Appliances have idiosyncracies, just like us. Unfortunately they have picked up our less attractive traits - they are proud, spiteful, and unforgiving.

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.

[On George H.W. Bush:] A man who wishes to lead the Western world should be able to find the right words, string them together in coherent sentences, and steer them to an intelligible conclusion. His sentences have the stuttering start of an old car on a cold morning. They never run smoothly. The only speech part that he has mastered completely is the non sequitur.

[On George H.W. Bush vs. Michael Dukakis:] Americans now know they can vote for a man who can't express his thoughts or a man who can't express his feelings.

Dogs, bless them, operate on the premise that human beings are fragile and require incessant applications of affection and reassurance. The random lick of a hand and the furry chin draped over the instep are calculated to let the shaky owner know that a friend is nearby.

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.

Baseball is what we were, football is what we have become.