When I was but a lad, I learned the phrase "raising skinny elephants is utterly boring." At my first job where I had a messenger (and thus could set a status message), I set this to display.

I was chastised because the leadership didn't know what it meant, but thought it might be offensive. I don't know whom they thought I might offend; one of the many skinny elephants on the team?

I was too nervous to set it again for several subsequent jobs, but eventually I got in a pretty technical one and displayed the message there. Not only did no one express offense, but I actually taught it to someone who put it to use when a mission critical server died.

Even if the sysrq key is disabled, most systems automatically invoke the oom killer. If your work is super important, just let your system sit for a day or two the problem may resolve itself.

If you don't get any logs about why it locked up I recommend enabling kernel message logging to disk.