The Day The Earth Stalled

...so Muhammad (which actually happens to be the name of my mechanic...no lampooning of holy figures here.) gets the Old Blue Terra Cruiser down from the hoist, and walks towards me, wiping the oil off his hands, drying the ocean spray on his hair, and getting the Saharan sand off his Mr. Goodwrench shirt. He is shaking his head in a manner that I have come to associate with bad news.  
Well, I got some good news and some bad news. Which do ya wanna hear first?

Masha'allah, I said, rolling my eyes.  

What model do you got? The 2 billion year old one, or the one that's got just over 6,000 years on her?

Man ya'rif? I said, shrugging. Who knows?  

Ya know, some people bought into the younger model, the Bishop Ussher model, the T four-oh-oh-four. Some got the older model.

I said I thought it was the older model. It had certainly been acting as if it were. (Bishop Ussher was the bloke who said the Earth was created in 4004 B.C.) 

Then there's the designer: was your designer the Big Guy or that Intellygent Designer that's all the rage these days?

While he said this, he did "majnoun" motions; i.e., finger points to temple and implies that some of us were not too tightly wrapped..." mad as hatters" nicely sums it up.

I said I thought it was the Big Lebowski...I don't know why. I mean, there isn't much holy about Jeff Bridges as The Big Lebowski. Or is there? Anyway, long story short, it was going to be flush the system for the next 1,000 years at some phenomenal figure per flush, or...get a new model.

So I'm getting the system flush. It gives me the shivers, sounding way too much like eternal colon cleansing, but she'll be running like new in no time.

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