all.

You can’t tell me that this is the best we can do:

That’s the Eliica. It looks like it was designed by Homer Simpson. Scratch that – it makes the Simpson mobile look like an Aston Martin.

Is that really the best we can do?