the official MLIA blog

The Average Award:
Recognizing spectacularly average things since the date that this article was written.

This week, we would like to give the average award to eggs.

Eggs are spectacularly average. I will list some average things about them.

• They are an ingredient in lots of average baked goods.
• They are a staple food for many different cultures, both eastern and western.
• They come from chickens, which are perhaps the average-est of all farm animals
• Their shell is kind of strong, but not too strong. Eggs’ shell strength is average.
• They are white. White is a pretty average color.
• They aren’t even unique to chickens. Lots of animals lay eggs, although those eggs aren’t quite as average.
• They were the average word of the day for like 14 days in a row. If that doesn’t make them average, I don’t know what average is.

So, now eggs finally get the recognition they deserve. Congratulations, eggs! … I guess.

Now, enjoy the following MLIA and have a great weekend! Or week! Or whatever!

Today, I asked my mom why we get eggs from the Easter Bunny and not the Easter Chicken. She didn’t know either. MLIA.

Hello again everyone!

Right now, I’m sitting at home reading words from a computer, and occasionally typing them. Most of you are probably doing that too. Welcome to the average club. Give yourself a pat on the back. But don’t feel too good about it. An obligatory self-inflicted back-pat signifying your acceptance into the average club is enough.

Today, we’re going to take a look at something that discerning members of the average club will find relevant to their interests. In our very first…

AVERAGE REVIEW

We decided that the MLIA community needs some guidance when it comes to incredibly average products. We need to know how average things are. Why? I’m not entirely sure. But wouldn’t it be comforting to know that your chair is exactly 1.5 times as average as your keyboard?

The average review will use the “rock” scale. Not very average gets one rock. Very average gets five rocks. This is because rocks are average.

Today, I’ll be reviewing Boise® Aspen™ 50 Recycled Multipurpose Paper, 8 1/2″ x 11″, 20 Lb, 92 Brightness, because as the printer paper changing guy at the place I work, it’s the only paper that I know about, and paper is really average.

The first thing that strikes me as pretty average is the color of the paper. It’s white. Average paper is white. Score one average rock for Boise® Aspen™ 50 Recycled Multipurpose Paper, 8 1/2″ x 11″, 20 Lb, 92 Brightness!!!

The paper comes in an average sized, relatively lightweight cardboard box, and there are 10 reams of 500 pages per box. 10 is a very average number, and the average ream of paper should have 500 pages. Which is exactly how many pages a ream of Boise® Aspen™ 50 Recycled Multipurpose Paper, 8 1/2″ x 11″, 20 Lb, 92 Brightness has!!!
Score one more rock. Please note that I didn’t actually count the number of pages. I think it’s safe to assume, though. The good folks at Boise® Aspen™ would never lie to me.

I tested this paper’s usability under several average conditions. Printing on it was the first test. I printed a picture on it. It turned out pretty much the same as it would on plain old paper. Good job, paper. I printed out an essay and the ink really took to it- the words stayed on the page even after I tried to shake them off. Finally, I drew some not very impressive stick figures and rocket ships on it. This paper made for slightly above average doodling paper, but certainly nothing that an expert doodler would recommend. All in all, this paper scores one more rock for its averageness in this category.

Next up: the paper is recycled. Although many papers are recycled, recycled paper is a good thing and helps the earth, which makes it not entirely average. On the other hand, most paper is recycled. So, how about half an average rock for that.

Finally, the paper airplane test. We made several paper airplanes using Boise® Aspen™ 50 Recycled Multipurpose Paper, and subjected them to a number of rigorously controlled tests against other major paper brands. The findings were as follows. The aircraft configuration was the International Paper Plane Council standard V-fold delta wing, tossed according to PPC average-toss-velocity standards. Calculated lift/drag ratios all fell within a statistically unremarkable margin around 10:1. Each of the paper aircraft exhibited tolerable but not quite ideal stall behavior, and suffered only minor structural damage to the nose area upon landing, which could best be described as “disappointing, but not really too bad, and hey look, it still kind of flies.” For Boise® Aspen™ 50 Recycled Multipurpose Paper’s outstandingly standard performance, and its slightly suboptimal creasing properties, we award one more average rock.

So after both incredibly rigorous and incredibly lazy tests, we are proud to award Boise® Aspen™ 50 Recycled Multipurpose Paper with four and a half average rocks! That means that it is very average, but not maximally average. So, next time you’re out shopping for paper, consider Boise® Aspen™ 50 Recycled Multipurpose Paper as a perfectly legitimate choice, neither spectacular nor awful, and not really worth thinking too much about.

We’ll leave you with this MLIA, which served as the inspiration for part of this review.

Today, my boss left for a week long vacation. I spent the whole day making a desk full of paper airplanes. I plan to race them tomorrow. MLIA.

Pleas note that we have no connection with Boise® other than that it’s the paper that’s used at the place I work. And I can’t really imagine Boise® paying us to advertise their product’s averageness…

Hi guys and gals,

This is going to be a short blog post.

We’ve just put the finishing touches on the new comment flagging system. If you see an inappropriate comment or if a user is being spammy, down vote their comment and click the report link. We will take appropriate action after reviewing the flagged content.

Sometime in the next few days, we should also have the “Extraordinarily Average” section up, so keep an eye out for that.

Finally, this weeks podcast is shaping up nicely and we will post it on Monday. Be sure to catch that either here or on iTunes.

Keep it Average,
Mek

I am writing this post using Q10, which if you haven’t heard of it, is a text editor that makes typewriter noises while you type. Which is awesome for everybody that isn’t sitting next to you.
Alright, seriously now, I would like to discuss some of the changes planned for MyLifeIsAverage.

Isn’t Christmas Over?

Right now there are lots of stories in the vote on submissions section that mention Christmas and the New Year, because the story queue has gotten quite long. We just finished writing a new algorithm which will sift through stories much quicker and will also (hopefully) improve the quality of stories making it to the front page. It gives registered users more of a say in which stories get published. What does this mean to you? Voting: If you have an account, log in before voting. You can still vote if you aren’t logged in, but it will count less. The stories: Should be fresher (i.e. there won’t be any Valentine’s Day posts in July).

Average Selects

Like McDonald’s chicken selects, except funnier… and more free. We will have a new section on the site which will feature a few hand-picked stories each day. These will be stories that we find extraordinarily average.

Spam

Spam is a canned meat product, which can be served fried. It is wildly popular in Hawaii and Guam. It does not belong on MyLifeIsAverage. To help cut down on the spam in the comments, we are adding the ability for you to report naughty users. After down voting a user’s comment, a link will appear which you can click to report the user. With great power comes great responsibility, so only use this power for good.

Mobile Site

Ever since we launched MyLifeIsAverage back in May, people have asked for mobile apps. We have held off, because we thought it was more important to focus on fixing the basics first. Now that the site is stable (more or less) we want to make MLIA available on mobile devices. Rather than make an iPhone app, which only iPhone users can use, we were thinking about making a mobile version of the website. That way, anybody with internet on their phone will be able to access the site.

The Podcast

The podcast is now available on iTunes. Please subscribe. We are still taking questions for MLIA co-founder Guru Khalsa on the hotline. (Guru Khalsa says: “I would like to answer at least one question from someone with a ridiculously awesome accent. Fake the accent if you have to. It might even be funnier that way…”) Please submit your questions before Tuesday, February 9th.

Also, if you use Firefox and consider yourself a hardcore MLIA fan, consider getting the official MLIA Firefox persona which is available here.

Disclaimer:
Everything in the post is for your entertainment. There are no updates to anything important that MLIA is doing. MLIA is hanging out, just kinda being MLIA. Maybe wearing sunglasses and trying to fit in with the cool kids, but not really trying too hard. And the cool kids won’t accept MLIA anyway, because it still brings its Thomas the Tank Engine lunchbox to school.

One of the best things about MLIA is that it occasionally causes moments of extreme nostalgia, which for some of us usually ends with the building of blanket forts and attempts to convince our roommates and/or girlfriend to leave them intact. I’d like to discuss a couple things that almost sent us to the hospital on a nostalgia overdose.

Legos!

The following MLIA is really sweet, and perhaps not that average. We like it nonetheless, although we do admit that its ending is rather cliché. And a sentence fragment.(<— irony)

Today, I wondered out loud as to why all the boys I know don’t want to date me. My eight-year-old brother looked up from his legos and said, “They all run away screaming because you’re so pretty they can’t stand to be around you.” Best. Brother. Ever.

But you know what blew my mind about it? It reminded me of legos.

Legos. Legos! Legos!!!

There were legos for everything. And if there weren’t legos already specifically made for the thing you wanted, you could build them. I fondly remember crushing my kindergarten friend’s quaint little aquatic lego-dude army with my vicious and powerful pirates-in-space army. Pirates in space. Eyepatches, peglegs, parrots, everything. They even had palm trees, growing in various odd places on the spaceship. There was a cargo ship that was filled to the brim with pirate treasure. But the best thing about legos is that, as well as being fun to build and play with, you are so much bigger than them. You can stomp around and imagine them trying to fight back against you, but you’re pretty much Godzilla. Except the kind of Godzilla that fighting back against won’t help. It was great.

Bowling

Another recent nostalgia moment was from this MLIA:

Today, I got tired of how badly I was bowling and switched to my left hand as a joke. I immediately bowled a strike. MLIA

Of all sport/pastime/gamelikethings, bowling is a laudably average sport/pastime/gamelikething. Although I now realize that it’s really just a sophisticated drinking game, it used to be the most magical experience in the world. What was going on behind the pins?

Also, if you used one of those aiming things, why didn’t the ball get a strike every time? And why was that random kid who you didn’t really like getting so many strikes, while you were only getting gutter balls?

There are still unresolved bowling mysteries. The main one being: how did they come up with bowling? Back in ancient history, there was no crazy machinery that returned the ball to people. We presume that primitive bowling must have been some guy or girl setting up sticks, grabbing some really heavy rock, and then hurling the rock at the sticks. Then they must have run to collect the rock, lugged it all the way back, and repeated the process.

Whatever compelled them to do this, we have no idea. But we owe them thanks, since they have paved the way for the joys of modern bowling, with its sparkling pink, green and orange bowling balls, mysterious ball return-ers, and its nice fresh bowling-feeling of total averageness. And bumpers. You can’t forget the bumpers.

In conclusion, we ask: do you have any good lego stories or bowling stories? Comment away.

Dear MLIA reader,

Here is a list of six average things that we think you should know, in no particular order.

Thing #1 – Sharks will only eat you if you are wet.

We feel that some of the best things about MLIA are the valuable survival lessons that we learn from it. We thought we should share this one with you, since it may save your life someday.

Thing #2 – The MLIA RSS feed works now.

Average websites have RSS feeds that work. Our website tries to be average. We’re one step closer. Enjoy the RSS here.

Thing #3 – We have a phone number.

Yes, for serious. We have a real, live, fresh from the factory phone number. For receiving communication from people.

So give us a call!

It will go to voicemail, and we’ll use your calls for various things in the future. Maybe for a podcast, or a video, or as background music for our bi-weekly sit-around-being-as-average-as-possible parties.

The number is 1 (405) 428-3724, which is like 1 (405) 4-AVERAGE but without the E, because that would be too many numbers. Check out the info page here.

We can’t promise anything about this- depending on how many people call, you might have difficulty getting through or messages might got lost, but we’re excited to hear from you and we will try to listen to all your messages.

Thing #4 – Rowboats.

Rowboats are really average. I googled them and found the most average rowboat page I could. Enjoy.

Thing #5 – Shirt Design

We love the stuff that you come up with, so we want to get you involved with our t-shirt designs. If you have a design for an MLIA-themed t-shirt, we’d love for you to submit it to us at design@mylifeisaverage.com

Before submitting, you should read and agree to the terms and conditions found here, because we’re doing everything by the book.

Here’s something that we’ve already had submitted- it’s a great example of the kind of thing we’re looking for.

Where the Average Things Are

Thing #6 – Jackets

Now that it’s Winter, jackets are our friends. In honor of them we present you with this MLIA.

Today, I bought an item that will keep me warm but give my hands the freedom to use the remote, phone, or eat a snack. It’s called a jacket. MLIA.

Dear MLIA reader,

Here at MLIA staff headquarters, surrounded by other small apartments and the loud noise of a garbage truck, we strive to be average in almost everything we do. We have a strong commitment to being average. We love average.

Because of this, we thought that the most average way to keep everyone up to date with what’s going on behind the scenes at MLIA was by using a blog. Blogs are so average that there’s even a blog about chairs.

So what is going on in MLIA-land?

Well, first we would like to congratulate everyone who has raised money for charity by buying an MLIA t-shirt. We’re donating 100% of the t-shirt profit from December to charity… but wait! THERE’S MORE! Inspired by some of the suggestions on the fan page, we’ve decided that we want to get a freshwater well for a village that doesn’t have one, through charitywater.org. Why ? BECAUSE WATER IS AVERAGE. Everyone should have access to clean drinking water.

Before Christmas we donated the first half of December’s t-shirt sales ($3,500!!!) to Toys for Tots, because Christmas presents are average. Now we’re shooting for an entire freshwater well for a village, and we’re going to keep donating all t-shirt sale profits until we get there. A well costs $5,000, and you raised $1,500 dollars from last December already. So grab an MLIA t-shirt here, because water is average.

What else is going on in MLIA-land?

Loads of things. We’ll keep you updated here, and to celebrate the new blog we’ll leave you with this MLIA.

Today, I was listening to the radio and heard an interview with a woman who shunned any form of electronics. At the end the news caster mentioned something along the lines of, “You can read about this in further depth on her blog.” Ah, the irony. MLIA