Not long, long ago in an obscure kingdom somewhere in the East there
lived a beautiful princess. It was time for her to marry,
and
as often happens with beautiful princesses of not long ago,
she had many suitors. So many, in fact, that she couldn't
keep track of them all. Her friend and confidant, Gazo, an
established wizard in the area whose ideas were way cool,
had an idea. Why not have all the suitors email a picture
of themselves? The princess could then line them up side by
side and choose who would be her husband.
No one had ever thought of such a clever suitor management system
before.
But there was one problem. With hundreds of pictures, how could the
princess arrange them in such a way that they would stay organized
and neat, especially with the constant breeze that flowed
through the palace? And to make matters worse, with hundreds
of pictures on the floor - the room would get cluttered, and
her mother, who was as meticulous as they come, would get
very upset. The princess, usually known for her radiant smile,
was very sad. But Gazo, as usual, came to the rescue. "Don't
be sad, my lovely princess. You gotta' Gazo."
"Gotta' Gazo?" she asked.
"Yes," the little man responded triumphantly. "Watch."
As the princess gazed in wonder, Gazo booted up her
computer and opened up a new software program that could
organize hundreds of digital images into beautiful digital
albums. The princess' eyes
grew wider and wider as she watched Gazo organize pictures
of all her suitors in an electric blue (her favorite color)
album.
The princess hugged Gazo in glee and then began studying the album
filled with images of all her suitors. As she looked, she
turned the pages faster and faster until she reached the end.
Suddenly she turned to Gazo and said, "I don't want any of
these suitors."
A
hush came over the palace.
"Not any of these suitors even comes close to the man I want as my
husband."
Her mother sighed in exasperation. "She's such a princess."
"Why should I choose from any of these men when I gotta' Gazo?" she
exclaimed.
"Gotta' Gazo?" echoed the palace crowd.
"That's right, she announced. "I can create as many albums as I want.
I can categorize my suitors according to intelligence, inventiveness,
humor, and any other category I want. So why should I stop
now to make a choice. The world is my oyster. I can take as
long as I want to choose."
So the princess went on to create 104 albums of suitors with the
software, which she named Gazo, in honor of its creator. Finally,
exactly 104 days from the day she began organizing her suitor
pics, she made her decision. The lucky groom was a computer
programmer from Frankfurt, Kentucky.
He had a great sense of humor, spoke 11 languages, was a math whiz,
and had the most gorgeous blue eyes the princess had ever
seen. He also had a killer southern accent that made the princess
weak at the knees.
The two were married and had many children who were married and so
on. As you can imagine there were thousands of photos of weddings,
children, graduations, and events in all their lives. Artists
painted thousands of pictures, which they presented to the
royal family and Gazo made digital images of the entire collection.
And in the evenings - even now, while the grandchildren rock
out to MTV, the princess and her husband sit drinking tea
and smiling warmly to each other as they look at hundreds
of digital albums of their lives.
But sometimes in the middle of the night, annoyed by her husban'ds
snoring and the way his leg trespasses into her half of the
bed, the princess drifts over to her computer and opens that
virtually dusty old album of potential suitors that she's
kept all these years. Gazing dreamily at the hundreds of faces
staring out at her from the past - she muses that life is
like Gazo - an album full of images, sound, and words that
can come from anywhere. Sometimes good. Sometimes bad.
You just gotta' go with the flow....
