Once upon a time there was a wizard. He made some pretty cool stuff–like a flying carpet and a self-propelled cart. One time this merchant, call him Floyd, showed up and was all, “Hey, make me this cool magical thing. It should do some cool magical things!” As Floyd walked out the door, he turned to say, “Yo!”
The wizard (his name was Zombardo) shuddered, but, hey, money, right? He worked feverishly deep into the night for at least a fortnight (that’s 30 wizard-years) and finally finished this sweet-looking crystal ball. “I’m gonna call this CrystalBall.” He put CrystalBall into a box and gave it to one of his flying monkeys to deliver. In the box, he’d put a note: “To activate CrystalBall, polish.”
A week later (he was pretty worried about his flying monkey, Zognarb), his flying monkey returned with a note from the merchant. “CrystalBall not working.” The wizard wrote back: “Have you tried polishing it?”
Merchant: “Yes.”
Wizard: “What happened when you polished it?”
Merchant: “It got shiny.”
The wizard sighed: “What color is it glowing?”
(Zognarb was getting tired of flying back and forth.)
Merchant: “It’s not glowing at all.”
The wizard put his wizard hat on frumiously and stormed out the door. He whirled in through the merchant’s door in a very wizardy way and squinted at the merchant, who was furiously polishing the note the wizard had included with the CrystalBall. It was very shiny. The wizard took his CrystalBall and went home.
Moral: Don’t sell your wizardy stuff to merchants.