Average Guy Quotes

I knew I was different. I thought that I might be gay or something because I couldn't identify with any of the guys at all. None of them liked art or music. They just wanted to fight and get laid. It was many years ago but it gave me this real hatred for the average American macho male.

Be grateful you’re not in the forest in France Where the average young person just hasn’t a chance To escape from the perilous pants eating plants But your pants are safe, you’re a fortunate guy You ought to be shouting how lucky am I

I couldn't claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys--but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly!

When something really bad is going on in a culture, the average guy doesn’t see it. He can’t. He’s average. And is surrounded by and immersed in the cant and discourse of the status quo.

Justin, honey, you were my very first kiss. My very first hand to hold. But you were nothing more than an average guy. And I don't say that to be mean- I don't. There was just something about you that made me need to be your girlfriend to this day I don't know exactly what that was. But it was there.. and it was amazingly strong. -Thirteen Reasons Why

Now, I don’t think I’m a stupid guy. I’m just an average guy who does stupid things.

It's about average for us. Behavior always draws more than survey. We're the sexy ones,' Nate said with a grin. Amy snorted. 'Oh, yeah, you guys are the Mae Wests of the nerd world.' We're action nerds,' Nate said. 'Adventure nerds. Nerds of romance.

A recent survey stated that the average person's greatest fear is having to give a speech in public. Somehow this ranked even higher than death which was third on the list. So, you're telling me that at a funeral, most people would rather be the guy in the coffin than have to stand up and give a eulogy.

Christmas poem to a man in jail hello Bill Abbott: I appreciate your passing around my books in jail there, my poems and stories. if I can lighten the load for some of those guys with my books, fine. but literature, you know, is difficult for the average man to assimilate (and for the unaverage man too); I don't like most poetry, for example, so I write mine the way I like to read it.

I'm not interested in absolute moral judgments. Just think of what it means to be a good man or a bad one. What, after all, is the measure of difference? The good guy may be 65 per cent good and 35 per cent bad—that's a very good guy. The average decent fellow might be 54 per cent good, 46 per cent bad—and the average mean spirit is the reverse. So say I'm 60 per cent bad and 40 per cent good—for that, must I suffer eternal punishment? "Heaven and Hell make no sense if the majority of humans are a complex mixture of good and evil. There's no reason to receive a reward if you're 57/43—why sit around forever in an elevated version of Club Med? That's almost impossible to contemplate.

The average newspaper boy in Pittsburgh knows more about the universe than did Galileo, Aristotle, Leonardo, or any of those other guys who were so smart they only needed one name.

And you've actually watched it yourself?' I asked. 'Willingly?' Sure. I had to see it, you know? Besides we should be safe. Only one in twenty viewers actually had a bad reaction. And it was mostly kids who were affected. I mean younger than you guys. I think the average age was about ten.' That made me feel somewhat better. But that was a kid's show,' said Jen. 'Maybe it affects everyone, but not that many adults were watching.' That made me feel less better. I wanted my protective bangs back.

I've become convinced that genius is a vastly overrated commodity. I think this country is full of geniuses, guys and gals so bright they make your average card carrying MENSA member look like Fucko the Clown. And I think that most of them are teachers, living and working in small town obscurity because that's the way they like it.

Most people assumed Aaron was gay just because he was on the cheerleading squad. I, on the other hand, assumed a guy who would endure severe social stigma in the name of getting his hands under a bunch of girls' skirts when he lifted them into the air was probably pervier than your average bear.

My enemy is not the average white guy, its not the kid down the block or the kids I see on the streets. My enemy is the white I don't see: the people in The white House, the corporate monoply owners. Fake liberal politicians-those are my enemies.

Rarely do very handsome men allow their faces to run around without a leash. I am not very handsome, but I am above-average handsome, which means I have spent only one-sixteenth of my life in front of a mirror practicing facial expressions, as opposed to the maybe one-fourth that a very handsome guy might have. Yet I can tell you that if I had accidentally spilled coffee on a first date, I would have immediately made facial expression number 69b: Spilled Coffee on First Date face.

Ten Best Song to Strip 1. Any hip-swiveling R&B fuckjam. This category includes The Greatest Stripping Song of All Time: "Remix to Ignition" by R. Kelly. 2. "Purple Rain" by Prince, but you have to be really theatrical about it. Arch your back like Prince himself is daubing body glitter on your abdomen. Most effective in nearly empty, pathos-ridden juice bars. 3. "Honky Tonk Woman" by the Rolling Stones. Insta-attitude. Makes even the clumsiest troglodyte strut like Anita Pallenberg. (However, the Troggs will make you look like even more of a troglodyte, so avoid if possible.) 4. "Pour Some Sugar on Me" by Def Leppard. The Lep's shouted choruses and relentless programmed drums prove ideal for chicks who can really stomp. (Coincidence: I once saw a stripper who, like Rick Allen, had only one arm.) 5. "Amber" by 311. This fluid stoner anthem is a favorite of midnight tokers at strip joints everywhere. Mellow enough that even the most shitfaced dancer can make it through the song and back to her Graffix bong without breaking a sweat. Pass the Fritos Scoops, dude. 6. "Miserable" by Lit, but mostly because Pamela Anderson is in the video, and she's like Jesus for strippers (blonde, plastic, capable of parlaying a broken nail into a domestic battery charge, damaged liver). Alos, you can't go wrong stripping to a song that opens with the line "You make me come." 7. "Back Door Man" by The Doors. Almost too easy. The mere implication that you like it in the ass will thrill the average strip-club patron. Just get on all fours and crawl your way toward the down payment on that condo in Cozumel. (Unless, like most strippers, you'd rather blow your nest egg on tacky pimped-out SUVs and Coach purses.) 8. Back in Black" by AC/DC. Producer Mutt Lange wants you to strip. He does. He told me. 9. "I Touch Myself" by the Devinyls. Strip to this, and that guy at the tip rail with the bitch tits and the shop teacher glasses will actually believe that he alone has inspired you to masturbate. Take his money, then go masturbate and think about someone else. 10. "Hash Pipe" by Weezer. Sure, it smells of nerd. But River Cuomo is obsessed with Asian chicks and nose candy, and that's just the spirit you want to evoke in a strip club. I recommend busting out your most crunk pole tricks during this one.

Sorry, the points are already deducted. And taking into account his schedule, and then the standard deviation from the average man’s schedule, I figure ninety percent of his time would go elsewhere. I’d never get uninterrupted coitus.” “Penis math,” Amy said. “Impressive.” She looked at Mallory. “See, this is why a guy shouldn’t date an accountant.

To tell you the truth, I prefer just your average, run-of-the-mill, everyday jackass with his glass-eyed, slack-jawed obliviousness to the guys who try to hijack my cool by reading poetry and listening to halfway-good music. I worked hard for my cool. I got my ass kicked in middle school for my cool. I came by this shit honestly.

Rich people always had someone to call who could arrange something that the average guy couldn't get done, no matter how right or wrong. The only call the poor man could make was to Jesus. If Jesus didn't answer, Smith and Wesson always did.

Two years ago, I was just your average seventeen-year-old guy. That’s a lie. I’ve never been average. I look like a movie star and move like an athlete.

Why is Amy amazing and Andy's just able? Well, don't you know a lot of powerful, fabulous women who settle for regular guys, Average Joes and Able Andys?

What if economic security and guilt-free sexual friendships were easily available to almost all men and women, as they are in many of the societies we’ve discussed, as well as among our closest primate cousins? What if no woman had to worry that a ruptured relationship would leave her and her children destitute and vulnerable? What if average guys knew they’d never have to worry about finding someone to love? What if we didn’t all grow up hearing that true love is obsessive and possessive? What if, like the Mosuo, we revered the dignity and autonomy of those we loved? What if, in other words, sex, love, and economic security were as available to us as they were to our ancestors? If fear is removed from jealousy, what’s left?

A solo woman is more likely to survive a perilous incident in the outdoors than a solo man. Yet, the average female hiker fears for her safety more than the average guy does. Ironically, this phenomenon, dubbed the Fear-Gender Paradox, may be why women fare better, because their angst makes them behave more cautiously. Meanwhile, their overconfident male peers are taking more risks and suffering the consequences.

The realms of dating, marriage, and sex are all marketplaces, and we are the products. Some may bristle at the idea of people as products on a marketplace, but this is an incredibly prevalent dynamic. Consider the labor marketplace, where people are also the product. Just as in the labor marketplace, one party makes an offer to another, and based on the terms of this offer, the other person can choose to accept it or walk. What makes the dating market so interesting is that the products we are marketing, selling, buying, and exchanging are essentially our identities and lives. As with all marketplaces, every item in stock has a value, and that value is determined by its desirability. However, the desirability of a product isn’t a fixed thing—the desirability of umbrellas increases in areas where it is currently raining while the desirability of a specific drug may increase to a specific individual if it can cure an illness their child has, even if its wider desirability on the market has not changed. In the world of dating, the two types of desirability we care about most are: - Aggregate Desirability: What the average demand within an open marketplace would be for a relationship with a particular person. - Individual Desirability: What the desirability of a relationship with an individual is from the perspective of a specific other individual. Imagine you are at a fish market and deciding whether or not to buy a specific fish: - Aggregate desirability = The fish’s market price that day - Individual desirability = What you are willing to pay for the fish Aggregate desirability is something our society enthusiastically emphasizes, with concepts like “leagues.” Whether these are revealed through crude statements like, “that guy's an 8,” or more politically correct comments such as, “I believe she may be out of your league,” there is a tacit acknowledgment by society that every individual has an aggregate value on the public dating market, and that value can be judged at a glance. When what we have to trade on the dating market is often ourselves, that means that on average, we are going to end up in relationships with people with an aggregate value roughly equal to our own (i.e., individuals “within our league”). Statistically speaking, leagues are a real phenomenon that affects dating patterns. Using data from dating websites, the University of Michigan found that when you sort online daters by desirability, they seem to know “their place.” People on online dating sites almost never send a message to someone less desirable than them, and on average they reach out to prospects only 25% more desirable than themselves. The great thing about these markets is how often the average desirability of a person to others is wildly different than their desirability to you. This gives you the opportunity to play arbitrage with traits that other people don’t like, but you either like or don’t mind. For example, while society may prefer women who are not overweight, a specific individual within the marketplace may prefer obese women, or even more interestingly may have no preference. If a guy doesn’t care whether his partner is slim or obese, then he should specifically target obese women, as obesity lowers desirability on the open marketplace, but not from his perspective, giving him access to women who are of higher value to him than those he could secure within an open market.

Space, let me repeat, is enormous. The average distance between stars out there is 20 million million miles. Even at speeds approaching those of light, these are fantastically challenging distances for any traveling individual. Of course, it is possible that alien beings travel billions of miles to amuse themselves by planting crop circles in Wiltshire or frightening the daylights out of some poor guy in a pickup truck on a lonely road in Arizona (they must have teenagers, after all), but it does seem unlikely.

When I woke, I was nestled on top of Ren’s chest. His arms were wrapped around me, and my legs were entwined with his. I was surprised I could breathe all night since my nose was smashed against his muscular torso. It had gotten cold, but my quilt covered both of us and his body, which maintained a warmer-than-average temperature, had kept me toasty all night. Ren was still asleep, so I took the rare opportunity to study him. His powerful frame was relaxed and his face was softened by sleep. His lips were full, smooth, and utterly kissable, and for the first time, I noticed how long his sooty lashes were. His glossy dark hair fell softly over his brow and was mussed in a way that made him look even more irresistible. So this is the real Ren. He doesn’t seem real. He looked like an archangel who fell to the earth. I’d been with Ren night and day for the past four weeks, but the time he was a man was such a small fraction of each day that he seemed almost like a dream guy, a real life Prince Charming. I traced a black eyebrow, following its arch with my finger, and lightly brushed the silky dark hair away from his face. Hoping not to disturb him, I sighed, shifted slowly, and tried to move away, but his arms tensed, restraining me. He sleepily mumbled, “Don’t even think about moving” and pulled me back to snuggle me close again. I rested my cheek against his chest, felt his heartbeat, and contented myself with listening to its rhythm. After a few minutes, he stretched and rolled to his side, pulling me with him. He kissed my forehead, blinked open his eyes, and smiled at me. It was like watching the sun come up. The handsome, sleeping man was potent enough, but when he turned his dazzling white smile on me and blinked open his cobalt blue eyes, I was dumbstruck. I bit my lip. Alarm bells started going off in my head. Ren’s eyes fluttered open, and he tucked some loose hair behind my ear. “Good morning, rajkumari. Sleep well?” I stammered, “I…you…I…slept just fine, thank you.” I closed my eyes, rolled away from him, and stood up. I could deal with him a lot better if I didn’t think about him much, or look at him, or talk to him, or hear him. He wrapped his arms around me from behind, and I felt his smile as he pressed his lips to the soft spot behind my ear. “Best night of sleep I’ve had in about three hundred and fifty years.

I am not a cowboy with a ranch and cattle, but I have this stable with some of the most beautiful horses in the world. I am not a farmer with a hundred-year-old farmhouse and acres of crops, but I have an island with acres of fertile land. I am not a mechanic with grease under my fingernails, but I know how to fix a flat tire. I am not your everyday average guy. I do not know if I can be one. But if you marry me, I will do my best to make your life as ordinary as you'd like.

I matched him glare for glare and refused to back down. I’d learnt that much, working with the guys we recruited for protection work. Forget your average heavy…we used the elite. Ex-commandos used to living behind enemy lines on nothing more than fresh air and dung beetles, and who could zero in on a target using mouse farts three miles away.

Currently, the average age of exposure to hardcore pornography is 9 years old. None of this can be good for anyone... except the sex industry.

Does the guy move around much? If he’s more mobile than, say, the average couch, Cho will probably lose him.

She’s the reason he will probably become an embittered old fuck before he’s even of legal drinking age, distrusting women and writing rude songs about them, and basically from here into eternity thinking all chicks are lying cheating sluts because one of them broke his heart. He’s the type of guy that makes girls like me frigid. I’m the girl who knows he’s capable of poetry, because, like I said, there are things I just know. I’m the one who could give him that old-fashioned song title of a thing called Devotion and True Love (However Complicated), if he ever gave a girl like me a second glance. I’m the less-than-five-minute girlfriend who for one too-brief kiss fantasized about ditching this joint with him, going all the way punk with him at a fucking jazz club in the Village or something. Maybe I would have treated him to borscht at Veselka at five in the morning, maybe I would have walked along Battery Park with him at sunrise, holding his hand, knowing I would become the one who would believe in him. I would tell him, I heard you play, I’ve read your poetry, not that crap your band just performed, but those love letters and songs you wrote to Tris. I know what you’re capable of and it’s certainly more than being a bassist in an average queercore band—you’re better than that; and dude, having a drummer, it’s like key, you fucking need one. I would be equipment bitch for him every night, no complaints. But, no, he’s the type with a complex for the Tris type: the big tits, the dumb giggle, the blowhard. Literally.

Rape culture manifests in a myriad ways…but its most devilish trick is to make the average, noncriminal person identify with the person accused, instead of the person reporting the crime. Rape culture encourages us to scrutinize victims’ stories for any evidence that they brought the violence onto themselves – and always to imagine ourselves in the terrifying role of Good Man, Falsely Accused, before we ‘rush to judgment’. We're not meant to picture ourselves in the role of drunk teenager at her first college party, thinking 'Wow, he seems to think I'm pretty!' Or the woman who accepts a ride with a 'nice guy,' who's generously offered to see her safely home from the bar. Or the girl who's passed out in a room upstairs, while the party rages on below, so chaotic that her friends don't even notice she's gone. When it comes to rape, if we're expected to put ourselves in anyone else's shoes at all, it's the accused rapist's. The questions that inevitably come along with 'What was she wearing?' and 'How much did she have to drink?' are, 'What if there was no rape at all? What if she's lying? What happens to this poor slob she's accusing? What if he goes to prison for a crime he didn't commit?

Get this,” the Trader spoke forcefully and earnestly, “there are five or six fat slobs who usually run an average planet. They get the rabbit punch, but I’m not losing peace of mind over them. See. The people? The ordinary run of guys? Sure, some get killed, and the rest pay extra taxes for a while. But it settles itself out; it runs itself down. And then it’s the old situation again with a different five or six.

This is the list you carry in your pocket, of the things you plan to say to Kay, when you find him, if you find him: 1. I’m sorry that I forgot to water your ferns while you were away that time. 2. When you said that I reminded you of your mother, was that a good thing? 3. I never really liked your friends all that much. 4. None of my friends ever really liked you. 5. Do you remember when the cat ran away, and I cried and cried and made you put up posters, and she never came back? I wasn’t crying because she didn’t come back. I was crying because I’d taken her to the woods, and I was scared she’d come back and tell you what I’d done, but I guess a wolf got her, or something. She never liked me anyway. 6. I never liked your mother. 7. After you left, I didn’t water your plants on purpose. They’re all dead. 8. Goodbye. 9. Were you ever really in love with me? 10. Was I good in bed, or just average? 11. What exactly did you mean, when you said that it was fine that I had put on a little weight, that you thought I was even more beautiful, that I should go ahead and eat as much as I wanted, but when I weighed myself on the bathroom scale, I was exactly the same weight as before, I hadn’t gained a single pound? 12. So all those times, I’m being honest here, every single time, and anyway I don’t care if you don’t believe me, I faked every orgasm you ever thought I had. Women can do that, you know. You never made me come, not even once. 13. So maybe I’m an idiot, but I used to be in love with you. 14. I slept with some guy, I didn’t mean to, it just kind of happened. Is that how it was with you? Not that I’m making any apologies, or that I’d accept yours, I just want to know. 15. My feet hurt, and it’s all your fault. 16. I mean it this time, goodbye.

machine powering the modern world is too complicated for the average person to fix or calibrate. And they know this. This is what makes an IT guy different from you. He might make less money, he might have less social prestige, and people might look at him in the cafeteria like he’s a morlock — but he can act however he wants. He can be nice, but only if he feels like it. He can ignore the company dress code. He can lie for

Now I was the only one left. I thought about what I was going to say: Oh, hi there, I'm Thom. I just want to say what an honor it is to be a part of this prestigious team. A leader that wants to kick my ass, some bitchy girl with a major attitude problem, a geriatric precog, a guy who should probably be quarantined at the Center for Disease Control, and me, just your average, ordinary, gay teen superhero. Surely we're what the founding members had in mind when they banded together to form the world's premier superhero group. What's not to be excited about? "I'm Thom." I scratched a dry patch above my elbow. "I can heal things. Sometimes.

There's always a but. It's a magical word. You can say anything you want, go on for as long as you want, and then all you have to do is add the magic word and instantly everything you said is erased, turned meaningless, just like that. You're a really nice guy... Your mother thinks you need a new computer... You've been working harder in class... But. You keep looking at Mr. Nagle as he explains how a few zero homework grades really knock down your average. You nod, and you're thinking that everything he is saying is true. You are smarter than this. You could be getting all As. You could be on the High Honor Roll. And that if you don't straighten up soon, you won't get into college. You won't be able to find a decent job. You won't amount to anything. And you know it's all true. But.

I’m not religious about God,” Boon agreed, “I’m religious about Man.” “We believe in average guys,” said Watt. “What happens is, the system makes them all fuckheads.” “And I want to try to snap them out of that,” said Boon. “That’s why I write these songs, OK?

I’ve become convinced that genius is a vastly overrated commodity. I think this country is full of geniuses, guys and gals so bright they make your average card-carrying MENSA member look like Fucko the Clown. And I think that most of them are teachers, living and working in small-town obscurity because that’s the way they like it.

History, practical experience, common sense and economic theory all agree: economic competition is probably one of the greatest ideas humans ever came up with. When people compete to achieve the same goal, great things seem to happen that otherwise would not. Things get done faster, cheaper, and better; new methods for lifting a weight or quenching a thirst are invented; the average guy ends up with more of the stuff he likes at a lower price than before. That is why, in the end, socialism collapsed like a rotten wall: it did not allow its people to compete and, as a result, it not only made their economic life miserable, but strangled their hearts and souls.

Fuckin’ Call of Duty. Older generations actually went off to war and fought shit worth fighting for, meeting and overcoming horrors that made them into men; now less than 1 percent of Americans enlist and your average guy in his twenties, Ray included, would probably have a helluva lot more pride in their performance playing that particular, stupid franchise.

Many of us get anxious in test-taking situations regardless of our intelligence, preparation, or familiarity with the material. One of the reasons test anxiety is so common is that it is relatively easy to trigger. Even one episode of heightened anxiety is sufficient for us to feel intensely anxious when facing a similar situation in the future. Test anxiety is especially problematic because it causes massive disruptions to our concentration, our focus, and our ability to think clearly, all of which have a huge impact on our performance. As a rule, anxiety tends to be extremely greedy when it comes to our concentration and attention. The visceral discomfort it creates can be so distracting, and the intellectual resources it hogs so critical, that we might struggle to comprehend the nuances of questions, retrieve the relevant information from our memory, formulate answers coherently, or choose the best option from a multiple-choice list. As an illustration of how dramatic its effects are, anxiety can cause us to score fifteen points lower than we would otherwise on a basic IQ test—a hugely significant margin that can drop a score from the Superior to the Average range.

Well,” I said, trying to keep my tone light as I walked over to put my arms around his neck, though I had to stand on my toes to do so. “That wasn’t so bad, was it? You told me something about yourself that I didn’t know before-that you didn’t, er, care for your family, except for your mother. But that didn’t make me hate you…it made me love you a bit more, because now I know we have even more in common.” He stared down at him, a wary look in his eyes. “If you knew the truth,” he said, “you wouldn’t be saying that. You’d be running.” “Where would I go?” I asked, with a laugh I hoped didn’t sound as nervous to him as it did to me. “You bolted all the doors, remember? Now, since you shared something I didn’t know about you, may I share something you don’t know about me?” Those dark eyebrows rose as he pulled me close. “I can’t even begin to imagine what this could be.” “It’s just,” I said, “that I’m a little worried about rushing into this consort thing…especially the cohabitation part.” “Cohabitation?” he echoed. He was clearly unfamiliar with the word. “Cohabitation means living together,” I explained, feeling my cheeks heat up. “Like married people.” “You said last night that these days no one your age thinks of getting married,” he said, holding me even closer and suddenly looking much more eager to stick around for the conversation, even though I heard the marina horn blow again. “And that your father would never approve it. But if you’ve changed your mind, I’m sure I could convince Mr. Smith to perform the ceremony-“ “No,” I said hastily. Of course Mr. Smith was somehow authorized to marry people in the state of Florida. Why not? I decided not to think about that right now, or how John had come across this piece of information. “That isn’t what I meant. My mom would kill me if I got married before I graduated from high school.” Not, of course, that my mom was going to know about any of this. Which was probably just as well, since her head would explode at the idea of my moving in with a guy before I’d even applied to college, let alone at the fact that I most likely wasn’t going to college. Not that there was any school that would have accepted me with my grades, not to mention my disciplinary record. “What I meant was that maybe we should take it more slowly,” I explained. “The past couple years, while all my friends were going out with boys, I was home, trying to figure out how this necklace you gave me worked. I wasn’t exactly dating.” “Pierce,” he said. He wore a slightly quizzical expression on his face. “Is this the thing you think I didn’t know about you? Because for one thing, I do know it, and for another, I don’t understand why you think I’d have a problem with it.” I’d forgotten he’d been born in the eighteen hundreds, when the only time proper ladies and gentlemen ever spent together before they were married was at heavily chaperoned balls…and that for most of the past two centuries, he’d been hanging out in a cemetery. Did he even know that these days, a lot of people hooked up on first dates, or that the average age at which girls-and boys as well-lost their virginity in the United States was seventeen…my age? Apparently not. “What I’m trying to say,” I said, my cheeks burning brighter, “is that I’m not very experienced with men. So this morning when I woke up and found you in bed beside me, while it was really, super nice-don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed it very much-it kind of freaked me out. Because I don’t know if I’m ready for that kind of thing yet.” Or maybe the problem was that I wasn’t prepared for how ready I was…

Time and again I am asked why no one has successfully replicated Trader Joe’s. The answer is that no one has been willing to pay the wages and benefits, and thereby attract—and keep—the quality of people who work at Trader Joe’s. My standard was simple: the average full-time employee in the stores would make the median family income for California. Back in those days it was about $7,000; as I write this, it is around $40,000. What I didn’t count on back there in the 1960s was that so many spouses would go to work in the national economy. When I started, average family income was about the same as average employee income. The great social change of the 1970s and 1980s moved millions of women into the workplace. Average family income soared ahead. But we stuck with our standard, and it paid off.

Antarctica is the highest, driest, coldest, and windiest place on the planet. The South Pole averages sixty below zero, has hurricane-strength winds, and sits at an altitude of ten thousand feet. In other words, those original explorers didn’t have to just get there, but had to climb serious mountains to do so. (Side note: Down here, you’re either an Amundsen guy, a Shackleton guy, or a Scott guy. Amundsen was the first to reach the Pole, but he did it by feeding dogs to dogs, which makes Amundsen the Michael Vick of polar explorers: you can like him, but keep it to yourself, or you’ll end up getting into arguments with a bunch of fanatics. Shackleton is the Charles Barkley of the bunch: he’s a legend, all-star personality, but there’s the asterisk that he never reached the Pole, i.e., won a championship. How this turned into a sports analogy, I don’t know. Finally, there’s Captain Scott, canonized for his failure, and to this day never fully embraced because he was terrible with people. He has my vote, you understand.)

There’s always room for error, but at an average temp of 72F, the body stays about the same temp for the first hour after death, then decreases 1-1.5 degrees per hour thereafter. I adjusted for when the cops arrived and the resultant decrease in ambient temperature when you guys left the doors open at around three. I took my own readings and compared them to the local weather station.” Math and death. Odd bedfellows.

All he could hear was a small voice inside his head that was saying you were wrong. Completely wrong. It was a voice he had heard before, but that didn’t make it any easier to hear again, because he had built his whole career on hearing it fewer times than the next guy. It was like a box score in his mind, and his average had just taken some serious damage. Which upset him. Not because of vanity. It upset him because he was a professional who was supposed to get things right.

Space, let me repeat, is enormous. The average distance between stars out there is 20 million million miles. Even at speeds approaching those of light, these are fantastically challenging distances for any traveling individual. Of course, it is possible that alien beings travel billions of miles to amuse themselves by planting crop circles in Wiltshire or frightening the daylights out of some poor guy in a pickup truck on a lonely road in Arizona (they must have teenagers, after all), but it does seem unlikely. Still,

The subway was the great leveler—underground, the Wall Street titans stood in the shuddering car and clutched the same poles as the junior IT guys to create a totem of fists, the executive vice presidents in charge of new product marketing pressed thighs with the luckless and the dreamers, who got off at their stations when instructed by the computer’s voice and were replaced by devisers of theoretical financial instruments of unreckoned power, who vacated their seats and were replaced in turn by unemployable homunculi clutching yesterday’s tabloids. They jostled one another, competed for space below as they did above, in a minuet of ruin and triumph. In the subway, down in the dark, no citizen was more significant or more decrepit than another. All were smeared into a common average of existence, the A’s and the C’s tumbling or rising to settle into a ruthless mediocrity. No escape. This was the plane where Mark Spitz lived. They were all him. Middling talents who got by, barnacles on humanity’s hull, survivors who had not yet been extinguished. Perhaps it was only a matter of time.

The best available apples-to-apples comparison of inflation-adjusted earnings shows what the typical fully employed man earned back in the 1970s and what that same fully employed man earns today. The picture isn’t pretty. As the GDP has doubled and almost doubled again, as corporations have piled up record profits, as the country has gotten wealthier, and as the number of billionaires has exploded, the average man working full-time today earns about what the average man earned back in 1970. Nearly half a century has gone by, and the guy right in the middle of the pack is making about what his granddad did. The second punch that’s landed on families is expenses. If costs had stayed the same over the past few decades, families would be okay—or, at least, they would be in about the same position as they were thirty-five years ago. Not advancing but not falling behind, either. But that didn’t happen. Total costs are up, way up. True, families have cut back on some kinds of expenses. Today, the average family spends less on food (including eating out), less on clothing, less on appliances, and less on furniture than a comparable family did back in 1971. In other words, families have been pretty careful about their day-to-day spending, but it hasn’t saved them. The problem is that the other expenses—the big, fixed expenses—have shot through the roof and blown apart the family budget. Adjusted for inflation, families today spend more on transportation, more on housing, and more on health insurance. And for all those families with small children and no one at home during the day, the cost of childcare has doubled, doubled again, and doubled once more. Families have pinched pennies on groceries and clothing, but these big, recurring expenses have blown them right over a financial cliff.

A singular disadvantage of the sea lies in the fact that after successfully surmounting one wave you discover that there is another behind it just as important and just as nervously anxious to do something effective in the way of swamping boats. In a ten-foot dingey one can get an idea of the resources of the sea in the line of waves that is not probable to the average experience which is never at sea in a dingey. As each slaty wall of water approached, it shut all else from the view of the men in the boat, and it was not difficult to imagine that this particular wave was the final outburst of the ocean, the last effort of the grim water.

Experts in diagnostic errors provided an answer to the puzzle that had been nagging me: How was it possible for missed diagnoses to be so common and yet not perceived by doctors as a major problem? The problem is that physicians, while generally aware that mistakes happen, greatly underestimate how often they make them. In his talks to doctors on the topic, Graber often asks how many have made a diagnostic error in the past year; typically, only about 1 percent of the hands go up. 'The concept that they, personally, could err at a significant rate is inconceivable to most physicians,' he writes. In short, they think it's the other guy. This overconfidence is not necessarily their fault: doctors simply do not get the feedback needed to gain an accurate sense of their batting average. They assume their diagnoses are correct until they hear otherwise. Since there are few, if any, health care organizations that systematically measure diagnostic error rates, they typically learn of their mistakes only from the patients themselves.

How rude of me, we haven’t even introduced ourselves. We’re the Andersons. I’m Evan, the lovely size-zero lass in the floppy sun hat is my wife Amy, and these are our best friends/children, Evan and Amy Jr. As you can see, we’re very fit and active. You know what our family’s average percentage of body fat is? Three. Yes, really. We got it tested last year when we all became organ donors. You may have noticed that I’m carrying Amy on my back. We do that a lot. At least once a day, and not just when we’re in fields like this; we do it on beaches and in urban environments as well. That’s what happens when your love is deep and playful like ours. You should also know that we also dab frosting on each other’s noses every single time we eat cupcakes, which is both mischievous and very us. Do you guys even eat cupcakes?

GET BEYOND THE ONE-MAN SHOW Great organizations are never one-man operations. There are 22 million licensed small businesses in America that have no employees. Forbes suggests 75 percent of all businesses operate with one person. And the average income of those companies is a sad $44,000. That’s not a business—that’s torture. That is a prison where you are both the warden and the prisoner. What makes a person start a business and then be the only person who works there? Are they committed to staying small? Or maybe an entrepreneur decides that because the talent pool is so poor, they can’t hire anyone who can do it as well as them, and they give up. My guess is the latter: Most people have just given up and said, “It’s easier if I just do it myself.” I know, because that’s what I did—and it was suicidal. Because my business was totally dependent on me and only me, I was barely able to survive, much less grow, for the first ten years. Instead I contracted another company to promote my seminars. When I hired just one person to assist me out of my home office, I thought I was so smart: Keep it small. Keep expenses low. Run a tight ship. Bigger isn’t always better. These were the things I told myself to justify not growing my business. I did this for years and even bragged about how well I was doing on my own. Then I started a second company with a partner, a consulting business that ran parallel to my seminar business. This consulting business quickly grew bigger than my first business because my partner hired people to work for us. But even then I resisted bringing other people into the company because I had this idea that I didn’t want the headaches and costs that come with managing people. My margins were monster when I had no employees, but I could never grow my revenue line without killing myself, and I have since learned that is where all my attention and effort should have gone. But with the efforts of one person and one contracted marketing company, I could expand only so much. I know that a lot of speakers and business gurus run their companies as one-man shows. Which means that while they are giving advice to others about how to grow a business, they may have never grown one themselves! Their one-man show is simply a guy or gal going out, collecting a fee, selling time and a few books. And when they are out speaking, the business terminates all activity. I started studying other people and companies that had made it big and discovered they all had lots of employees. The reality is you cannot have a great business if it’s just you. You need to add other people. If you don’t believe me, try to name one truly great business that is successful, ongoing, viable, and growing that doesn’t have many people making it happen. Good luck. Businesses are made of people, not just machines, automations, and technology. You need people around you to implement programs, to add passion to the technology, to serve customers, and ultimately to get you where you want to go. Consider the behemoth online company Amazon: It has more than 220,000 employees. Apple has more than 100,000; Microsoft has around the same number. Ernst & Young has more than 200,000 people. Apple calls the employees working in its stores “Geniuses.” Don’t you want to hire employees deserving of that title too? Think of how powerful they could make your business.

He reaches across me for a BLT and the sleeve on his suit rides up slightly. Holy sweet baby Jesus! He has tattoos around his wrist. Not a tattoo - singular, on his wrist, no. His wrist is wrapped in tattoos down to his cuff, leaving me in no doubt he is hiding a full sleeve up there. My knees actually wobble. Bloody hell, this guy is something right out of my inappropriate dreams. I need to move away now or I’ll embarrass myself...again.

We would be thrilled to have you as a guest on our show, EntrepreneurOnFire, a top ranked Business, averaging over 1 million unique listens each month in over 145 countries. We understand you have a busy schedule, and that's why we've developed an efficient, 30-minute audio interview over Skype. We have an awesome lineup thus far, including Seth Godin, Gary Vaynerchuk, Barbara Corcoran, Guy Kawasaki, Chris Brogan, Eric Ries, and Tim Ferriss... just to name a few.

[Phone interview transcript between author Roorda & Vershawn A. Young, author of Your Average Nigga: Performing Race, Literacy, and Masculinity, a book based on his Ph.D dissertation] Now the subtitle, Performing Race, Literacy, and Masculinity, what does that cover? It covers the range of enactments in speech, in dress, in the way we behave, the way that we interact with other people. Basically, it is the range of enactments that black people have to go through to be successful in America. I call it the burden of racial performance that black people are required, not only by whites but by other blacks as well, to prove through their behaviors, their speech, and their actions the kind of black person that they are. Really, there are only two kinds you can be. In the words of comedian Chris Rock, you can either be a black person, which is a respectable, bourgeois, middle-class black person, or you can be a nigger. As Chris Rock says in his show, "I love black people, but I hate niggers." So . . . when a black person walks into a room, always in the other person's mind is the question "What kind of black person is this in front of me?" They are looking for clues in your speech, in your demeanor, in your behavior, and in everything that you do -- it is like they are hyperattentive to your ways of being in order to say, "Okay, this is a real black person. I can trust them. I'll let them work here. Or, nope: this is a nigger, look at the spelling of their name: Shaniqua or Daquandre." We get discriminated against based on our actions. So that is what the subtitle was trying to suggest in performing race. And in performing literacy, just what is the prescribed means for increasing our class status? A mind-set: "Okay, black people, you guys have no excuse. You can go to school and get an education like everybody else." I wanted to pay attention to the ways in which school perpetuated a structural racism through literacy, the way in which it sort of stigmatizes and oppresses blackness in a space where it claims it is opening up opportunities for black people.

Did you ever think much about jobs? I mean, some of the jobs people land in? You see a guy giving haircuts to dogs, or maybe going along the curb with a shovel, scooping up horse manure. And you think, now why is the silly bastard doing that? He looks fairly bright, about as bright as anyone else. Why the hell does he do that for living? You kind grin and look down your nose at him. You think he’s nuts, know what I mean, or he doesn’t have any ambition. And then you take a good look at yourself, and you stop wondering about the other guy… You’ve got all your hands and feet. Your health is okay, and you make a nice appearance, and ambition-man! You’ve got it. You’re young, I guess: you’d call thirty young, and you’re strong. You don’t have much education, but you’ve got more than plenty of other people who go to the top. And yet with all that, with all you’ve had to do with this is as far you’ve got And something tellys you, you’re not going much farther if any. And there is nothing to be done about it now, of course, but you can’t stop hoping. You can’t stop wondering… …Maybe you had too much ambition. Maybe that was the trouble. You couldn’t see yourself spending forty years moving from office boy to president. So you signed on with a circulation crew; you worked the magazines from one coast to another. And then you ran across a little brush deal-it sounded nice, anyway. And you worked that until you found something better, something that looked better. And you moved from that something to another something. Coffee-and-tea premiums, dinnerware, penny-a-day insurance, photo coupons, cemetery lots, hosiery, extract, and God knows what all. You begged for the charities, You bought the old gold. You went back to the magazines and the brushes and the coffee and tea. You made good money, a couple of hundred a week sometimes. But when you averaged it up, the good weeks with the bad, it wasn’t so good. Fifty or sixty a week, maybe seventy. More than you could make, probably, behind agas pump or a soda fountain. But you had to knock yourself out to do it, and you were standing stil. You were still there at the starting place. And you weren’t a kid any more. So you come to this town, and you see this ad. Man for outside sales and collections. Good deal for hard worker. And you think maybe this is it. This sounds like a right town. So you take the job, and you settle down in the town. And, of course, neither one of ‘em is right, they’re just like all the others. The job stinks. The town stinks. You stink. And there’s not a goddamned thing you can do about it. All you can do is go on like this other guys go on. The guy giving haircuts to dogs, and the guy sweeping up horse manute Hating it. Hating yourself. And hoping.

Well,Anna.It's Matt or the minivan. I'm not making the choice for you." I choose my ex.We used to be good friends,so I'm sort of looking forward to seeing him again. And maybe Cherrie isn't as bad as I remember.Except she is. She totally is. After only five minutes in her company,I cannot fathom how Bridge stands sitting with her at lunch every day.She turns to look at me in the backseat,and her hair swishes in a vitamin-enriched, shampoo-commercial curtain. "So.How are the guys in Paris?" I shrug. "Parisian." "Ha ha.You're funny." Her lifeless laugh is one of her lesser attributes.What does Matt see in her? "No one special?" Matt smiles and glances at me through the rearview mirror. I'm not sure why,but I forgot that he has brown eyes.Why do they make some people look amazing and others completely average? It's the same with brown hair. Statistically speaking, St. Clair and Matt are quite similar. Eyes: Brown. Hair: Brown. Race: Caucasian. There's a significant difference in height,but still. It's like comparing a gourmet truffle to a Mr. Goodbar. I think about the gourmet truffle. And his girlfriend. "Not exactly.

apart from the stories about Senegal, was his faith in God’s power; he volunteered to be a choirboy and got up for vigils. The vigils were a weird feature of the boarding school; there were hours of prayer during the night, since to carry away the sins of the world was no small matter and required a kind of marathon. For Joseph God was absolutely present in life, which bothered others who were more preoccupied by their grade point averages, sports scores or how to sneak into the nearby girls boarding school, playing the fox in the henhouse, not even in your dreams!

I have a feeling you aren't going to like me very much. That may be the only thing we'll have in common, so let's make the most of it. I do terrible things. I do them to my enemies, to my own side, to myself. In the process, I save a large number of strangers (on average, between five and ten a week) from the worst thing that can happen to a human being. I'd like to say that I do it because I've one of the good guys, but if I did that , you'd see right through me. And the nyou'd quote scripture at me: Render to no one evil for evil. Really? Even if they're they enemy? Even if They're not human? You decide. Not sure I can be bothered with it anymore.

What do you remember about the Soviets?” “Lots of things.” I said, “Above all they were realistic, especially about human nature, and the quality of their own personnel. They had a very big army, which meant their average grunt was lazy, incompetent, and not blessed with any kind of discernible talent. They understood that, and they knew there wasn’t a whole lot they could do about it. So instead of trying to train their people upward toward the standard of available modern weaponry, they designed their available modern weaponry downward toward the standard of their people. Which was a truly radical approach.” “OK.” “Hence the AK-47. For instance, one example, what does a panicky grunt do under fire? He grabs his rifle and hits the fire selector and pulls the trigger. Our guns go from safe to single shot to full auto, which is nice and linear and logical, but they knew that would mean ninety-nine times in a hundred their guys would panic and ram the selector all the way home, and thereby fire off a whole magazine on the first hasty and unaimed shot. Which would leave them with an empty weapon right at the start of a firefight. Which is not helpful. So the AK selector goes safe, then full auto, then single shot. Not linear, not logical, but certainly practical. Single shot is a kind of default setting, and full auto is a deliberate choice.

I am sitting alone in my old English classroom at my old desk, reading from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The only sounds in the room are the ticking of the clock and the occasional rustling of the pages of the book. Then, Martina Reynaud, the most beautiful girl in the Class of ’83, walks in. She’s tall, graceful, and absolutely breathtaking. She’s wearing a black dress, one that shows off her long dancer’s legs. Her peaches-and-cream complexion is flawless; there is no sign of a pimple anywhere. Her long chestnut hair cascades down over her shoulders. In short, she is the personification of feminine elegance from the top of her head to her high-heeled shoes. I try to get back to my reading assignment, but the scent of her perfume, a mixture of jasmine and orange blossoms, is beguiling. I look to my right; she is sitting at the desk right next to mine. She gives me a smile. My heart skips a beat. I know guys who would kill for one of Marty’s smiles. She has that effect on most men. Her smile is full of genuine warmth and affection; I can tell by the look in her hazel eyes. “Hi, Jimmy,” she says. Her voice is soft and melodious; she speaks with a lilting British accent. From what I’ve heard, her family is from England. London, actually. “Hi,” I reply, feeling about as articulate as your average mango. Then, mustering my last reserves of willpower, I focus my attention on Shakespeare’s play.

If an undertaking was easy, someone else already would have done it. – If you follow in another’s footsteps, you miss the problems really worth solving. – Excellence is born of preparation, dedication, focus, and tenacity; compromise on any of these and you become average. – Every so often, life presents a great moment of decision, an intersection at which a man must decide to stop or go; a person lives with these decisions forever. – Examine everything; not all is as it seems or as people tell you. – It is easiest to live with a decision if it is based on an earnest sense of right and wrong. – The guy who gets killed is often the guy who got nervous. The guy who doesn’t care anymore, who has said, “I’m already dead—the fact that I live or die is irrelevant and the only thing that matters is the accounting I give of myself,” is the most formidable force in the world. – The worst possible decision is to give up.

Well, this is a rare context where boringness is something special: it implies that the individual men who did the scoring are likewise predictable, centered, and, above all, unbiased. And when you consider the supermodels, the porn, the cover girls, the Lara Croft– style fembots, the Bud Light ads, and, most devious of all, the Photoshop jobs that surely these men see every day, the fact that male opinion of female attractiveness is still where it’s supposed to be is, by my lights, a small miracle. It’s practically common sense that men should have unrealistic expectations of women’s looks, and yet here we see it’s just not true. In any event, they’re far more generous than the women, whose votes go like this: The red chart is centered barely a quarter of the way up the scale; only one guy in six is “above average” in an absolute sense. Sex appeal isn’t something commonly quantified like this, so let me put it in a more familiar context: translate this plot to IQ, and you have a world where the women think 58 percent of men are brain damaged.

If an undertaking was easy, someone else already would have done it. —  If you follow in another’s footsteps, you miss the problems really worth solving. —  Excellence is born of preparation, dedication, focus, and tenacity; compromise on any of these and you become average. —  Every so often, life presents a great moment of decision, an intersection at which a man must decide to stop or go; a person lives with these decisions forever. —  Examine everything; not all is as it seems or as people tell you. —  It is easiest to live with a decision if it is based on an earnest sense of right and wrong. —  The guy who gets killed is often the guy who got nervous. The guy who doesn’t care anymore, who has said, “I’m already dead—the fact that I live or die is irrelevant and the only thing that matters is the accounting I give of myself,” is the most formidable force in the world. —  The worst possible decision is to give up. For four months, Chatterton thought about the right way and the wrong way to live, and he continued to contemplate his principles. As

When I finally calmed down, I saw how disappointed he was and how bad he felt. I decided to take a deep breath and try to think this thing through. “Maybe it’s not that bad,” I said. (I think I was trying to cheer myself up as much as I was trying to console Chip.) “If we fix up the interior and just get it to the point where we can get it onto the water, at least maybe then we can turn around, sell it, and get our money back.” Over the course of the next hour or so, I really started to come around. I took another walk through the boat and started to picture how we could make it livable--maybe even kind of cool. After all, we’d conquered worse. We tore a few things apart right then and there, and I grabbed some paper and sketched out a new layout for the tiny kitchen. I talked to him about potentially finishing an accent wall with shiplap--a kind of rough-textured pine paneling that fans of our show now know all too well. “Shiplap?” Chip laughed. “That seems a little ironic to use on a ship, doesn’t it?” “Ha-ha,” I replied. I was still not in the mood for his jokes, but this is how Chip backs me off the ledge--with his humor. Then I asked him to help me lift something on the deck, and he said, “Aye, aye, matey!” in his best pirate voice, and slowly but surely I came around. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but by the end of that afternoon I was actually a little bit excited about taking on such a big challenge. Chip was still deflated that he’d allowed himself to get duped, but he put his arm around me as we started walking back to the truck. I put my head on his shoulder. And the camera captured the whole thing--just an average, roller-coaster afternoon in the lives of Chip and Joanna Gaines. The head cameraman came jogging over to us before we drove away. Chip rolled down his window and said sarcastically, “How’s that for reality TV?” We were both feeling embarrassed that this is how we had spent our last day of trying to get this stinkin’ television show. “Well,” the guy said, breaking into a great big smile, “if I do my job, you two just landed yourself a reality TV show.” What? We were floored. We couldn’t believe it. How was that a show? But lo and behold, he was right. That rotten houseboat turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

Myself and my colleague Guy Madison (Dutton & Madison, 2017) inadvertently provided evidence for the Finnish inferiority complex in a study we did of every marriage between a Finn and a foreigner that took place in Finland in the year 2013. On average, males and females operate different sexual selection strategies. Males have nothing to lose from the sexual encounter, so it makes sense for them, if they can get away with it, to have as much sex as possible with as many different women as possible in order to maximise the probability that their genes will be passed on. Accordingly, they select for youth and beauty, as these are markers of fertility and health. The essence of beauty is a symmetrical face and a such face implies a low level of mutant genes and thus sound genetic health. Females operate differently. As we discussed briefly earlier, they have a great deal to lose from the sexual encounter, because they can become pregnant, which carries with it a range of social and physical costs. This makes them more selective. Specifically, they are sexually attracted to high status men as these men will have the resources to provide for them and their child, meaning that both of them are more likely to survive (Buss, 1989). So, socioeconomically, women ‘marry up’ (hypergamously) and men ‘marry down’ (hypogamously). We would expect that nationality would be an aspect of status. We tested this by ranking different nationalities based on various criteria and especially how wealthy a country was. We predicted that, among marriages between a Finn and a foreigner, Finnish women would to a greater extent marry men that were from countries ranked as higher status than Finland while Finnish men would disproportionately marry women from lower status countries. This is, overall, what we found. However, we specifically found that, whatever the objective national status differences, Finnish women married Western European and Anglophone (USA, Canada and so on) men while Finnish men married Eastern European and East Asian (including Japanese) women. This would imply, whatever the economic reality, that Finns regard themselves as inferior to pretty much all Western Europeans. It also indicates that the Japanese – who are far wealthier than the Finns – regard themselves as inferior to the Finns, presumably because there is some idolization of whiteness or, possibly, as has been argued by a Japanese anthropologist, the Japanese specifically adore Finnish culture (Mitsui, 2012).

Stop viewing failure as something that is ruining your life and start viewing it as the thing that is going to get you where you want to be in your career.

incomplete and slow, people depended on a brand’s imprimatur for quality assurance. In the book business, the average number of stars on Amazon and the first few comments that strangers have posted

I remember my grandfather, who was chairman of that committee—I forget what he had done to get to that stage, but he was chairman of agriculture. And the guy who ran the Grange, which is like a collective for farmers across the country, would always begin by addressing the committee by saying, “Senator, for the last twenty years, the crops have been below average.” My grandfather would roar with laughter, and the Grange never knew what he was laughing at—the absence of norms, of course.

BRANDS ARE LESS IMPORTANT. When information was incomplete and slow, people depended on a brand’s imprimatur for quality assurance. In the book business, the average number of stars on Amazon and the first few comments that strangers have posted are more important and visible on Amazon than the publisher’s name.

She should have been out of my league. Luckily for me, she was attracted to tall, geeky guys with glasses. My hair is an average brown colour, I’m too skinny and I look a little like the guy who gets sand kicked in his face in the old ads. But luckily, there are women out there who are attracted to guys like me rather than to the guys kicking the sand.

Another interview, some more personal philosophy shared with the people of Japan: “You are in favour with women,” he is told. “Do you have any secret to be sexy?” “Yeah”, he answers. “Get famous and rich. Yeah, If you’re famous and rich, you become better-looking instantly. In fact, I’m quite an average guy but it’s what people think I’ve got that makes me sexy, it’s not what I actually have.” <…> “It’s 50 percent of what you’ve got and 50 percent of what people think you’ve got that makes you sexy… Yeah, I’m rich. That makes me sexy. Sexy’s in the eye of the beholder. I don’t fancy me much. They’ve got the perception that I’m a bit of a wild one, and I think people like to think they can tame you.

Okay, he was really far from average looking. But guaranteed, he was as much a liar as they all are. Maybe worse because the more attractive a guy is, the more he thinks he can get away with. I take that back—the more he can get away with. Because women are idiots.

Maybe you are asking the same question I ask: What happened to my life? What happened for most of us is reality. Instead of finding fame and fortune, normalcy and “never enough” found us. We are average Joes, but is that really a problem? Definitely not! So-called average Joes are the ones who make the world work. God seems to have a special fondness for average Joes. Before they accomplished extraordinary deeds, normal guys like Gideon, David, Peter, and Paul went about their farming, sheep herding, fishing, and tent making. Even Jesus, our Redeemer, Healer, and coming King, started out using a hammer and saw in a carpenter’s shop.

Whether it’s putting on a bunny costume and running with friends, or simply appreciating the whining coming out of the guy next to you, races offer moments when you can simply enjoy the people around you and feel happy.

Make the plan, believe in it, and stick to it.

Bizarre and Surprising Insights—Consumer Behavior Insight Organization Suggested Explanation7 Guys literally drool over sports cars. Male college student subjects produce measurably more saliva when presented with images of sports cars or money. Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management Consumer impulses are physiological cousins of hunger. If you buy diapers, you are more likely to also buy beer. A pharmacy chain found this across 90 days of evening shopping across dozens of outlets (urban myth to some, but based on reported results). Osco Drug Daddy needs a beer. Dolls and candy bars. Sixty percent of customers who buy a Barbie doll buy one of three types of candy bars. Walmart Kids come along for errands. Pop-Tarts before a hurricane. Prehurricane, Strawberry Pop-Tart sales increased about sevenfold. Walmart In preparation before an act of nature, people stock up on comfort or nonperishable foods. Staplers reveal hires. The purchase of a stapler often accompanies the purchase of paper, waste baskets, scissors, paper clips, folders, and so on. A large retailer Stapler purchases are often a part of a complete office kit for a new employee. Higher crime, more Uber rides. In San Francisco, the areas with the most prostitution, alcohol, theft, and burglary are most positively correlated with Uber trips. Uber “We hypothesized that crime should be a proxy for nonresidential population.…Uber riders are not causing more crime. Right, guys?” Mac users book more expensive hotels. Orbitz users on an Apple Mac spend up to 30 percent more than Windows users when booking a hotel reservation. Orbitz applies this insight, altering displayed options according to your operating system. Orbitz Macs are often more expensive than Windows computers, so Mac users may on average have greater financial resources. Your inclination to buy varies by time of day. For retail websites, the peak is 8:00 PM; for dating, late at night; for finance, around 1:00 PM; for travel, just after 10:00 AM. This is not the amount of website traffic, but the propensity to buy of those who are already on the website. Survey of websites The impetus to complete certain kinds of transactions is higher during certain times of day. Your e-mail address reveals your level of commitment. Customers who register for a free account with an Earthlink.com e-mail address are almost five times more likely to convert to a paid, premium-level membership than those with a Hotmail.com e-mail address. An online dating website Disclosing permanent or primary e-mail accounts reveals a longer-term intention. Banner ads affect you more than you think. Although you may feel you've learned to ignore them, people who see a merchant's banner ad are 61 percent more likely to subsequently perform a related search, and this drives a 249 percent increase in clicks on the merchant's paid textual ads in the search results. Yahoo! Advertising exerts a subconscious effect. Companies win by not prompting customers to think. Contacting actively engaged customers can backfire—direct mailing financial service customers who have already opened several accounts decreases the chances they will open more accounts (more details in Chapter 7).

Hey, Dylan,” I said, holding my orange ball. “You got rid of the Mohawk.” Lark and Raven’s stepbrother ran his hand over his bald head and sighed. “Yeah, I’d been thinking about going the business man route for a while. Kept going back and forth about cutting it. A few weeks ago, I got drunk at Lark’s place. The sisters were nice enough to shave my head while I was passed out.” Nearby, Raven laughed so hard she had trouble distracting Vaughn who was still trying to win the game. Dylan glared at her then shrugged. “Gonna let it grow out and play the average Joe shit.” “Good luck with that,” I said, glancing at the bathroom and hoping Bailey would appear. When she didn’t, I walked to an open lane and rolled the ball. It took out a single pin which was one more than I expected. A lane away Raven struggled to win against Vaughn. She bent over one direction. When her ass didn’t do it, she bent forward and adjusted her tits. A distracted Vaughn missed his strike with a single pin remaining. Before I could hear him complain and her celebrate, Cooper and Tucker appeared next to me. “I liked the way you handled that fucker,” Tucker said, arms crossed tightly. “You always know how to deal with these losers while looking like a Boy Scout. A good skill to have.” Ignoring them, I rolled the second ball and managed to take out three pins. A new record for me. “What’s with the silent shit?” Tucker asked. Sighing, I looked at them and frowned. “I want to be with Bailey. We just started dating, but here I am jumping through hoops for you two. You do this shit with every guy?” “Most are losers,” Cooper said. “Most never do the second date thing. They bang then hang. If they’re lucky, she never mentions it to us and we don’t kick anyone’s ass. You’re the first boyfriend type she’s had.” “Our family needs good people,” added Tucker. Cooper shifted his stance and shook his head at his brother. “He doesn’t want that life. Nick wants to be a teacher.” “Why?” “Who cares?” Cooper said. “It’s what he wants. Sounds like a nice safe life for our little sister, don’t you think?” Tucker’s expression froze and his dopey brain took awhile to put things together. By the time he figured it out, I’d rolled a gutter ball, Bailey returned, and Vaughn declared his wife a cheater. “It’s only fair!” Raven cried as Vaughn threw her over his shoulder and spun her around. “You’re a better bowler and I want to win. Cheating was the only card I could play.” “Making me think some fucker was looking at your ass was low, Raven.” “So is naming our first born son Maverick. You’re just looking for trouble with a name like that.” Vaughn lowered her to her feet then grinned. “My boys will be nothing but trouble. They’ll own this town and chase pretty girls like Scarlet and Lily.” “Hey, keep your pervy kid away from my daughter!” Tucker hollered, looking pissed. Cooper grabbed his brother and they wrestled onto the ground. By the end of pounding each other, they were both laughing.

Who wouldn’t want to watch an averagely attractive guy kick a three legged, one eyed dog in the face as it urinates all over itself? The correct answer is no one.

There is no alternative universe where Ralph Sampson is a beloved symbol of excellence. There’s no Philip K. Dick novel where he averages a career double-double and gets four rings. He could never be that guy. He was needed elsewhere, for other reasons. He was needed to remind people that their own self-imposed mediocrity is better than choking on transcendence.

Harlequin Holiday Collection: Four Classic Seasonal Novellas: And a Dead Guy in a Pear Tree\Seduced by the Season\Evidence of Desire\Season of Wonder, by Leslie Kelly, is free in the Kindle store for a limited time. It usually costs $0.99. It has an average rating of 4.0 out of 5 stars. The book is getting

I am simply an average, everyday Christian guy who has been radically changed by the good news about God’s presence in His world. This has primarily happened as I have learned how to read the Bible for what it says, in the way it says it.

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MR. AVERAGE MIDDLE-CLASS AMERICAN WHITE GUY.

started with the number of vehicles driving to the site each day. Then he examined the number of residents who lived around the location, in expanding concentric circles to which he assigned a decreasing value according to distance. He also assessed the demographic makeup of the population, the average age, the number of children and the ethnic makup, knowing from experience that some groups are less likely to shop at convenience stores.

The appeal was primal. “In Dungeons and Dragons,” Gygax said, “the average person gets a call to glory and becomes a hero and undergoes change. In the real world, children, especially, have no power; they must answer to everyone, they don’t direct their own lives, but in this game, they become super powerful and affect everything.

Why not start ’85 Magic (the ultimate for unselfish point guards) or maybe even bring ’82 Magic (younger, better defensively, capable of playing four positions, talented enough to average a shade under a triple double)

I graduated from college in the spring with a history degree, only to discover that there are no jobs for someone with my specialty. We've all decided being doomed to repeat history is fine, I guess.

Carry individual items as opposed to whole lines. We wouldn’t try to carry a whole line of spices, or bag candy, or vitamins. Each SKU (a single size of a single flavor of a single item) had to justify itself, as opposed to riding piggyback into the stores just so we had a “complete” line. Depth of assortment now was of no interest. As soon as Fair Trade ended in 1978, we began to get rid of the hundred brands of Scotch, seventy brands of bourbon, and fifty brands of gin. And slowly (it was like pulling teeth) we dismantled the broad assortment of California boutique wines. No fixtures. By 1982, the store would have most of its merchandise displayed in stacks with very little shelving. This implied a lower SKU count: a high-SKU store needs lots of shelves. The average supermarket carries about 27,000 SKUs in 30,000 square feet of sales area, or roughly one SKU per square foot. Trader Joe’s, by 1988, carried one SKU per five square feet! Price-Costco, one of my heroes, carried about one SKU per twenty square feet. As much as possible I wanted products to be displayed in the same cartons in which they were shipped by the manufacturers. This was already a key element in our wine merchandising. Each SKU would stand on its own two feet as a profit center. We would earn a gross profit on each SKU that was justified by the cost of handling that item. There would be no “loss leaders.” Above all we would not carry any item unless we could be outstanding in terms of price (and make a profit at that price per #7) or uniqueness. By the end of 1977, we increased the size of the buying staff, adding one very key person, Doug Rauch, whom we hired out of the wholesale health food trade. Leroy, Frank Kono, Bob Berning, and Doug rolled out Five Year Plan ’77, which for purposes of this history I call Mac the Knife. Back in those days we had no idea how sharp that knife would become! We just wanted to survive deregulation. Everything now depended on buying. So here we go into the next chapter, Intensive Buying.

I refuse to not be up to this, to fail in front of Luke. I need to prove to Mag they were wrong not to trust me. And, of course, defeat evil.

This history shows the enormous incentive you create if you give a guy a trademark [he can protect]. And this incentive is very useful to the wider civilization. As you see, Carnation got so that it was protecting products that it didn't even own.That sort of outcome is very, very desirable [for society]. So there are some very fundamental macroeconomic reasons why even communist countries should protect trademarks. They don't all do it, but there are very powerful reasons why they should. And, by and large, averaged out around the world, trademark protection been pretty good.

But being short something where your loss is unlimited is quite different than being long something that you’ve already paid for. And it’s tempting. You see way more stocks that are dramatically overvalued in your career than you will see stocks that are dramatically undervalued. I mean there — it’s the nature of securities markets to occasionally promote various things to the sky, so that securities will frequently sell for 5 or 10 times what they’re worth, and they will very, very seldom sell for 20 percent or 10 percent of what they’re worth. So, therefore, you see these much greater discrepancies between price and value on the overvaluation side. So you might think it’s easier to make money on short selling. And all I can say is, it hasn’t been for me. I don’t think it’s been for Charlie. It is a very, very tough business because of the fact that you face unlimited losses, and because of the fact that people that have overvalued stocks — very overvalued stocks — are frequently on some scale between promoter and crook. And that’s why they get there. And once there — And they also know how to use that very valuation to bootstrap value into the business, because if you have a stock that’s selling at 100 that’s worth 10, obviously it’s to your interest to go out and issue a whole lot of shares. And if you do that, when you get all through, the value can be 50. In fact, there’s a lot of chain letter-type stock promotions that are sort of based on the implicit assumption that the management will keep doing that. And if they do it once and build it to 50 by issuing a lot of shares at 100 when it’s worth 10, now the value is 50 and people say, “Well, these guys are so good at that. Let’s pay 200 for it or 300,” and then they could do it again and so on. It’s not usually that — quite that clear in their minds. But that’s the basic principle underlying a lot of stock promotions. And if you get caught up in one of those that is successful, you know, you can run out of money before the promoter runs out of ideas. In the end, they almost always work. I mean, I would say that, of the things that we have felt like shorting over the years, the batting average is very high in terms of eventual — that they would work out very well eventually if you held them through. But it is very painful and it’s — in my experience, it was a whole lot easier to make money on the long side.

I’m a frustrated citizen with an above-average understanding of the system, who disagrees with Republicans but is exhausted by the impotent hypocrisy of the Democrats, not to mention their startling lack of social skills.

One question was: Would you vote for someone you like but don’t agree with his policies, or would you vote for someone you don’t like but you like his policies? “One hundred percent said, I’ll vote for the guy I don’t like, but like his policies. One thousand to zero.” Whether true or not, it seemed to be his strong view. Here was the paradox, according to Parscale. Trump believed “presence is so important. He’d say it’s probably more important how I look when I give a speech than the speech I give.” Parscale added a corollary: “You get a picture with the president of China. It’s more important than whatever you did there” in the meeting. The average voter would think, “Oh, the president’s in China. I feel safe. We’re not going to war with them.” As Parscale described it, Trump had a power to persuade that is almost mystical.

Listen,” he grew serious, “what’s defeat? I’ve seen wars and I’ve seen defeats. What if the winner does take over? Who’s bothered? Me? Guys like me?” He shook his head in derision. “Get this,” the Trader spoke forcefully and earnestly, “there are five or six fat slobs who usually run an average planet. They get the rabbit punch, but I’m not losing peace of mind over them. See. The people? The ordinary run of guys? Sure, some get killed, and the rest pay extra taxes for a while. But it settles itself out; it runs itself down. And then it’s the old situation again with a different five or six.

an undertaking was easy, someone else already would have done it.—If you follow in another’s footsteps, you miss the problems really worth solving.—Excellence is born of preparation, dedication, focus, and tenacity; compromise on any of these and you become average.—Every so often, life presents a great moment of decision, an intersection at which a man must decide to stop or go; a person lives with these decisions forever.—Examine everything; not all is as it seems or as people tell you.—It is easiest to live with a decision if it is based on an earnest sense of right and wrong.—The guy who gets killed is often the guy who got nervous. The guy who doesn’t care anymore, who has said, “I’m already dead—the fact that I live or die is irrelevant and the only thing that matters is the accounting I give of myself,” is the most formidable force in the world.—The worst possible decision is to give up.

I’ve never seen a cock in person before. I shuffle backwards on the bed. Maybe this was a bad idea. Maybe I should lose it to an average guy. A smaller guy. Because surely that’s not normal.