My Short Career as a Professional Nude Model

An encore posting from 22 February 2006  Interesting day yesterday.  Went to renew my license plate and get the renewal date moved to my birthday rather than my (soon to be ex-) wife's birthday.  Decided to renew my drivers license while I was there too.  "Oh... we can't do that because your license is suspended...in Arizona."  OK, in 2001 I got a speeding ticket there, but try to locate a cancelled check from 5 years ago.  Called Arizona and waited on hold for 35 minutes, only to find out I needed to call the county court where I got the ticket.  Only on hold for 10 minutes there.  Found out that it was cleared up long ago and they just needed to notify the state people.  Still, I have to send $10 to Arizona to fix the problem.  Pretty cheap.
So, a couple hours later I get a call--from an Arizona area code!  What now?  It was Michelle Donati from Rose & Allyn Public Relations.  She had also just sent me an e-mail, which I pulled up and read while we were talking.  Seems they're doing an ad campaign and wanted to use a picture from my website.  Yes, you guessed it--the picture of me naked at the South Pole!
Excerpt from Michelle's e-mail:

"Our intern, Haley, stumbled across your website late
last week and our boss is interested in using one of
your photographs for an upcoming company
advertisement.

We are willing to monetarily compensate/sponsor you
for permission to use this image.

We will show you the final ad before it goes to print
and will send you the published ad once complete.
We've looked for stock photos that convey the same
message, but unfortunately, we didn't find any that
worked as well.

The clincher is...our boss is a procrastinator and our
ad is due tomorrow (Wednesday, February 22)...so we'd
need your permission by then. I can overnight you a
check or money order.
I assure you that this is real and that we're a legit
company."  

"Just what the hell kind of message are you trying to convey here?"  I asked her.  Seems they're targeting lobbyists or something, with the idea "There's no such thing as too much exposure." 
So, Michelle offers to pay me $250 to use my picture, and I send her the high-resolution copy I have on my computer.    You probably know I have a "Life List" in my computer.  Being a professional nude model wasn't on it.  But what the heck.
Really.  I don't make this stuff up.