An Alternative Bear Code
Joshua Cohen
overall correctness of the Natural Bear Classification System or NBCS.
I, for one, like the NBCS. I guess it is the liBEARian in me. We just
go around cataloging anything that will stay still long enough. Meet a
liBEARian and you will be talking to a man who knows the location and
nature of every book, record, and videotape in the house. I know of
extreme cases who keep track of articles of clothing, sexual
accouterments, and kitchen gadgets.
However, as any liBEARian can tell you, cataloging a book is absolutely
no replacement for reading it. Cataloging is merely a brief indication
of the books location and subject matter. The bear code should be taken
in the same light. It is merely the briefest of thumb nail sketches and
it is no substitute for getting to know a person. The issue is not that
someone has an e++ penis, the issue is the man that wields it.
Several people have said the some of the elements of the NBCS are shallow
or pejorative, the e and q factors being excellent examples. Others have
said it is not detailed enough and there should be new factors for
smoking, hair, and the like. And some extremely warped individual (I
think it was me) even thought it should be redefined as a barcode format
and tattooed onto our foreheads and that we should all carry scanners and
PDA's for easy computer-aided analysis.
Maybe the idea of the NBCS is O.K., but the criteria are not quite
right. Below is what I call the A, B, Cs of "beardom," and if you think
it all came about spontaneously, you'd be wrong.
A Affection.
a+ Constantly showing signs of affection, even at the most
inopportune moments such as when jumping from a burning plane.
a Shows normal levels of affection to the appropriate people.
a- Only can have sex through glory holes. Heaven forbid he actually
see and touch his partner. Probably slept with a rock as a child.
B Bookishness
b+ Has to hyperventilate into a paper bag if his book is removed
from his hands.
b Normal desire to read, which according to one survey is only one
book a year.
b- Barely reads traffic signs, let alone published materials.
C Credit Line
c+ Enough credit to fund the rebuilding of the Suez Canal. Can the
phrase "Once a size queen, always a size queen" apply to a credit limit?
c Normal amounts of credit, also inferring normal amounts of debt.
c- Cannot even buy a stick of gum on lay away.
D Dyslexia
d+ Cannot cross the living room without full Core evaluation and
remedial classes.
d Normal levels of klutziness.
d- Puts Robin Hood's eye-hand coordination to shame.
E Empathy
e+ Cries during Taster's Choice commercials.
e Normal level of empathy.
e- Wonders why all the men in the room cringe when Tom Lehrer sings
the line "Sliding down the razor blade of life."
F Food
f+ Totally adores food. Will likely be found dead at a busy
intersection with an ice-cream cone in his face.
f Normal enjoyment of food, with exceptions for things like okra.
No Southern flames, please. I'm not expecting you to like chopped liver.
f- Thinks only in terms of calories, RDA nutritional requirements,
and amounts of dietary fiber.
G Genetics
g+ Someone so utterly and completely perfect that he is even immune
to radiation, just like a cockroach.
g Normal genetic foibles. It's amazing how useful a prehensiled
tail can be.
g- We're talking Quasi Modo here.
H Hygiene
h+ The person is so clean, he only cums into a wet/dry vac.
h Normal levels of personal cleanliness with no fear of the
occasional mess caused by a good hard fuck.
h- Vultures regularly circle the house.
I Insanity
i+ Totally and irretrievably bonkers. For example, a person who
washes his face while kneeling on the floor in a pitch black bathroom (a
true life example, by the way). His only hope is a person equally nuts,
such as someone who shampoos his hair while spread eagle in the den.
i Normal levels of craziness which makes for good dinner and
post-coital conversations.
i- So sane that no one talks to him because he is unquestionably the
dullest human being on earth.
J Joy as in Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy.
j+ Everything in life is a pleasure. This is a bad person to take
to the Holocaust Museum but is great at Disney Land.
j Normal enjoyment levels of more or less appropriate things.
j- Experienced his first bout of depression while in the womb.
K Kindness
k+ Kind to a fault. Beware of this type of person, he will not only
give away everything he owns, but everything you own as well.
k Normal levels of kindness, with hopefully exceptional levels for
his mate and friends.
L Laughter
l+ Never stops laughing. He even laughed during The Killing
Fields. You might recall the I Love To Laugh number form Mary Poppins.
l Laughs when appropriate and for reasonable lengths of time.
l- Never cracks a smile, let alone voice a chuckle. Think of
Richard Nixon.
M Mench, or for the Yiddish-impaired, a Good Man
m+ The salt of the earth, a saint, a person respected and loved by
all. As good as this sounds, this person generally makes a lousy dinner
companion because people will always bothering him to bless their children.
m A good, solid individual and much rarer than you think.
m- Hannibal Lectur, Hitler and Newt Ginrich come to mind.
N Neatness, and believe it or not it does count.
n+ Dirt is cleaned before it even hits the floor. Think of Felix Unger.
n A normally tidy person, but not so tidy that an occasional
watersports scene is out of the question.
n- Archeological digs are being held at this moment to excavate the
bedroom. Think of Oscar Madison.
O Outness, as in Out of the Closet
o+ The guy is so "out" that he goes to complete strangers on the
street, shakes their hand, and announces he's gay.
o Normal levels of outness in the family and the workplace, but
thinks it's none of the paperboys business.
o- Many supposed heterosexuals.
P Potency
p+ So potent he orgasms when the phone rings. I was really tempted
to steal the Joan River line about climaxing when using credit cards.
p Normal potency that varies according to his partner, overall
levels of weariness, and amount of substance abuse.
p- What's an erection?
q Quirkiness, which is different from Insanity
q+ A true oddball. A person who wears white after Labor Day, for example.
q A person who is pleasantly and comfortably eccentric. Another
good quality for dining and bed repartee.
q- Another extraordinarily dull person.
R Relatives
r+ An orphan, or better yet an heir to a fortune and the last member
of the family is on life support.
r Has a normally dysfunctional family. Talks to one half and
avoids the other.
r- Comes from a huge extended family. Unfortunately, all of them living.
S Sociability
s+ A person so social he has to make an appointment with his lover
for sex.
s Normal levels of conviviality and hopefully he hates all the same
people you do.
s- A hermit, or at least someone who should be for the sake of those
around him.
T Television, very similar to Bookishness though they are often
inversely proportionate.
t+ All brain activity stops unless there is at least an infomercial
on. Such people are often mistakenly declared legally dead because there
is no T.V. in the emergency room.
t Normal television viewing habits. Has even been known to put
down the remote for conversations and sex.
t- What do you mean Howdy Doody got canceled.
U Unconsciousness or "To sleep, perchance to dream"
u+ Just this side of narcolepsy. Generally falls asleep as soon as
you put the tape into the VCR.
u Normal, healthy sleeping patterns that include a few extra warm,
snuggly hours on Saturday and Sunday mornings.
u- Never had a lover because no one could catch up with him. Most
people don' even notice him because he's only a blur. Might as well be a
humming bird.
V Variety, as in "the spice of life."
v+ Nothing, but nothing, can or will ever be the same. Generally,
this person has a photographic memory and will say things like "You know,
you sucked my cock just like this May 18th, 1992."
v Likes variety in moderation but realizes a rut can be very nice
as long as it is well decorated.
v- A person so regular the Greenwich sets the time by his bowel
movements.
W Work and Wealth
w+ Someone rich enough to use Ross Perot as his piss boy.
w A comfortable nest egg and you his sole beneficiary.
w- A person who could be a character in a Dickens novel. You might
remember the song lyric "You got to have j.o.b. if you want to be with me"
X Xenophobia
x+ A person who thinks the KKK has let in too many undesirables.
x A person with normal, every day prejudices and tries to deal with them.
x- A person so immune to prejudice that they eat a different ethnic
food every night.
Y Yenta, as in "Have I got a bear for you."
y+ Tries to fix up everyone, including priests, nuns, and the
recently dead.
y Likes to fix up nice people with nice people.
y- Refufes to meet anyone himself, let alone introduce anybody.
Z Zaniness (and you thought I couldn't figure out one that begins
with a Z)
z+ The ultimate practical joker. Someone who will fly to Mars just
to draw a smiley face in the sand to upset an astronaught.
z Someone with enjoys a good joke.
z- Someone one cries if you sneak up behind them and shout "boo."
Josh
--
Josh Cohen, a.k.a. Joshua Bear, just a chubby Jewish bear who likes to read
"The floggings will continue until morale improves!" -- Staffordshire P.L.
josh...@netcom.com; Somerville, MA, USA; B4 F W+/++ S K+/++ R-/+ P?
(c) Joshua Daniel Cohen, 1994 Funny or sad, what's mine is mine
Anthony Berno
Cohen) wrote:
> The issue has resurfaced yet again about the purpose, validity, and
> overall correctness of the Natural Bear Classification System or NBCS.
I think this deserves an award as the "most dead issue on Internet". You
are, oh, maybe the 50th person to propose a change to the NBCS? As an
excellent example of the value of totalitarianism over decision by
committee, the NBCS has resisted every proposed change and remains, in
tarnished but solid beauty, exactly the same as it has always been. This
is because the people that effectively own the definition of bear code
(i.e. Bob Donahue, who wrote it) seem to have little interest in changing
it.
This is probably good, since if it was constantly changing, nobody would
be able to figure out what it meant. It would die a grueling and painful
death amidst endless flame wars over what should and should not go in it.
Good or bad, I doubt very much that anything is going to change with the
NBCS. It's sort of like C - either live with it, or don't use it.
Alternately, you might create and popularize a completely, totally
different scheme for shorthanding one's characteristics. Then you could be
famous. ;-)
-Anthony
William Lemay
I laughed till I cried. That's different from "I squirmed with
recognition."
Just one adjustment. I'd expand the scale, so that JoshBear's
+ becomes my ++ and his - becomes my --. This puts an intermediate
step in the range, to show "tendencies." After all, I've been
showing tendencies since childhood.
Then, I'd call the whole thing:
JBC 1.1
"JBC 1" for Joshua Bear's Code. ".1" for the wider range.
* * *
As for why no one appreciates satire anymore, few ever did. It's
a specialized taste that requires a sophisticated palate. As so
many people on the net seem to be humor-impaired, I've lately been
pushing this line:
Nothing falls through the Net like humor.
Written humor is especially difficult. After all, not everyone
is a Saki. Then again, neither was Saki.
It should be no surprise that I'm a Tom Lehrer fan, too.
Bill, JBC 1.1: a- b++ c d(only when ytping) e++/-- f+/- g+/-
h+ i+/-- j("Joy" is also a brand of ice cream cone)
k-/+ l+ m- n-- o(-) p q+ r- s- t+ u+/- v+ w x(-)
y-- z+/-