Sideswipe: June 26: Knit one, Trump one...

Making America sane again!

"One of our dear politicians told us women to stick to our knitting so as a law-abiding citizen I did," writes Marian from Orewa. "I knitted 10 of these, during lockdown, sold them for $10 each and made $100 for the local food bank. Last year I did about 30 as a fundraiser and gave them only the sign with different slogans every time. They sold like hot cakes, but this year I felt I needed to add the bottle of "sane-itiser"…"

Hitting the fan

From a devastating pandemic, to a grim economic future for many millions, it certainly appears that, in the words of that popular idiom, "s*** has hit the fan." This expression alludes to the unmissable effects of s*** being thrown into an electric fan. It appears to have originated in the 1930s, and may have come from Canadian military slang. There are several WWII-era citations which have variants of the phrase. The more polite forms involve eggs, pie, soup and 'stuff' hitting the fan. Another suggestion is that the idiom is descended from "an old joke": A man in a crowded bar needed to defecate but couldn't find a bathroom, so he went upstairs and used a hole in the floor. Returning, he found everyone had gone except the bartender, who was cowering behind the bar. When the man asked what had happened, the bartender replied, "Where were you when the s*** hit the fan?"

Around the world…

1. The UK's All-party Parliamentary Dog Advisory Welfare Group is better known as APDAWG.
2. If you take a picture of your food in Germany, the chef legally owns the rights to the photo as it's considered their artwork.
3. All schools in Russia are being equipped with facial recognition cameras. The facial recognition platform's brand name is Orwell.

Entitled parking

A twist on double parking.

Family words

1. Among the many unconscious mispronunciations used by the now-adult members of our family, we consciously use the words gidar (guitar) and rissiles (meat patties or rissoles) coined by our son aged 8.

2. My  brother used to call scrambled eggs - strangled eggs - and that has stuck to this day.

3. My youngest daughter, as a child, always used to call the leader of our country "The Fried Minister".

4. Ok you got me. My now 18 year old son when he was little referred to pins and needles as noodles and poodles, and yes it has stuck.

5. My daughter when young would call strawberries, storyberries.

At about 4 our son called a bbq a sausage party. We still call it this 30 years later!