This morning on the way to fill up the Jeep with gas that annoying engine warning light wasn't lit up, which may or may not actually mean anything.

Maybe it burned out.

While I can't rule out the problem fixed itself, I sincerely doubt that any of my efforts fixed anything, either. All I did was poke around under Rama for a moment looking for some obvious problem and found nothing, but who knows? Maybe he (or she) just wanted a little attention. Stranger things have happened.

When the light first came on I looked up the error code (P0456) on, of all places, the Internet and as should be expected got several thousand results. I didn't check them all, but one I did visit had some guy talking about it, with what may turn out to be an interesting symptom.

The problem, generally, has to do with a tiny leak in the gasoline vapor recovery system. It might just be a California thing (because of our history with smog we're pretty much aware of emission problems), but over the last forty years or so great strides have been made about cleaning up the air. In addition to efforts to clean up what leaves through the exhaust system, I take it the whole fuel system is now sealed as tight as a walrus' butt hole. So, instead of the gas in the gas tank evaporating into the air the way it used to, now that vapor is collected and sent to the engine to be mixed with and burned with the regular air when the pistons fire.

So far, so good.

Unless, of course, some sensor that's looking after the integrity of that system decides it has a leak somewhere (in my case, a "very small" one). It might even be that all the hoses and things are fine, but the sensor is faulty.

Anyway, that guy I mentioned earlier said that he got that error, but never when his tank was full of gas. It only showed up after driving around awhile, when some of the gas had been used and the tank was, I guess, filling up with air.

I should mention that for my Jeep, those engine warning lights will go off if the problem isn't there any more and the engine has been started three times without triggering whatever caused the light in the first place. All of which means the engineers also recognize that anything can happen once, but it also means that if the problem comes and goes, it's maybe not as easy for the Jeep to be checked out when it's in an error condition.

This has happened to me once before, and I choose not to describe the steps I went through to have the error show up at the same time I had my earlier Jeep scheduled for service when it decided not to light up the instrument panel the way motion sensitive lights illuminate someone at night messing around on the Hollywood sign.

Getting back to the present, the light had been on for four or five days, annoying me all the time. Since I didn't think it was a big deal, not like if the error was "timing belt missing" or "crankshaft melted away," I figured I'd do my best to ignore it and see what I could do or have it fixed when I felt a little better about things.

Then, this morning after I decided the dogs needed to go to the dog park and the hell with the light, we all got in Rama and the light was off. I was so happy we took the longer shortcut through the desert on one of the many trails instead of sticking to paved roads, and Rama never complained but, in fact, performed flawlessly (I should mention that other than that damn light, I never noticed anything wrong with the Jeep, even when the light was on).

After going to the park, the light was still off, and it stayed off even after filling the tank with the precious commodity known as "gas."

The light first went on when the tank was about three-quarters full and was off this morning when it was closer to one-fourth full. Now, I'll see if it comes back on. I'd like to think it's gone for good, but will be expecting it to show up after I've burned off some gas and will then decide if it's something I'll learn to live with for half a tank of gas or so.

I should also check back to see if I can find that guy's post again and see what he did.

It's been a rough couple weeks for me lately, probably because I've spent too much time thinking about myself and not enough time doing things.

I suppose its a mark of some sort of progress, though, that I've gone from being unhappy and discouraged to my current state, which is one of nearly complete annoyance.

I'm annoyed with my Jeep, my television (and sometimes the things it shows me), my home, the weather, my computer stuff, and even with the games I play on it. I'm trying to keep my annoyance directed at the things in my life, but my unhappiness with myself keeps poking its head up and I don't really have much of a defense against that.

All my problems with the things in my life are pretty much my fault, but not all.

When I get my computer to work and connect to the internet (which I still feel like capitalizing even though it's recently been downgraded by AP), my annoyance changes to be directed at what I see on there. Of course, part of that's my doing because I go mostly to sites where people share their thoughts on things, and those can annoy me no end.

While the internet opens up the world so we can all see what's going on everywhere, what I've seen lately is massive numbers of people who use it to display their selfishness, their ugly natures, and their total lack of compassion and even the most meager attempts to understand other people.

It's not much of a relief from what I'm trying to escape at the moment, but I'll get better.

The other day I loaded up my dogs and drove down to Los Angeles to go to an event, and all of us except Jose, my Jeep, are back here safe and sound. He’s, um, taking a few days off to get drivable again.

Yes, I know, he just had his front end worked on to get rid of that annoying death wobble, but this time it’s his rear that’s causing problems, mostly due to a Jeep Grand Cherokee running into him and busting it up.

After seeing my old teacher and friend, Rob Roberge, talk about his latest book, a memoir (Liar), at a Barnes and Noble, I thought I’d stop at Tito’s Tacos to pick up a couple delicious beef and cheese burritos to bring back with me to the desert, where Tito’s, sadly, doesn’t exist. I even considered swinging by one of the places I lived in when I was still in LA, my place in Playa del Rey just across from the beach, to snap a quick picture and see if it had changed before heading back home.

Just as the restaurant came into view, my plans and a few other things besides, changed rather drastically.

Incredibly, Jose suffered no damage to his bodywork, not even a scratch. The other driver managed to hit only the right rear (passenger side) wheel, giving the tire a walnut-sized hole but pretty much destroying the rear end. I haven’t gotten the official word yet, but the drive shaft got knocked off and I’m guessing the rear axle and differential are history, along with the suspension elements.

Unlike Jose, most of the front end of the rented Grand Cherokee broke off and lay all over the place. None of that weight saving plastic seems to hold up very well in accidents, and one of the pieces slammed into (and broke) my windshield. That scared the crap out of me, and I’d guess the dogs, too, when it hit.

While Jose’s engine ran just fine, he wouldn’t budge an inch. I didn’t know about the drive shaft or anything at the time, but when I tried to move him it was as if I had a transmission full of neutral. After meeting with some of Culver City’s finest, none of whom obliged my request to just shoot me and let me done with it, I was given some paperwork and one of the officers told me what he would do.

He suggested I walk up to Sepulveda boulevard, a few hundred yards away, and look for a place to stay the night. There are a few motels right there, and then, the next morning I could think about getting the Jeep fixed. He made it sound so simple, but I was a mental mess, probably in a little shock, and my mind was racing with all sorts of dire thoughts. I was on the verge of tears and couldn’t find my insurance information and kept borrowing their flash lights as I dug through the place where it should be.

(I should point out that I typically wear a flash light on my belt when I go out at night, but that’s part of an entry that I wanted to write last week. I kept thinking I wish I’d done that)

Thanks to the part of my brain that was still working, I decided to try putting the Jeep in four wheel drive and see if the front end could pull Jose out of the middle of the intersection. Dragging the stricken rear end along the pavement didn’t sound very good, but it turned it we could move. A little later, the cops stopped the traffic so I could complete my turn and park it on the side of the road where I’d get a ticket the next morning, but he said he’d call something in and see if I could get a pass. Nice of him to do that for me. He also said it would be okay for me to sleep in the Jeep overnight if I had to, but greeted that idea with the dismay and revulsion most normal people would.

It didn’t sound good at all, but it made it.

I then stuffed what I could into the bag I take with me to the dog park, which I’d brought along, and the pups and I then began checking out the nearby places to spend the night. My worries about how much it would cost ended up being a waste of time and energy since none of the places that had vacancies allowed pets. So, around eleven or so at night we all piled back in the Jeep to spend the night.

I thought the front two seats wouldn’t be very comfortable and was (as always) worried about them getting out and running away to get hit by a car or something, so I just stuck their leashes to the seat belts for the rear seat, which is still sitting in my front room. I figured that would give them room to maneuver around and get comfortable, but they were having none of that and after several minutes of frustration I realized there just wasn’t room in the back. It’s small, anyway.

As soon as I got into the front, being dogs, they both climbed between the seats to get up to where I was, and it must have taken close to a half hour before we settled on me sitting in the passenger seat with my legs where the driver’s legs go, Vinko in the driver’s seat, and Sami sitting on top of me. After an hour or so of resting that way, I moved to the driver’s seat with my leg where the passenger’s feet go, and tried all night long to sleep.

One of my favorite things about the Jeep is how tiny and maneuverable it is, but its size does present drawbacks when you’re trying to sleep in it with two dogs. Of the three of us, only Sami could ever get comfortable. I don’t know if it was the novelty of the situation or what, but even when I could wedge myself into an acceptable position between avoiding the sharp metal center console, the steering wheel and pedals, and just the overall discomfort of trying to sleep in a car, every time I looked at Vinko, he was sitting up.

Quite often he will lay his head on the padded part of the console and rest, but not tonight, not when I wanted him to. I kept trying to push or pull him into what I thought would be a more comfortable position with him (not easy with a dog his size), but he never got the message. Eventually he’d get into a position where I thought he could sleep, but then I’d move (trying to make myself more comfortable), and he’d get up and the whole process would start all over again.

In short, all night long, the three of us kept moving around, trying to get comfortable and constantly failing.

One thing that kept bothering me was that I had to find a tow company, a place to get the Jeep fixed, and a rental car place. I had my mobile cell phone with me, but it’s not a smart phone and had resorted to having to ask strangers for help in locating any of those. Since the Internet has replaced telephone books, I felt very much alone and isolated and both helpless and worthless.

At some point in the night, a tow truck began collecting some other car, and I walked over to talk to the driver to get their name and number or see if he had a business card. He didn’t have one of those, but pointed to the phone number painted on the side of his truck and even told me there was a (good) car repair place just on a nearby corner!

I went back to the Jeep thinking I could call his place in the morning and have Jose taken up the street and felt a whole lot better. Two problems -- solved!

I next started wondering if I could save myself the tow charges by driving the Jeep up to the fixit place. It could possibly make it the few hundred yards (meters) but it would be a painfully slow drive and I’d get in the way of and be a nuisance to the morning traffic. Still, I thought it would be worth a shot and thought it might be easier if I put the spare tire on to at least avoid peeling off the flat one and then possibly grinding down the wheel.

I jacked the Jeep up and one of the heavy duty springs that keeps the body up, fell away. I put it in the back of the Jeep, just because. I got all the lug nuts off, but the wheel was stuck on one of the bolts no matter how hard I tried to get it off. It was dark, of course, so I gave up, put all but the locking nut back on, and went back inside to sleep, figuring it was damaged and I’d have to have it towed.

So, without worrying about being a slowly moving traffic obstruction in the morning, I tried, again, to get some sleep and tackle things in the morning.

Around six in the morning I decided the time was ripe to get started. The restroom at the gas station on the corner (which was across the street from the car repair place, as it turned out), was still locked up for the night and wouldn’t open until seven or eight, so I took a leak in an alley.

I went back to the Jeep to walk the dogs so they could join me in bladder relief and rewarded them with some handfuls of kibble and cookies that I’d wisely added to the dog park bag. We were all sort of okay and I downed the coffee I’d bought at the gas station, and decided the first thing I should do, even when local businesses were still shut, was to do my legal, civic, and decent duty and call my insurance company.

At some point when the police were still around I’d managed to find my insurance card, but in the ensuing few hours, I’d lost it again. Not only didn’t I have my policy number, I didn’t even have their phone number, but the cop had assured me I didn’t need the number but that they could find it for me. I called what used to be information (411) but is now some private company, and they gave me the number and connected me. Yes, there’s a charge for the service, but I’d even skimmed through a Spanish language free newspaper that was filled with ads, but none for Progressive Insurance, the one I used.

I got through to someone at Progressive, and I have to say, my whole life changed.

My connection wasn’t the greatest and I was right next to street that was growing busier by the moment with traffic so I had to ask the woman to repeat nearly everything she said once or twice, which embarrassed me, but she stayed friendly, patient, and accommodating all during the call.

Best of all, though, was what she told me. In California, at least, all drivers are required to have insurance for damage that they cause to people or property, and I knew I was good with that. All other insurance is optional and, since it costs more, that was all I thought I had, so you can imagine my surprise and joy to learn that I had collision insurance that covered damage to my own vehicle! All night long I’d worried how much it would cost me to fix Jose (or if it was even possible) and if I’d do it.

I love that little Jeep, and couldn’t imagine either being able to pay to get him fixed or buying another car. But, somehow, at some point, I’d gotten insurance to pay to repair my own car and the most it would cost me was one thousand dollars! Sure, that’s a lot of  money and I’d normally and habitually blanch at the thought of spending that much, but if that’s all it would cost me to get Jose back on his feet and good again, I’d do it in a heartbeat!

Also, equally surprising, my insurance would also pay for a rental car. And towing. And the sweet, sweet woman on the other end of the phone call would take care of everything for me. As they say, “sign me up!” but it seems I’d already done that.

I truthfully could not and cannot remember signing up for any for that. I’m not at all sure if I was at one point wise, feeling unexpectedly generous, or if at some point it was added to my policy like one of those browser toolbars that get loaded onto your system when you install something else, but all of my problems went away in the first two or three minutes of talking to her.

The phone call(s) took about an hour or so what with all my asking her to repeat things and me walking around to get away from a using leaf blowers to clean up the sidewalk, the arrival of some road crew to block off the lane the Jeep was in for repairs or something, and my struggles to find a place I could make out what she was saying. At one point we got disconnected, which I used to check the phone’s battery and how many more minutes I could still talk before paying for more, but it did get resolved and the tow truck showed up just as we were trying to the car rental people to come pick me up.

In the end, not only did the guy from Enterprise rent a car show up to take me and the long suffering pups to go get my rental car, he was also in a Jeep! I have no idea what the odds would be that all three vehicles involved in this incident would be Jeep products (his was also an SUV or ute), but I could have paid for everything had I made a bet on that beforehand.

The amount my insurance company was willing to pay for a rental vehicle just so happened to cover the entire cost of what they had for me to rent so I through caution to the wind and paid, myself, for the extra and best insurance Enterprise offered. Not only had my recent car experiences scared me, but I once worked with a Greatful Dead fan who used to say they all called “Deadhead insurance” that let you return the burned and twisted VIN tag and have the insurance company say “thank you.”

And, after all that, they rented me a pickup truck.

I have no idea how that worked or what went into their decision, but a shiny new full sized white Nissan pickup brought me, Vinko, and Sami eventually back to our desert home after fulfilling a requested appointment to visit my doctor at a time when I was feeling decidedly ugly and spent.

I’d spent a day and night wearing the same clothes, which I’d tried to sleep in inside a Jeep with two dogs, had survived a car accident, gone way over twelve hours without eating a thing and surviving on a few swallows of water (out of the dog’s traveling jug), one cup of coffee, and for the first time in years, an actual, honest-to-goodness Coca-Cola with sugar and caffeine to keep me alert for the last fifty miles of the drive back home.

I was dazed, spent, and had managed to collect a bruise on my forehead that neither the cops nor the doctor commented on, but after visiting her, we were all back home!

And, I decided to tell you all about it.

Although both can be scary, getting lost in an officially designated wilderness area is nothing at all like getting lost in a city.

This morning, after a couple times trying and not even being able to find the back route up the mountain to get to Big Bear, I set off once again with water and my dogs. This time I may have even found the illusive county route N202, or I may have just ventured deeper into the desert and the official San Bernardino wilderness.

I’d done a bit more checking and found directions to the start of the route, so I had that going for me. Years of desert rats had deemed the trail too much for 2W pickups, but since I don’t have one of those, I figured I was good to go with my Jeep.

Which I was, at least as far as I made it.

I took off this morning thinking I might go all the way to the top but more likely I’d just go and check out part of the trail to see what it was like. The portion of it I travelled wasn’t bad at all, but I still managed to get lost.

I didn’t expect the trail would be marked, but I also didn’t expect what a few decades of those previously mentioned desert rats could do to the route. You’re not allowed to travel off road in that part of the world but at least 100 minor trails branch off the main trail and since this is the desert, any way ever taken looks the same as main road. No vegetation creeps onto the trail no matter how recently or long ago it was created.

Like I said, I didn’t expect trail markers, but I was completely unprepared for all the side trails and how much they looked just like the main road. I was doing pretty good for what I guess was a fifth or a quarter of the route, but somehow managed to lose track of where I wanted to be or thought I should be and had no idea of where I was or how I’d get back.

It was a bit unsettling, especially when the Jeep decided to overheat.

I wasn’t in fear of losing my life, but more of being uncomfortable for a prolonged length of time. By the time I admitted I was lost, I’d driven around enough to lose track of when I’d left those tire tracks and which way I’d been going. You see, maybe I’d been going in circles for half an hour or so, and a lot of the trail was bare rock, which doesn’t hold tire tracks worth a damn.

Since you’re reading this, it’s obvious that I made it back, though I can’t say how, exactly. And of course I’ll try again, and maybe next time I’ll do a bit better. In the end, it was a nice Sunday drive, other than the rising feeling of panic and hating myself.

Here's how clever I am: I may be able to fix my Jeep's "death wobble."

Yes, it still happens in spite of having the alignment fixed and the tires balanced. It shows up around 45mph and seems to be more frequent or more violent under braking so I only need to be careful in fourth gear for what that's worth.

According to the how-to-fix-it website, I'm now down to suspension elements. One of the advantages of a four wheel drive vehicle is that they're easier to get under than a passenger car, but I still think my friend Rudi had the best idea back in the day when he was thinking of digging a pit so he could work on the underside of his Volkswagens. And, now that I think of it, I could make one of those easily enough if I rented a little ditch digger, but I may save that up for later.

Instead, I was going to run to Home Depot and pick up some bricks to drive up onto to make it even easier, but today I remembered I already have some that I plan to use for that shed I never get around to building. I could drive the front of the Jeep onto those and  -- voila! -- plenty of room to mess around with suspension or even make it worse!

The bigger sticking point is most of the next things to check need two people: one to sit in the Jeep and wiggle the steering wheel back and forth and another to "observe" how the steering components work.

Hmmm.

I originally considered teaching my dog, Vinko, how to wiggle the steering wheel, but on second thought I discounted that plan. While it would be great for this purpose, the more I thought about it the less I considered it one of my better ideas. Sure, it may help here and now when I need to fix the Jeep, but what if he decides he'd like to enjoy a treat while I'm driving and grabs the wheel while I'm cruising along at highway speeds? That may not work out so well.

But, and here's where the clever part comes into play, my camera takes movies! If I can set it all up, I can aim the camera at the component I should be checking, begin making a video, and hustle into the Jeep sitting on the bricks and wiggle the steering wheel myself! Then, after a bit of that, get out of the Jeep, shut off the camera, and view the movie all without bothering another person.

What could possibly go wrong?

I get a kick out of people's reactions at the dog park when they ask me where I live. Invariably, when I tell them we (my dog, Vinko, and I) come from Landers, I'll get a variation on "way out there?" that never fails to make me smile.

I then correct them (frequently by asking why everyone has that reaction) and they back down, and sometimes the subject gets dropped and sometimes they ask more about my living arrangements or whatever. The reason I get such a charge out of it comes from an old saying and also this map:

First, the old saying, "One hundred years is a long time for Americans and one hundred miles is a long way for Englishmen."

I have to say I think that's true, and not just for Englishmen but for everyone in Europe and the old world. We in America don't have anything very old, not compared to what they have, so we get all excited about some building or other that dates back to the 1800s or, in Los Angeles terms, to the 1960s. It's sort of like what Erma Bombeck said to someone who was in her twenties: I've got cookie sheets older than that.

In the US, at least in the western part, one hundred miles isn't considered very far at all, maybe a two hour trip by car. Just about everyone I've known has driven many times those sort of distances on vacations or to shop or go to events, and no one's made a very big deal about it, but I realize a lot of people in Europe or elsewhere were born, lived, and died in the place they were born and never ventured more than a day's walk from their home.

On the map it's a little over ten miles (16km) from Landers, where I live, to Yucca Valley and a couple more to the dog park. That's about the same distance from Yucca Valley to Morongo Valley and just a little less than the trip from Yucca Valley to Joshua Tree.

I should note that Yucca Valley is by far the largest of the towns in the Morongo Basin, boasting over 25,000 people.

But, and here's what gets me, everyone in Yucca (as I call it) acts as if Landers is on the other side of the planet. Now, I admit that there's not much of a reason for any of them to drive up here for a visit, but if they want to go to Victorville or Barstow or Las Vegas, they have to drive through it, and maybe that's their only experience of the place.

But, really, people, c'mon.

Most of the residences in Yucca Valley, Joshua Tree, and Morongo Valley are all within a mile of highway 62, which runs east to west on the map. The other highway, 247, runs from the 62 up to Victorville and passes through a couple of small places that even I consider "too far" out to live in. One of those is Johnson Valley, which is mostly an off road driving place and site of the annual War of the Hammers, and then there's Lucerne Valley where you can turn to drive up to Big Bear.

Along the way to Victorville, I might add, you go through Apple Valley, which is where my congressional representative has his home and also the nearest Best Buy. It takes close to an hour to make that drive, and I can't say that I do it a lot. Not in the summer, anyway.

Our little Morongo Basin, however, with its handful of towns, is home to maybe about fifty thousand people all told, and as someone used to driving forty-five minutes to work each day, I can visit any of them in less time than it used to take me to do that.

And, yet, despite the old saying, in Morongo Basin, it seems ten miles is a long way, even along paved, straight, and empty desert roads where you can actually drive the whole way at highway speeds. Also, anything from earlier than the sixties is ancient, so we test positive for both sides of the saying.

If you think the world's changed a lot in your lifetime, do yourself a favor and read something else.

As far as most of the things I'm interested in go, nothing has changed while I've been on earth or for the thousands of years that we've been around. Sure, how we do things has changed a lot, but we as people have changed very little, if at all. We still love and fight and bully each other and get hurt over the same things, we still try to make sense of the world and ask the same questions we always have.

We're pretty much the same as every other living thing on this planet, too, in the sense that we want things, but maybe different in that sometimes we can make that happen. A bunny might really want a carrot, but unless it bounces across one during its hopping, it's out of luck. We're pretty much unique, I think, in that we can make carrots happen. Sometimes.

And here's where it gets interesting.

I'll leave aside the question of whether or not we should change the world to be more to our liking and write a bit about just how it is we go about making that happen. Whether it's the love of a woman, a big pile of tasty carrots, rain to grow our crops, a healthy herd of goats, or the destruction of our enemies, humans have always wanted things and have tried any number of things to get the results they want.

As you can imagine, this wanting and trying isn't a recent thing, and is probably as old as humankind. Sir James G. Frazer, around the turn of the twentieth century, wrote about it. A lot. He came up with a twelve volume collection that described in agonizing detail the ways we've tried throughout our history to make the world more the way we want it to be.

He also put forth an argument that I think about quite a bit. I have no idea how well his ideas were accepted in the academic world (he was a Scot who studied at Cambridge), but whether or not they're true, they took hold with me.

We have to go back to the beginning to understand his thinking, back to the earliest cave men. Putting aside cultural, clothing, and other differences, they had a lot of the same problems we do. They needed their crops to grow, their enemies defeated, and that woman over there to love them, to give just three examples. How they tried to make that happen, and how we've tried ever since to make that happen is all cataloged in his work, The Golden Bough.

Simply put, Frazer came up with the idea that the first thing humans came up with is what he called primitive magic. Early man knew that it rained sometimes, but not always when and how much he wanted. So, they tried to change that, and the first thing they thought of was magic, as practiced by the witch doctors, shamans, and the like.

It started innocently enough with sympathetic magic, people going out with water and pouring it on their fields to show nature how it was supposed to act. What better way to get fertile crops than by taking someone out into the fields and screwing?

Maybe a bit later, or maybe at the same time, other magics were popular. If someone discovered that a spear with a bit of animal fur stuck onto it by chance killed a deer, they all started sticking fur on their spears. And so on.

The witch doctors kept track of all these coincidences and they became the way to do things (and were about as successful as you can imagine).

A bit later on, according to Frazer, some people weren't all that happy with the success rate and perhaps jealous of the power the witch doctor had over the tribe. And, instead of an impartial universe that would mimic our human activities in the fields, they came up with the notion that someone other than us was in charge of the rain and if we got on his or her good side, we'd be rewarded.

As Frazer put it, we progressed from magic to religion, and priests (in a generic sense) started telling their people who was in charge of the rain and how to please them. Gods for every big and little thing were worshipped and the priests soon replaced the witch doctors as the people in the tribe who knew how to get things done.

Every tribe, every culture, who'd had their own magical rituals and practices, pretty much all evolved to have their own religious practices and rituals, and Sir Frazer pretty much covers them all. Although his twelve volume compendium was later published as a much shorter one volume book, there's still pages and pages, chapter after chapter, detailing corn gods, dead, dying, and resurrected gods, and every other manner of things we've practiced and worshipped.

From there, we discovered science, and, in a nutshell, Frazer argues that sort of similar to evolution, we've gone from magic to religion to science to get things done, with each of these evolving in turn before being cast aside.

And I think there's a lot in what he has to say on the matter. We still practice magic with our lucky panties and underwear and it still seems to be true that chocolates and roses somehow get us love, and we still pray for rain or to get a job or score a point, and we've tried everything from seeding clouds to developing atomic weapons to get our way in the world.

So, at first we thought we were in charge of what happens, then it was god(s), and now it's us again. I didn't study any more sociology (Frazer's field) than I needed to graduate, so I have no idea if anyone is talking about him and his theory any more or if it's been disproven, but I still like it.

True or not, it explains a lot. Pretty much everything, actually.