Water. It’s the elixir of all life on Earth. It cleans us, it fuels us, and it cools us. It can also be a destructive force, leveling towns with typhoons or floods. It can also cause roadblocks when a water main bursts. Water is something else.

(Pictured: water.)

Despite its inherent dangers, the thing about water is if you stop using it, you could die. That’s not in all cases, of course. In some cases it can be somewhere in between death and a minor inconvenience, like a chalky mouth. In this particular case, it’s pretty bad. This morning brought a broken pipe on Ventura Blvd, shutting off water to all buildings within 3 blocks. We work in a 6 story building that now has no working bathrooms, and we’re still here.

Big Boss Man does not see an issue with this. He simply suggests that we go down the street to a nearby hotel. There are 40 of us on the top floor, and that’s just our company. In the age of email, Skype, iChatting, and texting, we for some reason have to stay in a building that cannot produce coffee or eliminate waste for the rest of the day. Ah, the entertainment industry, where the laws of the land need not apply! Bathrooms? Fuck you, get back to work! Lunch breaks? Quit your belly aching, you wuss. We’re making movies here!

I actually don’t care either way, since I rarely have the time to even take a bathroom break, but like any sane person I would love to not be here. Perhaps the afternoon will bring power outages, wild animal attacks and locusts. Surely then, we could work from home.

But we won’t.