There is a fever for bacon in this country. How do we tap into that? If we don’t do something to put Oscar Mayer in its rightful place, then shame on us.

– Tom Bick, Oscar Mayer’s director for integrated marketing communications and advertising.

So what did Bick and his boys in integrated marketing communications and advertising come up with? Something called the Great American Bacon Barter, in which an LA-based actor and comedian has been charged with making his way across the country without cash or credit cards, using only his bartering skills and the 3,000 pounds of Butcher Thick Cut bacon furnished to him by Oscar Mayer.

Here’s the thing, though: The article says Butcher Thick Cut bacon runs $8.99 for a 22-ounce package, which means this guy’s armed with just short of 20 grand worth of bacon, at least in retail value. Seems like it just can’t be that hard to make it across the country on that — living pretty damn well, I might add.

Do you have access to the Internet? Because maybe you could just look up the buyers for various regional supermarkets, offer to undercut the local distributors, then barter your bacon for cash money and drive across the country living like a king. Even if you allow for nearly a 200-percent retail markup, you could pawn off 2,800 pounds of that delicious bacon and make almost $5,000 with which to travel, some $40 of which you could use to purchase a toaster oven to cook the 200 pounds of bacon you reserved for personal consumption.

Spirit of the game? Maybe not. But hey, you gave me all this bacon and I have a very particular set of skills, one of which is telling people about how great bacon is and trying to get them to give me money for it, another of which is eating bacon. So I’d like to take a crack at it.

Hat tip to Moses for the link.