LONG BEACH (gorewon2000.net) March 31 - April 1, 2001 -- The Diva, BBBR Resistance Fighters, and Cranky Political Prisoners, extend a warm welcome to our little corner of the internet, and wish you a Very Happy (if somewhat belated) Birthday...

Dear President Gore:

First of all, let me wish you a Very Happy Birthday, and thank you for taking the time to stop by the BBBR.  Secondly, a thousand apologies, My Liege, for being so inexcusably tardy kicking off your Birthday Party on the web.

What can I say?  "The Daylight Savings Dog ate my homework..."

Okay, not really.  Really, I just didn't know how to get this party started -- Especially now that The Political Prisoners of the BBBR have reached almost maximum crankiness.  Things, as I am sure you know, have gotten almost surrealistically awful in The Bush Brothers Banana Republic (formerly The United States of America).  YIKES!

So for days, I sat here in front of my computer in the BBBR Resistance Bunker in Long Beach, staring at my computer screen, flipping through the hundreds of pages of the BBBR, trying to figure out what you might want to see here... I was stuck.  I didn't know WHAT to include.

Then First Lady Tipper (bless her heart) came to me in a dream, and said, "Diva!  Make it fun!  It's a Birthday Party!  All giggles, and no sniffles!  And wake up, already!  You're late!"

When the First Lady talks, even in a dream, The Diva listens...

So, first off, a little about your tour guide:

My name is Tammy (Tammy Sue, if you can believe that... What were my parents thinking?), but most folks around here call me "The Diva," a nickname I was given when I lived in Texas.  Did I mention I was from Texas?  Well, I am, though I was lucky enough to have gone into exile in sunny Southern California before Count Fluke-ula had completely trashed the state.  Little did I know he wouldn't be so easy to shake.

Anyway, flashback to the Fall of 2000, about two weeks after the election, Long Beach, California:

This was the point where I got really angry.  I mean, REALLY ANGRY.  I'm not going to revisit all the reasons for my high dudgeon -- you know them better than anyone -- suffice it to say I was too angry to just keep yelling at the TV.  So, I started a website to do my yelling on, sending bits and bytes of outrage out into the vast void of cyberspace...

The BBBR began as a self-prescribed temporary course of cyber-primal scream-therapy, of me venting my righteous anger on the web, until things turned around, until Bush 'n Thugs, Inc. got nailed for their bad behavior, and until all the ballots got counted... or so I thought.  You see, at this point, I was convinced that things would turn out alright, and everything would be on the up-and-up.  Shows what I know, huh?

So, I began my "talking cure," a sort of diary or journal.  I knew I was living through a historically significant event, and I wanted to document that -- not for anyone else, but for me.  I never expected anyone but a few friends, and one enemy in particular, to visit my "personal page" on GeoCities.

Well, it didn't take me long to find out I wasn't alone.  I would go online to do my "research," and there they were -- people just like me, doing the same thing.  Within a few days of going live on the web, I got my first e-mail from a fellow-traveler.  She was an Elvis fan, and dropped me a note to let me know she liked my "Al-vis" graphic, as she called it.

That was November 25th, over four months ago, and the beginning of the BBBR as a real place on the web.  No longer just a personal diary or journal, the BBBR took on a life of its own, eventually got it's own domain name, then its own domain.

Along the way, both population and tourism have grown, and alliances have been formed.  What started out as "I" is now "We".  People call us by many names, as we do ourselves -- BBBR Resistance Fighters, Political Prisoners of the BBBR, The Jaded, TAFKAV...

We have found that we have many things in common, but the most important one is this:  We know what happened, we know what it means, and we are determined to never forget it, and to do everything we can to see that it never happens again.

(Oops!  Got a little serious there...  Sorry, Tipper...)

So, if you've come this far, perhaps you would be willing to come a little farther, and see some of the things that kept us fighting and laughing along the way...

So, without further ado, I give you...

NEXT:  SPRING CLEANING FOR THE PRESIDENT

The ActivismHQ

E-Mail The Diva

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