USAGE: idioms with variable objects (was: deeply embedded VSOnightmare)

John Cowan wrote:
> I think that Russian has an idiom of the form "The devil's grandmother
> knows X", where X is an event, and meaning that X is obscure,
> incomprehensible, or generally f****-ed up.
"God knows ___" ("The Lord knows", "Who knows" being variants) in
English, e.g., "Who knows how he came up with *that* idea."  I'm never
sure whether to write a question mark or a period with that idiom.  The
"who" makes me want to put a question mark, and yet, it's not spoken in
a question intonation.  Most people I've seen write it with a period (if
they use punctuation at all, of course)

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