So let me introduce you to Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno, The Yes Men.

Before I get to the Exxon bit - which is current - let's take a stroll through the Wikipedia entry for this scurrilous pair...

One of The Yes Men's first pranks was the satirical website [www.gwbush.com], established for the 2000 presidential election to draw attention to alleged hypocrisies on Bush's actual website. When asked about the site in a press conference on May 21, 1999, Bush responded that the website had gone too far in criticizing him, and that "there ought to be limits to freedom." In 2004, The Yes Men went on tour posing as the group "Yes, Bush Can!" encouraging supporters to sign a "Patriot Pledge" agreeing to keep nuclear waste in their backyard and send their children off to war. They appeared at the 2004 Republican National Convention and drove across the country at first in an RV with a George W. Bush body wrap, and then in a painted van.

In 2000, these guys had already seen the future... They tried to warn us...

Since then, they have been incredibly active. I'm not going to recite everything they've done right now, but there is one pretty extraordinary action you should know about. Once again, a huge company has brought the weight of their entire legal corps to bear on progressive activists.

Let me pause here to note this: This product is something that you would never expect to see developed by government or in socialist states. This kind of innovation is bold and risky and something that only happens when free markets are allowed unfettered freedom to flourish without the restrictive and limiting straight-jacket of a burdensome regulatory state watching over their shoulder at every turn. In the end, this bold initiative, this willingness to take risk... well, it brings us all new products that would have been scarcely imaginable by previous generations. Progress!

Witness:

While showing this video, two representatives passed out candles and matches. As people lit the candles, the smell of burning human hair became quite apparent. Vivoleum hasn't quite been perfected yet, but it's prototypical use as a fuel has been clearly established...

Of course, the YesMen were removed from the stage. The conference organizers attempted to have them arrested, but were unsuccessful.

ExxonMobil, assumably, did find success when they contacted the YesMen's service provider with a demand that the Vivoleum website be discontinued.

The Yes Men's Vivoleum.com Forced Offline On June 15th, one day after the Yes Men made a joke announcement in Calgary at Canada's largest oil conference that ExxonMobil plans to turn billions of climate-change victims into a brand-new fuel called Vivoleum, the Yes Men's upstream internet service provider shut down Vivoleum.com, the Yes Men's spoof website, and cut off the Yes Men's email service, in reaction to a complaint whose source they will not identify. The provider, Broadview Networks, also made the Yes Men remove all mention of Exxon from TheYesMen.org before they'd restore the Yes Men's email service. The Yes Men assume the complainant was Exxon. "Since parody is protected under US law, Exxon must think that people seeing the site will think Vivoleum's a real Exxon product, not just a parody," said Yes Man Mike Bonanno. "Exxon's policies do already contribute to 150,000 climate-change related deaths each year," added Yes Man Andy Bichlbaum. "So maybe it really is credible. What a resource!" ... Broadview did restore both IPs after the Vivoleum.com website was completely disabled and all mention of Exxon was removed from TheYesMen.org.

So here's what I think we need to do... First of all, I now have in my possession the site files for Vivoleum.com - the "disappeared" site. I'd like to pass them off to somebody that is willing to host them for others to download. I'm hoping we can seed this site across the internet and make ExxonMobils lawyers chase thousands of us...

Secondly, and as importantly, I've agreed to promote the YEsMen to the blogosphere.

(Full disclosure: I will be compensated for my efforts. Because I've got a ton of ideas for activist work, and no funds to implement said ideas, I've been brainstorming means of financing the activism I want to do. One of those ideas was to leverage my previous work and name recognition in the blogosphere. SO I reached out to the YesMen - who are genuine heroes to me - to see if I could help them promote themselves to an incredible concentration of like-minded souls. They said Yes (of course) and now, here we are.)

Unfortunately, their incredible work is largely unknown to many of us. They've already made one movie (which you can buy here - along with t-shirts and other oddities), and they are in the process of making another.

These guys are completely self-funded. Their last movie cost them $400,000. They just cannot afford to do this activist work or make these movies without people willing to invest in them.

I asked them if a donation of $25 would get your name placed in the credit roll. The said, you guessed it, "Yes".

I asked them if people could invest in their film. I don't have details of how it would work, but I assume this movie will cost less than $1,000,000 to make. If you invest $10,000 and the movie makes $20,000,000... well, I think you'd probably realize a pretty substantial return on your investment. Go here if you are interested.

If you don't want your name in the credit rolls and you don't have a few thousand dollars to invest... But you want to see their activism continue... Well, you can donate here.

These guys are two of the most creative activists I've ever witnessed. Help them punish Exxon, and please, consider helping them get their next movie made.

Thanks!