Pick out your brick. Your good intentions will fly with it. 
@bodhipaksa π
Took me a sec, but I got there.
Oddly, it didn't look like AI slop when I took the photograph on Daniel St in Portsmouth NH, yesterday afternoon at 2:05 PM. It looked kind of ... real?
@bodhipaksa @_the_cloud Nah. That's AI. You don't fool me. π

My late mother-in-law who was born in 1920 in NYC always said it "going to hell in a handcart" which does make more sense to me, so there are regional variations.
@cassandracorvid I've heard both, and that version makes more sense to me as well.
I tracked down the earliest known usage of the expression a few years ago, but I can't find where I saved the reference. There's been debate about whether it was a US or UK usage originally. The usage I found was British.