Medium Rare

An old college buddy of mine lost 51 pounds in the past 6 months by going "raw."

You may not be hip to raw if you don't have at least two of the below sites bookmarked.

www.rawguru.com
www.treehugger.com
www.biodiesel.com
www.vegan.com

According to www.veggieboards.com, Sting, Seal, Pierce Brosnan, Daryl Hannah, Christina Ricci, Gwyneth Paltrow, Demi Moore and Woody Harrelson are all "totally raw." For the militant vegan looking for a menu that is even more restrictive, "Raw" fits the bill nicely.

(Note: it is implied that your raw intake does not include raw flesh-stuff like raw oysters, raw fish, raw herbivore, raw cat or even raw Budweiser.)

Aside from the love and respect of your produce grocer, those who adhere can expect to make bulky, verdant and frequent deposits to the nearest septic system. But what are the other benefits? It sounded a bit limiting.

"So, what do you eat, dude?"

"I only eat raw fruit, vegetables, nuts and seeds."

Upon cross examination, he admitted to the occasional departure into the beer/pizza/flesh realm, and figured he was actually about "90% Raw."

"90% RAW?" Now I am confused. Is that 90% based on food weight, or food bulk? If you have a whole meal of charred venison, does that count as one infraction? Could you just write off a whole day and use the days per month calculation?

"How raw am I?" I wondered. And how would my employer react if I told him I was 94% Drug-Free?

or

"Honey, I have been nearly 100% faithful."

or

Hebrew National Franks, Now 97% Kosher.

In California, a blood alcohol content of .08 will land you a DUI while you are still 99.92% sober.

With more eloquence and energy, I'd go on about how our labels confuse and perhaps injure by implying more complete orthodoxy than is really there.

Politicians are great at it: "I'm a pro-choice, anti-gay marriage, anti-Iraq War, health care advocate who who puts children first."

Maybe one day, we'll have a president who runs on the "Vegan, No Gun, Flat-tax, Atheism" ticket, but until then, we can be assured that Larry Craig is "100% Not Gay."