Editor's note: We're very pleased to welcome Max Lindberg to our writing team. The publisher of the Lindberg Report podcast, now a part of The Fuels Report, Max is a retired broadcast journalist. We're very happy to have his wealth of experience on the team! Stay tuned — once we get the technical kinks worked out, Max will be producing the first GO podcast series, "Greening the Golden Years."

So you're going to join the May 15th MySpace members Gas Out. Good for you! We need to show those greedy, and not necessarily nice, oil-rich countries in the Mideast that we don't like their attitudes and hit 'em where in counts: in the pocketbook.

What a great idea: 72-million MySpace members avoiding gas stations for one day. I didn't do the math ( too complicated for me!), but based on a fill-up costing between $20 and $30, the boycott would cost the Middle Eastern oil companies more than $2,000,000.000 in revenue. That's $2 Billion. Wow!

But, wait a minute. There's only one hitch to this great idea. To pull it off, all 72 million who drive a gasoline-fueled vehicle would have to leave their cars, trucks or whatever, home for 24 hours and take a bus, ride a bike, walk or hitch a ride with someone who doesn't care. You can bet your baby-blue-booties it ain't gonna work.

And what about those who do avoid filling stations for 24-hours and still drive? Well, bunky, think about this. On May 14, the price of gas will be, let's say for the sake of argument, $2.85 a gallon. So you drive on the 15th, and you burn several gallons of gas, which eventually has to be replaced. On the 16th, the price of petrol jumps to $2.95 a gallon. So on your next fill-up, you'll pay $.10 more for a gallon of gas, and the oil companies would have made a modest profit anyway.

But, if you must, join the "gas out", I'm sure they'll notice your absence at the pump.

Why not take a more pro-active approach? Drive a little less than usual, join a car pool, support the use of alternative fuels and use them if appropriate for your vehicle. Use less energy any way you can. The emphasis here is not to "punish" the oil companies, but to save our environment. It's the least we can do."

Oh, and if all this sounds very familiar, you're right. According to Snopes, the Urban Legends people, this particular message, or a variance, has been around since 1999. Read the above paragraph.