Yesterday, Clifton, a 16 ounce glass tumbler, who contains only 8 ounces of water, was faced with the proverbial question:  Do you see yourself as half-empty, or half-full?   Clinton, an eternal optimist, saw himself as half-FULL, despite the fact that the water inside his glass contains lead, arsenic, radium, various others pathogens and traces of Raspberry Kool-Aid left over from a gathering of Scientologists.   The other sources of Clifton’s rancid water include, Baltimore City, any city in Michigan, and being down river from a gathering of The Loyal Order Of Water Buffalos.

                   “I’ve always tried to have a positive attitude,” says Clifton.  “Starting many years ago when I was just a little shot glass, bad things have always tried to get me down.  But I kept it positive.  Even after, my mom, a wine glass, was killed in a canoeing accident.  The canoe came through the front window of the restaurant where she was working at the time.  It crashed into her table where she was holding a Chardonnay, vintage 1981.  The canoe then ricocheted across the room where it wiped out most of the glasses on the bar counter.  Among the lost, my father, a beer mug, who never saw it coming.  The window, also a casualty that day, was a distant cousin on my paternal grandfather’s side.  Though, tragic, I saw those events in a positive light, through a prism of hope and inspiration.  That prism… was my grandmother, who always instilled in me to always look at myself as half-full, no matter what.”