If you’ve followed any of my feeds in the past month, you probably already know how much I loved Mad Max: Fury Road. You can go here, or here to see me wax eloquent on how it’s the platonic ideal of its genre and the best movie of any genre I’ve seen this year.

You know what else? It’s also a model for how to rev up your life to kick more ass in your career, relationships, hobbies and anything else. That feature comes from something I’m certain they had as part of their writing process.

An Awesome Guy

Picture a table in a writing studio. The creative team sits there, batting around ideas. The air smells of stale coffee and cold pizza. They’re in the zone. A writer says “What if we had a huge fleet of apocalyptic death cars chase them into the desert?”

Everybody nods in approval, then the Awesome Guy clears his throat and does his only job.

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I don’t usually get political here on the blog (as opposed to my FB where I pick political fights constantly and with great elan). Recently, though, some of the national conversation and chats I’ve had on social media have led me to a thought too long to put on social media. So here it is.

Let’s talk about privilege.

Privilege is a social construct people toss around a lot that boils down to the fact that life ain’t fair. For example, I’m white and male and hetero and grew up with sufficient food. I earned none of that, but it makes corners of my life easier than it is for people without those advantages. For better or worse, privilege is the word we use to describe that, and it’s a real thing.

Trouble is, a lot of people skew towards asshole when the topic comes up.

• Liberal assholes use it as a bludgeon to end legitimate questioning of their ideas. They holler RACIST or claim the other can’t understand instead of having a conversation. More on them in a bit.
• Conservative assholes respond with indignation, and point out how their lives are limited by their demographic identity. Very often, it sounds like “There was a Black Pride march parade today…why can’t I have a White Pride parade?”

Both sides go all out when this happens, joining an upward spiral of outrage that accomplishes nothing. But it’s not the liberals’ fault. It’s not the conservatives’ fault.

It’s Vanilla Ice’s fault. 

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