i don't care that this is 7 minutes long, watch the entire thing. do it.=)

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1.20.09

obama is our president!
wooo for the end of the 8-year global shit-storm!
just think: george w. bush never, ever has to make another decision regarding the future of our country. gitmo is closing, the war in the middle east is being looked at and reviewed for the first time in months, alternative energy is being actively researched and discussed with every intention of establishing a new source of fuel for the very near future, the economy and social security, though still fucked, might actually have a chance, and today america made history! today we made a black man our president, and we broke the mold for stuffy old white guys that care more about their share in the oil companies than the people they're supposed to be looking out for. today we reminded the world what america, as a country, as a home, as an idea, stands for, and will continue to stand for; everyone is welcome and everyone can have a voice. and despite what some people may argue, the american people were in bad shape; even if this doesn't work out the way everyone wants it to, even if all the things that are supposed to be accomplished aren't, we needed this. people were more excited and involved in this election than they've been in a long time. it got people thinking, and talking, and debating, and fact-checking and researching and caring, some for the first time in their lives. it gave people something to fight for, whether they were with or against obama, and in the end, the candidate that shows that america has agreed to face the future head-on, and tackle the prejudices and misconceptions that still exist therein was the one that won, and i am so happy about it.
i cannot be thankful enough that i was alive to see the day when something this monumental happened, and i am going to remind myself as much as possible not to take it for granted, no matter what.
the feeling in the country right now is this weird mixture of renewed hope and electricity and anxiety and inexpressible joy and amazement. and i wouldn't want to be anywhere else but in america right now.

ali say whaaat

so! this week (or last week; i'm not really sure which lol) marks my one-year anniversary of being an xbox live member! i know; i'm a loser=) a lot has happened in the past year because of this membership; both good and strange. i've learned the awkwardness of being a girl on xbox, and all of the potentially scarring but mostly hysterical experiences that go along with it(nerds are desperate. seriously.) but i've also met a bunch of really interesting people, from all over the country and the world, who have taught me that actually, stereotypes are often true lmao. and from all of these people, i've managed to make a few lasting acquaintances, who i shall hereby call my xbox nerds=) (yes, that smiley face counts as part of the name.) this group are the best call of duty/halo/left4dead players i've met (well sort of anyway), and they come with the added ability to always make me laugh. we have good times while we virtually murder zombies and nazis, and nazi-zombies.
one of my favorite things about xbox is that you get to talk to people who live all over the world; i take it for granted now (but it is pretty funny to listen to my friends say 'voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir?', since that's the only french they know, when we get the angry french people in our lobby; they tend to get angrier after that;), but it's probably one of the coolest ideas ever. i've spoken to people from england, scotland, ireland, canada, france, belgium, denmark, wales, germany, australia, and japan. and of course there's some serious cultural diffusion going on; thanks to me, the word "guido" is making its way across Washington, Illinois, Ohio, Georgia, Canada, Scotland, and probably England.=)
and if there's one thing i've learned, it's that ALL of these people, however far away they live from each other or however different their lives are, ALL of them hate obnoxious little 12 year olds who scream lame insults at you and go on and on about how they're the shit and if you try and tell them to shut the fuck up, they call you a pedophile. everyone hates those kids. but seriously, what kind of parent lets their 12 year old scream "fuck you" to a bunch of people they don't know?! the shitty kind.

anyways, the moral of my rambling is that nerds are nerds, but they're also awesome in their special nerdy way. and without certain ones, my life wouldn't have nearly as many hysterical little stories to tell. i've gained some good ones and lost some good ones and gained some more great ones; there's a couple that i wonder who the fuck they are and how they got on my friends list, and there's even a few that i wonder why i talk to at all sometimes, but then i remember how much they make me laugh despite their weirdness=) and of course there's a select few that i immediately clicked with and even though it's only been a few months it feels like we've been friends for years, and these are the ones that make playing xbox worthwhile.
so, happy one year xbl anniversary to me! i hope this next year sees these friendships continuing and maybe even some new ones? nah i don't really need any more lol.

oh, and i changed my gamertag! theFullmetal001, though loved much, is now gone. it served me infallibly, but it was time to move on. to take its place is my new and improved gamertag "ali say whaaat", which i feel gives off more of my personality (mainly awesomeness), and didn't require me to add numbers to make it unique. woooo! this is the dawning of a new era!=) lmfao i know i know, i'm a nerd. but i'm a cute nerd so it's chill lmao;)
peace!<3
and happy inauguration day!!!! wooooooooooooooooooo!=D yes we did!!!

guns, Giants, and tofu!=)

dude, what the FUCK is going on in our country?
seriously, this has obviously been going on for like a really long time, but get this:
in Texas, and i think Georgia and South Carolina, and plenty of other states that we New Yorkers generally attempt to pretend don't exist, it's legal to carry an exposed side-arm as long as you are eighteen or older. no permit necessary. so say i happen to acquire a Texas liscense, in 10 and a half months, in Texas, i could decide to go to the mall or something, and decide i feel like bringing my handgun along for the ride. i mean, how isn't that a good idea? it's not like something absolutely horrific could happen by giving an 18-year old a gun or anything.
so far, this is the argument i've recieved from someone who lives in one of these states and does, in fact, excercise his "second amendment rights":
"well what if i go to a bank and the bank's being robbed? i just pull out my sidearm; problem solved."
hor-ri-fy-ing.
yeah because i'm sure it's not the ridiculously lax gun laws that made it so easy for the "bank robbers" to acquire the guns in the first place.
and somehow i just have the tiniest inkling of uncertainty regarding a regular citizen's ability, wielding a gun, to react correctly in a high-pressure situation. i'm sure if you want to be able to carry the gun around, the State makes you go through some kind of basic training with it, but guess what? i went through basic training of how to defend myself by breaking a 200lb man's arm if need-be, and at this point i'm pretty goddamn sure that if it ever came down to it, i would have no fucking clue how to break that guy's arm in real life.
just because the second amendment, which i might add was written like 230 years ago, says you have the "right" to "bear" arms, doesn't mean it's that great of an idea to waltz around town, doing your grocery shopping and going to the post office with a gun strapped to your belt "just in case". in actuality, the second amendment was written so that, at the time, should the country (which was constantly threatened and unstable in it's youth) ever be invaded by England (again) or any other (mostly)European nation, its citizens would be able to defend themselves and their lands without having to be hanged five years later because, even though they weren't in the colonial army, they shot some redcoat that was raping and murdering their family. i kind of doubt that the founding fathers really wanted people to be so casual about going about their daily lives with guns along for the ride. i mean, do these people understand what guns do? they kill people. they were made for taking lives.
i'm not advocating that we take all guns away from plain citizens, that would be naive and ridiculous; guns have their uses, i might decided to own a gun someday myself, and if it makes a person feel safer or whatever to own one than go for it, but don't carry it when taking a run out to the store; i'm pretty sure we can agree that the chance of someone deciding to rob that exact store at that exact time are slim to none, and it's really just an excuse to, i don't know, look "cool" or something? and jesus, make some legislation that makes it, you know, a little bit more difficult to legally acquire one, rather than just stopping in at wal-mart to get dinner for later and, oh yeah, a new gun. that's right, wal-mart son. even just requiring a goddamn permit would help.
america freaks me out sometimes.

oh and what the fuck happened to the Giants?! damnit Eli, you had one job to do! just one! and i defended you to the very last, even when you were down 12 fucking points with three minutes left, because you pulled it off last year! but no. not this year.
i mean, for christ's sake, we had like the worst decade ever up until last year; i think that deserves two superbowls in a row. grrrrr.

haha and check out tofu; he's my virtual tiger!=) if you click on him he purrs, and he follows the cursor around and swats at it. and in the little "more" tab, there's a steak for him to eat lol. AND if he crouches down and you put the cursor or his steak in front of him, he pounces on it lmao. yeah he's pretty awesome, and ironically, isn't, as his name implies, meat free=)

2009

i always thought the new year was supposed to be about starting fresh, but i'm starting to realize that people find it less exerting to remain in a pointless existence, where they have a reason to complain. apparently it's much easier to say you're going to change and not actually follow through with it, instead taking the opprotunity to blame other people and bitch and moan about how much life sucks for you and how clearly it's going to continue to suck for the next year, and the one after that. but so help me god, don't you people understand that if all you do is complain, yeah, guess what, life's going to keep on sucking. and like always, the rest of us have to sit and listen to the same story we've heard a hundred times over from you, and i'm sure we'll here at least hundred more. so wake the fuck up and change yourself, because no one else is going to do it for you, and it makes me sick to have to listen to all these "resolutions" and know that come tomorrow, nothing will have changed. they've been forgotten, without a second glance.
ugh i'm pissed.
and sorry i know i switched over to using "you" at some point; all of you reading just disregard that, ha, it's not aimed at you. just needed to keep it going once i started flipping out and writing it down.
happy 2009.