It's Overloading the Machine as in, the washing machine, primarily. The name comes from the laundromat next door. They have very large signs on each machine which say, in all-caps, "DO NOT OVERLOAD THE MACHINE". All in all, there are at least twenty of these signs posted.
Both at the laundromat and at home, I regularly overload the machine, leading to unpredictable results.
A morgue is a morgue is a morgue. They can paint the walls with aggressively
cheerful primary colors and splashy bold graphics, but it's still a holding
place for the dead until they can be parted out to organ banks. Not that I
would have cared normally but my viewpoint was skewed. The relentless
pleasance of the room I sat in seemed only grotesque.
-- Pat Cadigan, "Mindplayers"
This page was last modified on 2011 December 20.