You've heard of smokeouts, sit-ins, walkouts. They are mass protests, united fronts mustered in the face of a perceived, prevailing evil -- be it the revered/reviled and soon-to-be-outlawed plant known as tobacco, or the Big Brother coercion that haunts the public education system, or the first-world military poohbahs who hawk wars in other countries. In the grass-roots tradition of subterranean citizen initiatives comes the second annual show of resistance known as the sickout. Actually, in the United States, it's been dubbed the "U.S.A. Phone In Sick Day," and it will be staged this year on Tuesday . Supporting the American effort is RTMARK (pronounced "art mark"), a pro-creative freedom/pro-artists' rights/damn-the-corporate monopolies organization whose main spokesman is writer and National Public Radio commentator Andrei Codrescu. During last year's Phone In Sick Day, Codrescu called in sick for his NPR gig. The poet later observed that calling in sick is a "terrific thing to do if you feel well. You should phone in and say, `I feel very well, so I will not murder my time by participating in your rituals.' " Presumably, Codrescu was speaking to corporate America in general, not NPR in particular. He's still employed. Major media picked up on the protest last year, from London to the Big Apple. Last year, The New York Times on April 5 quoted Codrescu as saying that for his day of nonwork, he planned "to get up without any idea of what I'm going to do or where I'm going to end up, take a few buses to nowhere, maybe having romantic or violent adventures along the way." The same story cited a spokesman for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who said: "Our response to those guys who are doing the national Phone in Sick Day: Get a job."