Anyone who has undergone home repair lately knows that your everyday artisan uses language so loosely and makes false promises so glibly as to make your politicians, even the presidential candidate, seem like a model of accuracy and rectitude. 'Be there Wednesday at nine,' the workman will tell you. It is a lie. He is humoring you. He says it to silence you, the way you tell a child you will take it to Disneyland if it will stop crying.

I am hoping for better times. That's how you know us hapless gardeners - by our dirty fingernails and our absurd, unquenchable optimism about next year.

My friend Phil has a theory that the Lord, having made teenagers, felt constrained to make amends and so created the golden retriever.

[On men:] On their best days, the best of them are eight years old.

And the propensity of weak and empty people to follow a leader into the darkness from which there is no return is still flourishing, as ever.

You need the will to disarm the civilian population. If we can do it in Somalia, we can do it here.

Baseball has a special place in our hearts. It is the game that shows us as we would like to be.