As iI was reading the paper today, several phrases struck me, so you're going to see several questions of this sort. And yes, I know I could look them up, but then the fun wouldn't be shared.

Here's the first one:

When plans blow up in your face, why do we that that things are going haywire?

Hey! I actually looked this up! The Word Detective says this:

The term "haywire" used in a figurative sense originally meant "poorly equipped or makeshift" and apparently first appeared in the logging camps of 19th century New England. Much of the heavy work in such camps was done by horses, and where you have horses, you have hay (or you have very hungry horses). It didn't take resourceful loggers long to realize that the wire with which the hay was baled could also be used for simple repairs to machinery and the like. But while clever use of haywire as a stopgap measure was admired in moderation, a camp that habitually relied on equipment held together in this makeshift fashion came to be known among loggers as a "haywire outfit," a poorly-equipped, inefficient operation.

By the early 20th century, this sense of "haywire" had come to be applied to just about any sort of business or operation that was poorly organized, slipshod or not working up to snuff. With the growth of technology the propensity of machinery, from automobiles to radios, to suddenly malfunction or cease working entirely led to the expansion of "haywire" to mean "to get mixed up, malfunction or become hopelessly confused" by about 1929. And since machinery isn't the only thing that can have a bad day, "haywire" was also soon applied to people who became mentally unbalanced.

Lastly, the propensity of haywire to, as you note, "spring everywhere" and become tangled when a hay bale is cut open almost certainly contributed to the modern use of "haywire" to mean "confused or malfunctioning."