The Fox and the Grapes (a fable for our time)

Once upon a time, there lived a photographer named Fox. He was not a very good photographer. His work was drab and ordinary (probably because Fox himself was drab and ordinary). But Fox was convinced he was the equal of any photographer on earth.

One day, Fox saw some beautiful pictures of a bunch of grapes, taken by a photographer named Adam Moose. "Hmmm," thought Fox to himself, "I know where those very grapes are -- I'll go there and take pictures of them myself. They will be beautiful, of course, because I'm the equal of any photographer on earth."

But, when Fox looked at his images, he was disappointed. His pictures looked nothing at all like the beautiful photographs by Adam Moose. Fox tried every technique he read about in magazines and books, to no avail. Worse, while the friends and students of Adam Moose all took beautiful photographs of the grapes, Fox's own pictures continued to look drab and ordinary (because, of course, Fox himself was drab and ordinary).

Fox tried and tried. But, although his credit-card balances jumped higher and higher with each new piece of equipment he bought, a beautiful photograph of the grapes remained just out of Fox's reach.

Finally, Fox gave up. "If I," he said to himself, "the equal of any photographer on earth, cannot take a beautiful picture of those grapes, obviously no one can do so. Those who have taken those other photographs of the grapes are obviously using Photoshop trickery to make them look beautiful. It's an outrage! I shall dedicate my life to a crusade against the lies and deceptions of Adam Moose and his followers!" So Fox stormed off to his basement, where he kept his computer, and disappeared. He, and his photographs, were never seen again.

The moral of the story: If at first you don't succeed, put up a website denouncing those who do as "thugs," "morons," and "unemployed homosexual losers."