A 13 on the BUN Scale

At work this week we started chatting about how somethings should just be WRONG no matter where you live.  There shouldn't be a culture (in my personal and oh so humble, opinion) where it's OK to try to sell or marry a child.  There shouldn't be a culture where women aren't allowed to think or have a voice or face.  There shouldn't be a culture where children can die because their parents were sucked into a Facebook game and left them to drown in the tub.

 I think we could call it the "B.U.N. Scale" for Basic Universal Nastiness.

The more I have thought about this the last few days, the more I like the idea.  It would be awesome if news stories had a BUN Scale at the beginning of the story and you could just know you'd want to tune out because the details of this story exceed your BUN Scale coping abilities.

Then I saw the local news the other day.  There was a headline that said something like, 'Man May Face Felony Charges after 9th Arrest in Girls' Locker Room".  I don't know which word in that is more disturbing:  "may" or "9th".  Repeat Offenders would get a high number on the BUN scale.  Repeat Offenders against children are practically on their own chart.  Frisking 6 year olds at the airport would be on the scale.  The three stories I've heard lately about people who have essentially locked children in rooms and treated them like animals should be scored.  This number could give judges a clear indicator of universal nastiness of some of the crimes.  It should pull into their sentencing. 

There are some other, broader social applications of this potential scale.  For example, mullets could have a rating.  Wife-beaters would get a score.  Spandex in general could have a score.  That woman that walked by me at a concert years ago who was wearing a lime-green tank top that was about 12 sizes too small for her and therefore her entire belly was hanging out - she gets a special number.  I still remember it because I was scarred by it.  SHE had the hairiest navel I've EVER seen.  I still have nightmares.  High BUN Scale factor on that one.

So I'm partly joking and I'm partly serious.  I wish there was a better way to keep kids safe, help people make choices that aren't harmful and generally help people to not bite each other.  Those things should be universally understood.  We should do a better job of taking care of each other.

Whether or not we rank she-male navels is really optional.