Can’t speak for the single, but here’s the album:

https://www.discogs.com/release/5137461-Ozzy-Osbourne-Blizzard-Of-Ozz

I read this in Michael McKean’s singing voice.

Maybe it depends on what I want to happen when that load spike comes.

I don’t know what they wanted to happen, but at my old place the load spike overloaded the UPS units.

Me: “we really shouldn’t be running these at 85 90 95%.”

Brass: “That’s not 100. Find room to ingest this company we bought when the CEO made a friend at a circlejerk.”

Overnight server update check: blip

UPS: Bypass mode, bitches!

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I’m near neither of those places, but both birds are regulars in my neighborhood. It’s kinda cool. Sure bears beats boring old robins and sparrows.

CORDER

I can’t even.

I utterly fail at containing and articulating most of these flashes. It’s like the data (signal and noise alike) is an incessant thought stream, and the insight is a flash flood. In that instant it makes sense, but turning it into spoken word before getting washed away is a creaky elderly bucket brigade that can never keep up. The buckets leak and end up in the wrong order. I always found it more helpful to go with the flow and see where it takes me, but that doesn’t often align with the demands of real life. Teachers want essays (sometimes by the end of the period). Parents want grades. Bosses want results. All demand obedience.

I’ve got more than a drop of the 'tism, combined with the intermittently squirting faucet of severe anxiety and dank sludge of executive dysfunction going back to childhood. And in hindsight it feels like the gifted label I earned before things got truly awful was just a dunk tank where teachers and parents got to take free shots because they couldn’t see unreliable bucket brigade or smell the sludge. “Not working up to his potential.” “Lazy.” The standard 80’s fare for bright AuDHD kids that weren’t disruptive (or had stimming etc. behaviors shamed out of them.)

I managed to doggy-paddle my way upstream - undiagnosed, unmedicated, exhausted. To outsiders, it’s like I wasn’t even moving. Just splashing around. The constant negative reinforcement begat dreary, drizzly depression. Soggy muck everywhere. At first there were breaks of daylight, but those became less and less frequent in favor of more damp, more gray.

And then I got my head held under by the real world. Every breath I was able to snatch came with conditions - just go back to the retail job for a bit after getting laid off, just get through Christmas, just get a real job, just get a promotion, just get a better job, just get a raise, just get a house and finally stop sharing thin walls, fighting the overwhelm and the sludge through all of it and losing more and more of myself. Each snatched breath carried the empty hope that the next breath would be the one to let me keep my head above water. It never happened. I just kept getting dashed against the rocks, the incessant thought streams and occasional flash flood of insight meaning nothing against the might of the sea.

Yet still I adapted. I discovered the sensory deprivation tank of dissociation. The hyperfocues and special interests that once provided warmth and light in calmer tides were now but a featureless bog. No longer drowning, but every movement risked losing something else. A shoe, keys, a prized memory - the bog would take it all. The incessant stream became more of a trickle, much of it passive. But it didn’t stop, even if I did. And in the still bog below me I could see reflections of the current trickle. And just to the right, reflections of past streams. Each mirror-like pool showed the reflection of a different stream. Past failures. Regrets for things not done. Injustices unpunished. Mistakes I could never undo. I got lost in some of them. Relived pain. Fantasized about taking different branches in the stream. Had impeccably articulate arguments with antagonists that in real life would have left me floundering for words. And the more I tried interacting with the reflections, the more I realized the ponds weren’t quite motionless. There were tiny ripples. And those ripples influenced the reeds, which influenced other pools. In places, the cumulative ripples produced an interference pattern. In this joyless bog where I hid from the world, from myself, unmoving lest the sense of false safety be betrayed, I was seeing tiny crests and troughs modifying countless others in myriad Fourier dances and creating a new stream. No, not new. Just previously undiscovered. One that was there all along, exerting unseen influence. It made me question, well, everything. Myself. My upbringing. My place in the world. The world itself. My beliefs. There was no flash flood of insight. Just a steady drip of reevaluation.

And then it started to rain. At first it was the familiar dreary rain. Then it was the spray from a geothermal geyser that was way too close for comfort. Hot, abrasive. Anger. I couldn’t stop the geyser. Couldn’t fight it. I could walk away, but I quickly found many more geysers.

Through all of this, the sludge and unreliably squirting faucet kept picking away pieces of me. Until one day a literal tempest hit and laid me bare. It was all I could do to tread water. I managed to find a life preserver, but it’s slowly deflating as the riot police hook up the firehose with detached indifference.

I’d apologize for the extended metaphors, but once I got my feet wet I couldn’t help but dive in.

Oh let me flow into the ocean
Yeah let me get back to the sea
Let me be stormy and let me calm
Let the tide in, and set me free

• Pete Townshend

My spouse’s father was a train guy. When he passed, she inherited a dozen or so photo albums of just trains. Very “normal” hobby.

I’m not sure about my dad. He was an anti-intellectual functioning alcoholic. But I’m pretty sure my grandfather was autistic. His special interest was in historical military equipment, which is “normal” so he got a pass.

Both of these people fell in love, had kids, paid taxes, hell, probably even played baseball. You know, all those things Secretary Brainworm said would never happen.

And have you ever seen a hurricane? Not on TV. Not on “satellite images” (which are just more made up computer pictures). I mean with your own eyes.

Indeed I have.

Hurricanes, nor’easters, the occasional derecho… a few tornados have been too close for comfort but nothing I could see. Have heard the freight train sound though.

Personally I blame those weird domes made of triangles. They’re definitely causing the weather. cocks shotgun

No, it’s not. No matter how much effort you put in, it will never be enough. The world is only satisfied when we’re dead, preferably of natural causes after wringing us dry of “productivity.”

The ship is far from sinking, and not recognizing that we’re stuck with Trump until he dies is wishful thinking.

I’m not a huge fan of the Warriors format, but I had a good enough time with AoC. Some of the cut scenes gave me chills. I’m a little fuzzy about the DLC. I got it, and enjoyed it (don’t think I finished all of it), but I’m not sure I’d call it crucial. It’s just more game. It’s gone on sale a handful of times for the patient gamers out there. I’d wait until you’re done with the core game before trying to decide. If you’re still flowing, go for it. If you’ve had enough, let it be.

Been kinda wanting to pick it back up since Age of Imprisonment was revealed.

It’s a primary, vot for something, you’ll never have to hold your nose in a primary.

It’s a nice notion and all, but in far too many locations, people have to vote strategically even in the primary. Very specific example: my state has a gubernatorial election coming up this year. Red and blue primaries are loaded. One of the blue candidates is a lapdog for the state mob boss power broker. Another blue candidate is a sleazeball with money to have been running conservative talking point ads for the past two months. The rest of the field is a mix of middle of the road types and various levels of progressive. At least some of them are there to split the vote, which is historically what the mob boss power broker has done to protect his people (like, say, his little brother) from getting primaried once entrenched. Whoever survives the primary is likely going to do so with only ~30-40% of the vote. If I vote by platform, it’s effectively tossing my vote away. The only chance at avoiding the sleazeball or lap dog is everyone unifying behind some other (likely) moderate. Failing that, the governor’s race is going to mirror the presidential, with someone at best unlikable vs whatever the conservative grift machine turns out.

And in other more local races, the primary is the election. Shit is that deeply embedded here. Being in a solid blue district has its upshots. Fair and open primaries aren’t one of them.

I love the fact that the channel evolved from dunking on the uninformed public to full blown documentaries.

Stay back, everyone! You might catch the woke mind virus!

Hard relate to 1. But I actually have some relevant info for 3:

https://youtu.be/rStL7niR7gs

You’ll still get coup’d, but at least you’ll have a better understanding of why.

To be fair, about 8 LA remakes would fit inside the original LA cartridge.

headphones with music (at a reasonable volume!) to dampen other sounds in the case of sound sensitivity, sunglasses in case of light sensitivity, etc.

Any suggestions for smell (that don’t involve holding one’s nose permanently and sounding like a muppet)? Because I spent over half my life in an environment teeming with cigarettes stale and fresh, and ever since I got out of that environment the faintest of fragrances are irritating and the strongest are repulsive. I’ve spent the past 15 years being incredulous that I’m either the only one that smells Whatever That Smell Is, or convinced I’m having olfactory hallucinations.

It’s still a struggle and it’s also cost me a significant amount of my ability to enjoy my free time (have to severely limit my investment in anything not work related so I don’t accidentally get consumed by it and lapse at work)

This path leads to burnout. I have no practical advice since we are kind of required to put work first in order to survive. But the fact that it’s socially acceptable to call this “living” makes me sick to my stomach.