blow a stack

Anger. The building pressure of intense and focused anger finally overcomes the best efforts of containment, repression, and self-control. Rage. The inevitable and imminent eruption of loosed anger is foreshadowed by purpling of the face, flaring of the nostrils, arteries bulging in the neck, and eyeballs popping out of the head. These symptoms indicate that someone is about blow a stack. It's what happened when a student shit in Mr. Sparaco's desk drawer (7th grade). It's best to leave immediately if one is on the business end of a blown stack, otherwise very entertaining to watch. Origin from the steam engine era, when a mistakenly capped chimney stack would finally rupture from pressure in the furnace.

Doug placed thumbtacks on the substitute teacher's chair, causing him to blow a stack when he sat down on them. I heard it from across the hallway!

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blow one's stack

explode with rage, have a fit

One of the few times the normally cool Rice blew her stack during the first term...

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blow my stack

A rage induced orgasm

After having the items in his room moved around, jon said, "I'm gonna blow my stack."

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Push-down, Blow-out Stack

A FIFO (First-In, First-Out) stack in computing is also known as a Push-down, Pull-out stack - records or events or items are pushed down at the top and pulled out at the bottom. A LIFO (Last-In, First-Out) is also known as a Push-down, Pop-out stack - records are pushed down from the top and pulled out from the top.

You can imagine a FIBO or Push-down, Blow-out stack where you keep pushing events or to-do items (or emails) down at the top until the pressure reaches a certain point at which time the bottom of the stack ruptures and all the items in the queue blow out the bottom and scatter all over the floor.

For some folks, their email inbox is a Push-down, Blow-out stack where any emails that get pushed down below the fold (bottom edge of the screen) essentially disappear from their reality and might as well have blown out all over the floor.

My To-Do list is a Push-down, Blow-out stack which has reached critical mass and exploded; it's blissfully reassuring now that I have nothing in my To-Do list!

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