Quantifiable Living: Country song - patheticness

Social state of being: Patheticness, or the amount of pathos associated with a person involved in a social situation including or requiring a lost pet (i.e. dog), lost romantic partner (i.e. wife), lost or "beat up" pick-up truck, or any other item deemed "pathetic" by dominant culture.

Unit of measure: Country songs (Cs)

How it works: A long established link between country-western music and pathetic social situations -- one which long predates the unusually embarassing practice of collective country line dancing -- makes this scale almost intuitive, and easy to manage and use. Both the amount of social embarassment experienced by someone involved in the patheticness-incurring situation and the amount of perceived embarassment perceived as accruing to that or those individual(s) by those outside the situation may be measured by this scale.

Examples: Your credit card gets declines while you're attempting to buy feminine products: .3 Cs (for women); .6 Cs (for men)

The person who agreed to go on a date with you called out sick, but is seen later that night at the local Shake Shack with someone more attractive than you: 1 Cs

Your dog runs away with your romantic partner in your trusty beat-up pick-up truck: 5 Cs

Limits: This scale only measures the amount of patheticness involved in a social situation, not personal embarassment experienced in a non-social situation (i.e., when alone) nor any other emotion associated with the same situation. For truly accurate measures of emotionally complex scenarios, several scales must be used.

The scale also only refers to country-western songs that themselves describe pathetic situations, homogenized into the unit Cs. Garth Brooks is, in general, not involved in this scale; nor are any current or prior American Idol contestants, though the scale may itself be used in describing their rise to fame.