I suppose that by most peoples standards I'd be considered a pessimist. I prefer to call myself a realist. After all, the glass is (both) half empty and half full. I mean, does a pessimist take the glass to the faucet, fill it up and become an optimist? Does the optimist drink the remaining water and become a pessimist? Do the optimist and pessimist get into an arguement over whose glass it was in the first place? Does anyone really give a fuck? Take a quarter for example. It's a small disc of copper, two thin layers of nickel tin, an emblem is stamped on one side, and a different emblem is stamped on the other and has ridges around the edge and it is said to be worth twenty-five cents. What if you take the quarter, put it in a smelting pot at six-hundred degrees and melt it into some- thing unrecognizeable? Is it still worth twenty five cents? Can you go to buy some thing that costs a dollar and twenty five cents, hand the clerk a dollar and the blob of metal and walk out? I don't think you can. You see, reality ,for me,is a truck. Rusty, with eight hundred sixty plus thousand miles on the odometer. It might puke its engine all over the highway tomorrow. Or the trailer might collapse under the loaded weight and create the best ground sparks and metal mayhem anyone has ever seen. It might do both. It might do neither. And quietly go about aging for another year. So, people keep on driving their cars. Because they've got that low monthly payment. And that insurance policy that covers and protects them. No matter what.