The Dark Side (The Frog)

Not-toad








Feels he is being constantly propositioned by: not-toads




Have you ever been solicited for sex by an amphibian? Don't be shy. You have, you know, you're just unaware of the fact. Let me explain. Jean-Pierre Brisset was a nineteenth-century French savant who believed humanity was descended not from (ha!) the handiwork of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or (ha!) monkeys, but frogs. Frogs are also speakers of an ur-language from which all later human speech derives, and most of which is taken up with demands for sexual gratification, apparently. As John Sturrock explains:

The frog, is, at a guess, the one creature whose characteristic call is spelt out in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after the form found for it by Aristophanes' ancient Greek frogs: in the ODQ's transliteration, "brekekekex coax, coax". Brisset's nineteenth-century French frogs went, more curtly, "coa, coa" -- "coasser" is the standard French verb meaning "to croak". This gurgled monotone would have struck all but a rarely attuned listener as thin evidence on which to conclude that frogs were the earliest language-users. Brisset, however, was rarely attuned, so taken up with the acoustic aspect of language that he accorded it an all-embracing precedence over the semantic. What he heard the frogs coming out with was not the meaningless - to a human ear -"coa", but the common interrogative pronoun, quoi? In his own charming account: "Un jour que nous observions ces jolies petites bêtes, en répetant nous-même ce cri: coac, l'une d'elles nous répondit, les yeux interrogateurs et brillants, par deux ou trois fois: Coac. II nous était clair qu'elle disait: quoi que tu dis?" [One day when we were observing these pretty little beasts, repeating to ourselves the cry 'coac', one of them answered us, with shining and inquisitive eyes, two or three times: coac. It was clear to us that it was asking: what are {quoi que} you saying?] The fact that frogs turned out to speak what was easily recognizable as French seems at no point to have fazed Brisset, and since the original human language has willy-nilly to be universal, all other known languages must be capable of being derived from French, which was pleasing news for a Frenchman. Coa/quoi can serve as Brisset's founding homophone or paronym, on which his extraordinary theory of language was to be erected. This theory was paronymic to a maniacal degree. There were seemingly no French words or phrases into which he couldn't, by tweaking the syntax if need be and as it were respelling them, read the new meanings that he required, in his construction of a historical anthropology all his own. If you had Brisset's ear for picking up double entendres, it was relatively simple to trace the primordial passage out of the batrachian and into the human condition, when the evidence for it was glaringly apparent in the word-forms of spoken French. It had struck him about frogs that there is no telling by looking at them what gender they are, from which he concluded that as they began to evolve - and what more logical than that a creature which had already changed from a sperm-like tadpole should change again, into a human being? - they were intrigued by the appearance on their bodies of a burgeoning sexual organ. What more natural again than that they should greet it with the words: "Je ne sais ce que c'est" [I don't know what that is], or verb sap, "Jeune sexe est" [It's a nascent sex organ]. Thus equipped, with sexual organs and the words to go with them, they were off down the path of verbal creation, whose direction for the by all accounts celibate Brisset was invariably settled by the urgings of the ancestral frog-man's libido: "Je sais que c'est bien. Je ou jeu sexe est bien. Le premier jeu était le sexe. De là vient la passion du jeu. Le prudent cachait son jeu. Le pronom je désigne ainsi le sexe et quand je parle, c'est un sexe, un membre viril de l'Eternel Dieu qui agit par sa volonté ou sa permission" [I know it's good. 'I', or the sexual game is good. The first game was sex. Thence comes the passion for the game. The prudent player conceals the game. The pronoun 'I' designated sex and when I speak, it's a sexual organ, the virile member of God Almighty which acts by his will and his say-so.]

[End quotation]

And now some sample Brisset potty-mouth frog-speak:

Eh? Sais que? èque-çe? çe-a? Qu'est-ce que c'est que ça?
sexe, sexe, sexe...ai? ai? ai? ...eh! eh! eh! ...ai que? ai que? ai que? ... eque, eque, eque... ec, ec, ec...ai que ce? ai que ce? ai que ce? ...
sais que ce? sais que ce? sais que ce? ... exe, sais que ce? exe, sais que ce? exe, sais que ce? ... ce éque ce, ce éque ce, ce éque ce... ce éque ce, ce ex, ce éque ce, ce ex...(sexe, sexe, sexe...) ce éque ce, ce ex est, ce éque ce, ce ex est... (sexe est, sexe est, sexe est...) ce exe est, ce exe est, ce exe est... exe est, exe est, exe est... sexe est, sexe est, sexe est...ce ex est, ce ex est, ce ex est... ce exe, sais que ce? ce exe sais que c'est? ... Excès!
Excès, excès, excès... ce excès sais que... ce ex est excès... ce exe est excès! C'EST LE SEXE!
sexe, sexe, sexe... je ne sais que c'est... jeune sexe est... je ne sais... jeune ce ai... tu sais que c'est bien! TU SEXE EST BIEN!
Oh! Cache ton tu, ton tutu... tu relues tutu, tu relues tutu, tu reluques ton sexe! Je me exe a mine ai.Tu te exe a mine as. Y le sexe à mine a.Il s'examinait. Sexe à mine ai. Son examen. Son exe à main. Son sexe à la main.
Que ce à? Que ce à? Que ce à? ... C'est que ce à? C'est que ce à? C'est que ce à? ... Que aie ce que c'est que ce à? ... Exe est que ce à? ... Que exe est que ça? Que excès que ça? ... Qu'ai que sexe a? Qu'ai que sexe a? ... Que exe ai que ca? Que exe ai que ca? ... Qu'est-ce que c'est que ça? ...
Kékséksa. Kékséksa. Kékséksa. ...C'est le SEXE!!

Eh? Know what? this thing? this? What is that?
Sex, sex, sex...Have, have, have...Eh! Eh! Eh! ...Have that, have that, have that...It, it, it...Uh, uh, uh...Have that thing? have that thing? have that thing? ...
Know what it? Know what it? know what it?...ex*, know what it? ex, know what it? ex, know what it? ... [* "ex" = protuberance!]this thing? this thing? this thing?...this thing, this ex, this thing, this ex ....(sex, sex, sex) ...this thing, this ex is, this thing, this ex is ...(sex is, sex is, sex is...)this ex is, this ex is, this ex is ...ex is, ex is, ex is ...sex is, sex is, sex is ... this ex is, this ex is, this ex is ... this ex know what it? this ex know what it is? ... EXCESS!
Excess, excess, excess ... this ex know what... this ex is excess... this ex is excess! IT IS SEX!
Sex, sex, sex ...I don't know what it is... it's a young sex... I don't know, I don't know, I don't know...have this young, have this young... you know that it's good! Sex, you are good!
Oh!Hide your willie! your willie! your wee-willie! your wee-willie! You expose your willie, you expose your williewee-willie-wee, wee-willie-wee you're gaping at your SEX!
I've got my ex in hand. You've got your ex in hand. The ex is in hand. The sex is in hand. Sex in hand. He examines himself. Sex in hand. His examination. His ex in hand. His sex in his hand.
What's this have? What's this have? What's this have? ... It's that this have? It's that this have? It's that this have? ... What has this that is that which has? ... Is it ex? ...What ex is that? What excess is that? ...What does sex have? What does sex have? ... What does ex have? What does ex have? .... What is that? What is that? ... Kékséksa? It is SEX!!

[End quotation]



The Budweiser frogs: had what in their hands?!




After this brief and possibly disastrous flirtation with frogs, we now pledge ourselves afresh to our first love, the toad. As long as we can get our trousers clean in time. Frogspawn is such a persistent stain.