Before the Storm

Planet Tokyo BORDER - GREEN - LEFT Testing out the codes for borders. Think green is my favourite.  So pretty.  Dots aren't practical, but they're pretty, too. Sargasso Sea middle of the North Atlantic Ocean only sea on Earth which has no coastline water with brown Sargassum seaweed and calm blue water different from the rest of the Atlantic Ocean all the currents deposit the marine plants and refuse into this sea but water of Sargasso Sea is distinctive for its deep blue color and exceptional clarity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sargasso_Sea Ocean gyre 5 major ocean gyres: Pacific Ocean   - north & south Atlantic Ocean - north & south Indian Ocean large system of rotating ocean currents exp. involved with large wind movements gyre can be used to refer to any type of vortex in the air or the sea even one that is man-made https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_gyre HMS Queen Mary Queen Mary THE BLOWING UP OF THE QUEEN MARY which was the cruiser Indefatigable. A black column of smoke shot upward 400 feet, hiding the ship, and when it cleared away a little later the ship had disappeared. Out of her 900 officers and men, only two survived. At 4.18, when the third ship in the German line was seen to be on fire, another misfortune befell the British squadron, the battle-cruiser Queen Mary being vitally hit, and, with a terrific explosion which appeared to blow her hull asunder, she disappeared. She had at least 1,000 people aboard, and only about a score were saved. source HMS Queen Mary 1904, Admiral John "Jackie" Fisher became First Sea Lord at the behest of King Edward VII. Tasked with reducing expenditures and modernizing the Royal Navy, he also began advocating for "all big gun" battleships. ... vision that battlecruisers would conduct reconnaissance, support the battle fleet, protect commerce, and pursue a defeated enemy. Over the next eight years, several battlecruisers were constructed by both the Royal Navy and the German Kaiserliche Marine. Ordered as part of the 1910–11 Naval Program along with four King George V-class battleships, HMS Queen Mary was to be the sole ship of its class. Laid down on March 6, 1911 at Palmer Shipbuilding and Iron Company in Jarrow, the new battlecruiser was named for King George V's wife, Mary of Teck. Work progressed over the next year and Queen Mary slid down the ways on March 20, 1912 ... HMS Queen Mary | Loss at Jutland Steaming in advance of Admiral Sir John Jellicoe's Grand Fleet, Beatty's battlecruisers, supported by the battleships of the 5th Battle Squadron, collided with Vice Admiral Franz Hipper's battlecruisers in the opening phases of the Battle of Jutland. Engaging at 3:48 PM on May 31, the German fire proved accurate from the outset. At 3:50 PM, Queen Mary opened fire on SMS Seydlitz with its forward turrets. As Beatty closed the range, Queen Mary scored two hits on its opponent and disabled one of Seydlitz's aft turrets. Around 4:15, HMS Lion came under intense fire from Hipper's ships. The smoke from this obscured HMS Princess Royal forcing SMS Derfflinger to shift its fire to Queen Mary. As this new enemy engaged, the British ship continued to trade hits with Seydlitz. At 4:26 PM, a shell from Derfflinger struck Queen Mary detonating one or both of its forward magazines. The resulting explosion broke the battlecruiser in half near its foremast. A second shell from Derfflinger may have hit further aft. As the after part of the ship began to roll, it was rocked by large explosion before sinking. Of Queen Mary's crew, 1,266 were lost while only twenty were rescued. Though Jutland resulted in a strategic victory for the British, it saw two battlecruisers, HMS Indefatigable and Queen Mary, lost with nearly all hands. An investigation into the losses led to changes in ammunition handling aboard British ships as the report showed that cordite handling practices may have contributed to the loss of the two battlecruisers. source http://militaryhistory.about.com/od/shipprofiles/p/World-War-I-Hms-Queen-Mary.htm Maybe I should change the name of this blog to:  'Welcome To My Nervous Breakdown', or something like that.  Feel like I'm about to flip out. If I'm having a nervous breakdown, I wish it would hurry up and come, and release me at last.  It's amazing the excruciating levels of distress is possible to experience, without ever going over the edge (whatever the edge might be). Experiencing the most horrible feeling of being totally emotionally flooded and what I guess is physiologically, hijacked, rattled or shaken (so this is a full-body affair), after a freak-out about some things that have come up in my 'real world' (versus my preferred 'virtual' escape space, where I wish I could immerse myself forever, without any interruption whatsoever to my 'autism'). Everything feels an impossible lose/lose choice (to me), and I can't get my act together ... so it's a vicious circle with no resolution or escape. Half-assed reading about the dramas at Tor Project regarding the fall-out from the allegations against a developer, but I'm finding it hard to follow anything I read, let alone fully understand the drawn out drama that has now led to various people quitting.  Seems like the crew at neurotic Tor Project is having a 'nervous breakdown', as well — or, at least, a break-up.  LOL Reading an article in some German publication the other day had me thinking:  OMG, is this what stands between us tech-stupid plebs and the totalitarian surveillance state?   It's not at all reassuring. It must suck being a techie if you're normal, rather than a member of the 'progressive' liberal left indoctrinated, self-absorbed, ecky dropping, drama-loving, dysfunctional sounding, international techie set.  But who am I to judge?  I'm losing my mind here.  LOL TV's on and I'm hating the noise and the 'canned' aspect of it.  It brings back terrible memories of watching commercial TV, which I haven't done in years.  I've acquired an aversion to even the sounds that commercial TV emits.  There's nothing I can look at or hear on commercial TV (and commercial media pretty much) that doesn't piss me off.  It's nice and windy.  I like it windy.  I think I'd be happy living somewhere windy, stormy and enveloped in permanent darkness — a night-time that never ends.  A lifetime of night-time sounds ideal ... as long as I could be left alone to enjoy the embrace of extended darkness.  I was supposed to cook, but I can't manage.  I feel sick and shaky.   If I calm down to any extent soon-ish, I'll have to try to stir-fry prawns (so I don't have to throw them out).  Pizza's been ordered but I can't bring myself to eat pizza:  the toppings are revolting.  Sometimes even the base is horrible tasting, so I won't be pulling off toppings and eating crust (like I do sometimes). Focusing on writing any old crap, right now, is sort of calming.   Hoping I'll calm down enough just to lose myself in sleep.  Sleep is good for the duration of the sleep. I think I rarely dream now.  Sleep is just an uninterrupted absence, without any features.  The worst part of sleep is pre-sleep, lying  there feeling like you're bobbing up and down on a sinking ship, about to drown.  I'm guessing maybe a person is most vulnerable just before going to sleep?  Don't know.  It's probably just an anxiety feeling that I'm finding hard to control.  It sucks being me, probably more than it sucks being a liberal ecky-dropper.  LOL ... I'm so uptight.