Blame it on the rain.
     
     (A modern fable by Bill Clearlake)
     
     
     Once upon a time, a group of architects and carpenters decided to 
     build a shelter to protect the people of their village from the heavy 
     rains that often fell there.
     
     The architects brought their blueprints and the carpenters brought the 
     lumber and tools.
     
     They all sat in a clearing to plan their work.
     
     The architectects, being intellectuals, didn't much like the 
     carpenters who worked with their hands and got sweaty and smelly.  So 
     they sat apart from them.
     
     The carpenters, being hard workers, didn't much like the boorish 
     architects who just sat around daydreaming and drawing pictures.  So 
     they sat apart from them.
     
     The architects began looking over their blueprints.  They immediately 
     began a discussion about standard blueprint formats, font types, 
     grades of blueprint paper and the like.
     
     The carpenters compared tools and discussed the merits of drop-forged 
     versus cold-forged steel and whether the old wooden-handled tools 
     would finally be replaced by the new, lighter alloys.
     
     Then they all had lunch.
     
     After lunch, the architects began bickering over who was the best 
     designer.  The carpenters argued about who was the strongest and 
     fastest builder.  For hours they bragged and boasted of their prowess 
     with t-square and hammer.
     
     Then the rains came.  
     
     The architects and carpenters gathered their blueprints, tools, and 
     lumber and ran back to the makeshift hovels of the village.
     
     When the villagers asked them why thy hadn't built the shelter, the 
     architects are carpenters said together, "You know how it is.  
     Whenever we try to build something, the rain comes and stops us."
     
     The villagers all nodded in agreement and went into their hovels and 
     grumbled about the rain just as they had for generations on end.