elsewhere pengo used “rip” just to mean “this sucks”, e.g. when telling mel that curly was feeling bad.  and i certainly remember his using it even less seriously at the time, e.g. on tumblr.  in my experience he uses it like i would use “ugh”.

pengo was emphasizing the sparking outlet, so that’s what i was replying to.  it looks like mel just missed that earlier text about the sirens, which is unfortunate, but leaves us with nothing to really analyze.

mel did try to cheer him up after the first text with a joke about baltimore, where she and marl used to live.  that’s probably what i would’ve done, too.  if there’s something better to say then please let us know for the future.

clearly “mom had an accident” is something bad, but generally people only say that much if it’s something relatively minor — anything from slipping in the kitchen and spraining one’s ankle to a minor fender bender would also qualify, and those things would be inconvenient, but wouldn’t cause any of the results that pengo complains mel “ignored”.  i certainly don’t see how she could’ve been expected to guess that a person died and a family was stuck without transportation from just that single phrase.