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Someone once asked me where the phrase "mad as a box of frogs" has its origin. My reply was as follows:
My frog-box understanding (Froschkastenanschauung) is necessarily limited by my having never seen a box of frogs. However, I shall endeavour to answer as accurately as possible.
Frog-box madness (Froschkastentobsucht) and its attacks, or "fits" (Froschkastentobsuchtanfile) were first observed by some dry, sober Bavarian explorers, deep in the heart of the Amazon. As you know, some of the world's most spectacularly poisonous tree-frogs live there, arrayed in bright orange shades to indicate to all passers by what they, the frogs, will do for your head if you eat them. The intrepid, yet still clean-shaven and impeccably hygienic explorers carefully gathered, catalogued and classified some dozens of frogs in a specially compartmentalized frog-box (the Froschkasten itself). After a long day's exploration, with only a short delay occasioned by the need of one of the expedition's leaders to iron his second shirt, they made a camp in a tree.
The tree-frog toxins were starting to interfere, however—several different species were in very close confinement in the Froschkasten. Moreover, the explorers had decided to celebrate the success of their expedition by opening a case of beer, and had already consumed a dozen bottles and sung several traditional glees in beautiful four-part harmony. The expedition leader was just beginning his party piece, an aria from Der Rheingold, when the Froschkasten began leaping about in an alarming manner and emitting strange squawking noises.
Two of the members of the expedition attempted to stop it, but one was tragically subjected to some of the frog venom leaking from the box and immediately started to experience vivid hallucinations. "It was as though," he later said in an interview with a London newspaper, "I myself the spirit of the box of frogs on took, and to the behaviour of the box of frogs, my own behaviour began to resemble." He started leaping about and squawking, just like the box, causing one of his colleagues to remark, "Er ist tobend sowie der Froschkasten" ("He's as mad as the box of frogs"), and the rest, as they say, is history, linguistics, poorly-dubbed dialogue, and my imagination.
How can a girl be draped? This suggests that girls are like curtains, but curtains are large rectangular inert objects, of widely varying sizes, made of interlocking dry fibres and girls are freestanding bipedal self-propelling systems filled largely with fluid and with flexible armatures, with a very small range of sizes and with the capability to make other girls (or boys), a capability in no way possessed by curtains.
It must be Monday.