®TMark’s first act of corporate sabotage was a prank so poetic, so universally appealing that people assume it’s an urban legend, like the Nieman-Marcus recipe story, or the one about the guy whose kidneys got ripped off by a prostitute while he was passed out in the hotel bathtub.

But the Barbie Liberation Organization was no myth. While isolated incidents still crop up today, the movement made its mark in 1993, back when Talking Barbie and Talking G.I. Joe dolls first hit the toy shelves. Inspired, a band of cultural guerrillas bought up the plasticine soldiers and beauty queens by the cartload, switched the voiceboxes, and returned them to stores re-sealed in their original boxes. "Dead men tell no lies," the Talking Barbies now grunted. Soprano commandos, meanwhile, daintily informed their new owners that anytime was the right time to shop for shoes.

Courtesy of rtmark.com

As a band of dedicated capitalist culture jammers, ®TMark (pronounced "artmark") has since conceived of, publicized, and/or invested in anti-corporate projects ranging from National Phone In Sick Day to last year’s lawsuit-ready Deconstructing Beck CD (an experiment in second-degree sampling that was briefly available at Rhino Records). This Tuesday at 4:15 ®TMark representatives intend to disseminate their particular brand of propaganda at Scripps’ Baxter Auditorium.

"Our power resides in being unknown," a founder told Shift magazine. "Some of our members are minor celebrities. One is an actor, another a rock and roll personality. Anonymity is part of our corporate identity."

®TMark is a registered company; its aim, however, is "cultural profit." The organization provides start-up funds–"mutual funds," it calls them, underscoring "the audacity of corporate claims that consumers’ best interests match their own"–for those individuals willing to take on ®TMark’s pet projects.

Some of the company’s proposals are admittedly more wistful than practical. Anyone who convinces Nike to sponsor an unborn child’s education in return for a permanent "swoosh" logo to be tattooed on its body at birth (or, if possible, in the womb) will receive $400 for her efforts. Any Latino, refugee or not, who successfully applies to Disney World for amnesty from Cuba–"and from the United States, and from the state of Florida"–will be awarded $100, provided that the story is reported by Disney-operated media outlets.

Likewise, the organization is currently offering $2,000 to the first court to condemn a corporation to death. Payment will be forwarded upon execution. "Funds may be used for courthouse renovations," they add helpfully.

®TMark is determined to live or die by the legal system; they expect to be sued within the year, and they do not expect to win. As a corporation, their origins–and AOL Time-Warner’s, and Kaiser Permanente’s–are in what they consider to be a profound judicial misreading of the Fourteenth Amendment. After the collapse of Reconstruction made racial parity passé, the Supreme Court used that onetime guarantee of individual liberty to grant corporations the rights to privacy, sovereignty, and anonymity that, ®TMark argues, ought to belong to citizens alone.

®TMark’s most recent flirtation with the law came with its sponsorship of the widely-publicized www.gwbush.com, which bears a striking resemblance to the candidate’s real website, except that its motto is "Hypocrisy with Bravado." Also, a number of stories linked from the site appear to be based on the premise that Bush is serving five-to-ten in a federal prison for drug possession and one or more counts of driving under the influence.

Despite these fairly broad hints at illegitimacy, last summer the Bush campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission claiming that gullible voters would not be able to tell the cocaine-intensive parody from the real thing. Since then gwbush.com has also come to feature big blinking ads promoting "It’s the hypocrisy, stupid" bumper stickers.

Said concessions were added at the behest of site owner Zach Exley, a 29-year-old computer consultant who, operating without benefit of an alias, hoped that shifting the site’s emphasis from deadpan satire to over-the-top spoof would convince Bush’s attorneys to stop filling his mailbox with "cease-and-desist" letters. It did not. "There ought to be limits to freedom," the real-life Bush declared, calling Exley "a garbage man."

A more subtle mirror can be found at yesrudy.com, which cannot be told apart from Giuliani’s actual site (located at rudyyes.com) until the viewer reaches the bottom of the front page, where ®TMark’s imaginary mayor outlines his plan for restoring order to the Bronx a la Haiti’s "Baby Doc" Duvalier regime, circa 1983. In an attempt to avoid charges of partisanship, the Dallas Morning News reports, the organization has also purchased Gore- and Hillary-centric domain names, as well as the mysterious "bushisnicelydressed.org."