“Bloody” as in the British expletive, not the condition of the pipe that Professor Plum used to kill Mr. Boddy in the study.
NOTE: “Hiag” is my alter-ego. On a U.S. QWERTY keyboard, that’s what you get when you type “Josh” shifted one key to the left, which I do more often than you’d think.
HIAG: Josh, why are you upset?
JOSH: Because they fixed that bloody pipe!
HIAG: What pipe? Who? What are you talking about?
JOSH: You know the pipe that carries the rainwater from the roof to the drain in the courtyard of my building?
HIAG: You mean the one that’s been broken ever since you moved in there? The one that ends about five feet off the ground, and you can hear all the water coming out of it and hitting the ground?
JOSH: Yeah, that one.
HIAG: Well…why are you upset that they fixed it?
JOSH: Because now I can’t tell if it's raining or not?
HIAG: Huh?
JOSH: I used to be able to tell it was raining by hearing the water come out of the pipe and hitting the ground. They’ve taken that away from me.
HIAG: Uh…can you look out of the window?
JOSH: But I liked not having to look out the window. Besides, if it’s dark out, or if it’s not raining hard enough, you can’t really tell by looking out the window.
HIAG: Uh…you could use the TV or the radio.
JOSH: Nah. What if they’re not on? Besides, they only tell you every 10 minutes, and with my luck, I’d turn them on right after they did a weather report and have to wait nine more minutes. Besides, I need to know at that moment because I’m usually about the leave the house. It was so great to go to the door and hear the water coming down…it was like an umbrella alarm.
HIAG: How about one of those weather stations?
JOSH: —
HIAG: What about looking it up on the Internet?
JOSH: Did you wake up and have a big bowl of stupid for breakfast?! I just told you that the whole reason I liked it was because it was something that passively told me it was raining. Those things you mentioned require effort. I want to be able to tell if it’s raining while I’m lying in bed. I’m trying to be as lazy as possible.
HIAG: Hmm. Can you tell the building to unfix it?
JOSH: Probably not. I complain when things don't get fixed…now you want me to complain when they actually fix something?
HIAG: Good point. So, how did they fix it?
JOSH: They put in an s-curve piece of pipe to connect the pipe from the roof to the actual drain pipe. Here, I’ll draw you a picture.
Josh grabs a pen and paper and quickly draws an incredibly awesome representation of the before and after experience of the “umbrella alarm” (despite the sneeze that occurred while trying to draw the “R” in the AFTER label).
HIAG: How about you sneak in there and break it? You could do it late at nig ht and dress up like a ninja.
JOSH: I’m six-foot-six, two hundred twenty pounds. I don’t ”sneak“ anywhere.
HIAG: What about that time you were with that girl and her father came home?
JOSH: I said I don’t ”sneak“ anywhere. Hiding under a bed doesn’t qualify as ”sneaking“.
HIAG: How long did you hide under the bed?
JOSH: WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH THE BLOODY PIPE?!
HIAG: Nothing. I just like hearing that story.
I know it’s not Shakespeare, but it can still be classified as a tragedy.
