The Arbiter of Sanity.

Yesterday I posted a mysterious, last minute article that not too many people saw. Which, honestly, was to be expected. I mean, I haven't posted anything in months despite saying several times that I was going to start writing more regularly. I don't blame you, really.

Well, that's not entirely true. I blame you a little bit.

The thing is, I wanted to continue writing, but not on this page. Not on Blogger. I've learned a lot over the years, and I figured it was time for a change. A new identity, even.

And that change has finally come.

I will be writing again, yes. And I have a new site which you can find here called The Arbiter of Sanity. I like it. It has a nice ring to it, and I'm never above assigning myself a self-righteous title.

I will be writing and posting new articles there from now on, so if you want to see anything new, that's the place to go. I will of course leave this site up, both as a monument to how goddamn awesome I am and as a funnel to get everyone safely to my new digs.

I really hope to see you all there but, if I don't, thank you for reading A Sane Break From the Insanity. It's been really fun.

New Site, Same Shit.

 Just a quick update to let you all know:







There's a new site in the works.







More refined.







More sarcasm.






More political idiocy.












More sanity.













More to come...

Facts: A Beginner's Guide For Conservatives.

*Warning!*  If you are not familiar with grade school level science, the English language, or reality in general, you may have trouble comprehending this article. Of course, as it is meant for my conservative readers (a.k.a. the people that accidentally stumbled here because reading things you don't agree with is almost fundamentally out of your wheelhouse), I'll try to keep my words small, the sentences brief, and the pictures plentiful.

Here's a fun game:

One of the following sentences is a fact and the other one is not. Can you tell which one is which?

A.) Getting punched in the dick hurts.
B.) President Obama wants to take away everyone's guns.

Share The Sanity!

Good evening, all! I just wanted to take a second to encourage you all to share my articles on whatever social networking site you use the most, be it Facebook, Twitter, or by writing my articles down by hand and sending them through the post to your Luddite cousin.

This is particularly important for me now more than ever, as I want to get back into writing daily as well as professionally. That's right. As soon as I have the money saved up, I will be returning to college for journalism. And no, I am not encouraging you to share because I see any money out of it - I totally don't. As you may have noticed, this blog is ad-free, and ad-free it shall remain.

My motivation for the career change is simple: I've been writing this blog for more than 2 and a half years, and one of the most consistent things that has pissed me off is that reporters and journalists are no longer holding our politicians accountable for the stupid, ignorant shit that they say. I'd very much like to change that.

You'd like an example? How about when Representative Grimm threatened to throw New York One reporter Michael Scotto off of a balcony for (half) asking the incumbent a question that he didn't want to answer on television? If I had been that reporter, I wouldn't have backed down. I would have told Grimm to fucking do it. "Do it, motherfucker. Throw me off this balcony in front of all of these cameras and all of these people. Show the country how much of a man you are. Show the world that you're the best we have to offer when it comes to representation."

Expect that kind of reporting if I ever make it to the big leagues.  

So please, share the sanity, leave some comments* below and, as always, you can personally email me at asanebreak@gmail.com.

Do it.

Do it for me?








You're the best.







*I'll be posting again about this later, but just as a reminder: anonymous comments will not be posted, even if they are friendly and supportive. I know I have some older anonymous comments floating around here (I was a bit lax with the policy in my early days) but please, don't follow by example. Read the text above the comment box, and either use a handle you are comfortable with or, at the very least, just make one up. If you don't have the stones to stand behind your opinion, then why take the time to write it at all?

Christian Couple In Florida Fined For Feeding The Homeless

Chico and Debbie Jimenez are a lovely Christian couple in Daytona Beach, Florida that, for more than a year now, have been feeding the homeless at Manatee Island Park every Wednesday around lunch time. Isn't that great? I'd love to just end this post there with a short congratulations to the Jimenez's on being awesome, and for actually following the teachings of Christ. It always warms my heart to hear of stories like this - of people just doing good things for others and expecting nothing in return. Charity is truly wonderful.

But, of course, I wouldn't be writing about the Jimenez's if this story didn't take a sharp left turn into Whatthefuckville and slam into the Areyoufuckingkiddingme Boutique. Keeping up with state's theme of lawlessness, ignorance, and hypocrisy, the police of Daytona Beach moved in on Manatee Island Park last week and served citations to the Jiminezes and a few of their volunteer helpers, as well as banning them from the park permanently.

Ann Coulter's Attempt to Mock First Lady Obama and Hashtag Activism Backfires

"Give me all of your babies, for they 

fuel my unbridled hatred."

Ann Coulter is a right-wing political commentator and activist that can best be described as the female version of one Rush Limbaugh. Just about every word that hisses its way past her forked tongue and sharp fangs are loaded with hate and tipped with spite (and yes, if words had flavors, hers would taste distinctly of bullshit).

She is one of the champions of ignorance over at Fox News, and she is evil personified. To give you a brief glimpse of what I mean, here's a little quote from Coulter from an interview she did with the New York Observer back in 2007:

"If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat president. It's kind of a pipe dream, it's a personal fantasy of mine, but I don't think it's going to happen. And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women.

"It also makes the point, it is kind of embarrassing, the Democratic Party ought to be hanging its head in shame, that is has so much difficulty getting men to vote for it. I mean, you do see it's the party of women and 'We'll pay for health care and tuition and day care - and here, what else can we give you, soccer moms?'"

6 Reasons Why Cliven Bundy and His Militiamen Are Assholes.

Cliven Bundy is an asshole. Everyone that joins him at his ranch is an asshole. And anyone that supports him has their heads up their own assholes. For those of you that don't know, Bundy (the asshole pictured above) is the man trying to start an armed revolution against the federal government because he's too stubborn to admit that he's wrong.

WTF Is Wrong With Americans?

I found this lil' gem over at Daily Kos but clearly the image belongs to the Occupy Movement.  I'm not a fan of Silhouette Man - he's a little shady - but I like what he has to say.  I'd gladly pay higher taxes if it meant everyone in my country had the opportunity to better their education for free. 

Unfortunately, I don't think the whole "raising taxes to make college free" pitch would go well in today's Congress.  I mean, put yourself in the black leather Ferragamo shoes of a Senator.  Educating your own constituents (particularly those of you in the red parts of 'Merica) is a great way to get your dumb ass voted out of office.



'Merica.   

Welcome Back!

Looking Back...


Soooooo.... hi.

It's been awhile, hasn't it?  Almost six months to the day.  Damn.  What have you all been doing without me?

I'll tell you what I've been doing: Ignoring this blog.  I wish I could say I did it on accident.  That life got too busy for me and that I just couldn't keep up with it anymore.  I guess in a way that's true.  But I always had time to write.

I just didn't want to.  The news stories became more and more depressing and outrageous.  So outrageous, in fact, I didn't think I needed to give my two cents to most stories - they were ludicrous enough as it was.

I tried to tune politics out for awhile.  With a do-nothing Congress and what unfortunately appears to now be a do-nothing president, nothing even really seemed interesting to write about.  The Keystone Pipeline?  It'll probably get built.  The NSA Scandal?  Tell me something I didn't already assume was happening.  The Boston Bombing?  A tragedy that I had no business writing anything sarcastic about.

I gotta tell ya, I was pretty close to deleting this whole site from the internet altogether.

But then I remembered something.  I remembered why I started writing this back in November of 2010.

You see, I have near crippling anxiety with a lovely dash of depression.  Mix those things with a hatred of confrontation, and you got yourself a Me.  I'm never one to lash out at people.  Shit, I don't even like being rude to people that were first rude to me.  But this site gave me that opportunity.

For the first time in my life, I was able to lash out at things and people that deserved it in a relatively public forum.  And it's not the anonymity that I like, but the fact that I get to think out my arguments and write them down in a manner to which I find to be quite funny.

That's how this site started, see?  As a way for me to just unwind, share my worldview with anyone that wanted to read it, and to make people laugh.  If you go back to my first posts, only a handful of them were political.  A lot of them were fairly nonsensical.  I made a list of movies that I hated.  I wrote about how everything should be wireless these days.  I made Michael Bay my bitch.    

Now, I'm not saying that the shift to politics was unintentional, or even that I'm regretting it.  It wasn't, and I don't.  But reminding myself of the core reasons as to why I was wrote these posts inspired me to go back through and look at some of them and notice/remember a few things.

My original intention for this blog was to create a character that I would write in, much like Stephen Colbert has a character named Stephen Colbert that he does on his show every Monday-Thursday night.  This character would be funny, a bit mean, vulgar, sarcastic, and informative.  He would come out in my posts, and to strike down trolls in the comments section.  He would be put away when responding to kind comments, or when writing about serious subjects.

I think I managed this quite well.  Truthfully, I didn't have to work very hard.  That character is me, to a degree, although I like to think of him as a more hyperbolic me.

Then I set to work coming up with a schtick.  A lot of people might notice that my earlier posts have lots of captioned pictures.  I was very fond of that.

After that, came the content.  What the fuck was I going to write about?  That was how the name came about.  "A Sane Break From The Insanity."  I immediately loved it.  It was my first and only choice.  Here you were, reading my blog and getting your sanity break from the surrounding insane world, and there I was, enjoying myself and taking pleasure in the fact that somewhere, someone was smiling or laughing because of something I wrote.  

The problem started when I wanted more.  I wanted to be viewed by more.  I wanted my site to gain in popularity until I was the next Oatmeal.  So I started trying to write for others.  Best of the Blogs and Addicting Info are the big ones that come to mind.  And while I had a lot of control over what I wrote at both sites, neither site fully accepted the style in which I wrote.  They wanted more journalism and less opinion so I, in my quest for recognition, reconfigured my style to suit them.

I took out those pictures with the funny captions and stuck with just one picture for an "article grabber."  I took out the humor and added in more references and charts and boring graphics.  My articles went from being entertaining and informative to just being informative with random swearing.  That swearing, by the way, was the character I had come up with being smothered.  He could manage to get a few words out here and there, peppered into the post like a vulgar spice, but they were never pretty. 

It was for these reasons (and several other more personal ones) that I stopped writing in February.

Well, folks, I've realized something.  Being the King of Facts is not my job.  I'm not here to give you the news.  I'm not Brian Williams.  I'm here to do two things: entertain you, and state my opinion in a reasonable manner.  You visit my site to do two things: read, and agree or disagree with what you just read. 

I want to have fun with this again.


Looking Ahead...

As I approach 50,000 views (a significant milestone to be sure), my resolve to keep this thing going has become stronger.  And while I still want to be a prominent liberal voice on the internet, the coming posts will be less fact-oriented and more humorous.  That's not to say that I won't back my claims up with data or spouting outright falsities like my counter-parts on the right do.  That's their ignorant bubble to play in, not mine.  

What I mean is this: if I write it down and publish it in a post, it is (to my knowledge) accurate.  I will still hyperlink to relevant sources if I feel like I need to, but other than that, you're all smart enough to use Google.  If you don't believe me on something, either look it up yourself, or bring it up in the comments section.  That is what the comments section is for.  I promise that if you ask nice enough, I'll back up any claims I made in the corresponding article.

Simply put: I don't want my future posts to look like they belong on Politico or ThinkProgress.  I want to get back to why I started writing this and to how I was writing it from the beginning.  I want to see more discussions in my comments section, and would love to get more of them started through my email account.   

If you want to know what to expect in the coming weeks, click here.  This is one of my newest and last posts, and it happens to be one of my favorites.  It was my old self breaking through, and it's what I hope to be returning to very soon. 

That's all for now.  Thank you for reading.  To those of you returning, welcome back to your happy place.  To those of you just joining us, well...

Welcome to your new happy place.














Be sure to LIKE "A Sane Break" on Facebook for more personal updates about me, conversations with other intelligent individuals, and updates on when I post new articles!
   

Uganda Closer To Passing Dangerous Anti-Homosexual Bill.

Before I get into the meat of this article, let me begin by saying that you will find my normal sense of humor and my sarcastic style of writing elsewhere.  This is not the time or the place for either - I want everyone to be aware of what is going on in Uganda right now, and I want to be blunt about it.  There is nothing funny about the Anti-Homosexual Bill being considered by the Ugandan Parliament.

Perhaps you don't know about it.  Perhaps you know it by another name.  Don't be fooled by its rather G-rated government title - there's a reason that the Anti-Homosexual Bill is also known as the "Kill the Gays" Bill.

If it passes, LGBT members of the Ugandan community will not be safe, nor will people that defend them, harbor them, or associate themselves with them. Box Turtle Bulletin has the information, complete with a bunch of lovely, educational hyperlinks:

The Anti-Homosexuality Bill would, in its current form, bring the death penalty or life imprisonment for gay people, and would endanger everyone else with lengthy prison terms for either knowing, providing services, or defending them. A complete clause-by-clause examination of the bill’s nineteen clauses begins here, and our examination of the numerous false reports that the death penalty has been removed is here. A description of the Parliamentary process is here; with the Anti-Homosexuality Bill now at step “C.” If the bill is passed by Parliament, the Uganda Constitution spells out these options before the bill becomes law.

This is very dangerous, folks.  Regardless about how you feel towards the LGBT community, I think everyone can agree that this bill is harsh, unnecessary, and terrifying.  It bears a chilling resemblance to the actions of the Third Reich during World War II, and it has to be stopped immediately.  I don't think I need to warn anyone of the dangers that innocent human beings would face if this bill passes.

Take a few minutes out of your day and educate yourself about this bill, then share that knowledge with someone.  Start a conversation, get a dialogue going.  Let the leaders of Uganda know that ignorance of this scale will not be tolerated by the rest of the world. 

Don't let them pass this bill.  Please.














I'm not sure how old this is, but here's the link to a Change.org petition you could sign to show your support for the Ugandan LGBT community.  Out of date or not, your signature can't hurt.


Peace.Love.Understanding.