So there you were over the weekend, filling the tank on your not-really-new-anymore pickup and watching the numbers click by so fast that they merged into one big LCD read-out that said, "College for your kids? Forget it."

At $2.85 a gallon, somebody's getting rich here, and it ain't you. Exxon's profits are in the billions, and that jowly guy Lee Raymond just walked away with more money than a Powerball winner.

Friends, this isn't right. Somebody, somewhere, has got to do something about these gasoline prices. Oil just hit $75 a barrel? Where does it end?

Washington! That's whom we can blame. Bush and Cheney and their oil pals and all those suits in Congress. Why don't they fix this?

Tap the brakes there, Octane Boy. There's a lot you can blame on President Bush and Congress — one political party, we hear, has a whole strategy built around your misery — but the price of gasoline isn't one of them.

The numbers on the big sign at the RaceTrac, while daunting, don't react to politicians' blow-harding. "Mr. Bush, bring down those prices," might feel good to say, but in America's free market, some things are out of even his control.

Sure, we could dazzle you with hundreds of words on the complex factors that affect a commodity like oil in a global marketplace, but two suffice: supply and demand. It's not much more complicated than that, even with all the MTBE and ethanol and winter and summer blends swirled in.

One remark from a crazy man in Iran can do more to affect the world oil market — and, ultimately, the price of gasoline — than a dozen white papers or 250-page bills in Congress.

We're not letting our politicians entirely off the hook. Bush is saying the right things about alternative energy sources, but he'll have long retired to Crawford before we see any effects. Congress can get serious about stricter fuel-efficiency standards for U.S. automakers.

What about you? Drive less or drive smaller. Walk more. Take the train. Share a ride to work. Move closer to the office. Whatever we can do to burn less gas jiggers the demand side of the equation.

If enough of us do that, it adds a third thing we can do about high gas prices to nothing and like it.