fart in a mitten
n.— «I could not bear to cut any of this out, you did a helluva good job and because the whole god damned thing started over a fart in a mitten made by me I can truthfully confirm that you have the meat of the situation down exactly.» —“Re: Harassment training (was Expres Test)” by Gord Beaman in Prince Edward Island, Canada Usenet:can.community.military July 18, 2000. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Jill from Greenville, South Carolina, wants to know why pickle automatically means “pickled cucumber,” as opposed to other pickled vegetables, such as onions and carrots. The answer has to do with prototypicality, the cultural agreement that one...
Novelist Charles Dickens and the musician Prince were very different types of artists, but they also had a lot in common. A new book chronicling their extraordinary careers becomes a larger meditation on perfectionism and creativity itself. Plus...