The Uncertain Glossary of TEP

Angst

1.n. A feeling of anxiety, especially that your life and that of everyone else sucks and that you can't do anything about it. Commonly found at TEP under trash cans, behind doors, and often out in the open.

The SI unit of Angst is the Stovall.

Angst Wall

1.n. A section of wall at TEP on the second floor on which it is socially acceptable to record feelings of angst. The Angst Wall was started by drooling alumnus Julio Freedman, who lived in Room 24 adjacent to the Angst Wall, and created it by writing ANGST in four-foot high letters with colored chalk. While this raised the angst of anal-retentive brothers who did not approve of defacing the pristine walls of TEP, it brought much relief to others and has therefore been continued to the present day. When the angst gets too extreme or dense, the wall is repainted.

Recently, tepeological studies have begun to search for the Original Angst by peeling away the many layers of paint. The material removed is Concentrated Angst and must be handled with extreme care.

Banister of Blasphemy, The

1.n.. You'll have to come over and find this one for yourself.

Blooter

1. adj. Incredibly huge. 2. n. (rare) A person matching said physical characteristics. 3. n. (most common usage today) The 16 oz coffees sold by the SCC 24 Hour Coffeehouse. These were named by Bo, a TEP who worked a lot of shifts at the time that the new cups were introduced.

Bouncer

1. n. a 12 oz, polycarbonate beverage mug made by the Rubbermaid company, as shown in the picture. 2.n. The beverage container more sky divers choose, as it can survive the drop from the top of the Green Building. 3. n. TEP's standard unit of volumetric measurement.

Coffee Hour

A fine TEP social tradition. On Sunday, we come down in bathrobes to the front room, partake in delicious donuts and bagels, drink coffee, and fight over the comics.

Crock Opera

1. n. A musical comedy put on every year by the Drooling Alums of TEP. It is performed at TEP on the Sunday night of Rush Week.

Druler

1. n. An old, decrepit, drooling TEP. Usually graduated. Likes to say things like "when I was a freshman" and "did you say...tuition?"

Eit!

1. int. An exclamation of a Bad Thing. 2. v. To knock an object out of a person's hands, to cause a Bad Thing to happen; often followed by the exclamation, "Eit!" For more information, see the Eit Page.

Felch

1. v. An act of love.

Fire Extinguisher Pudding

1. n. Place instant pudding and water in a fire extinguisher. Shake. Spray. Run away fast.

Flame Pits

1. n. Unlike most of the Internet, flaming at TEP does not necessarily mean verbally biting someone's head off. Flame Pits consist of people who are pretending not to punt, by ranting about some topic that they know little about, and have even less power to change.

Foam Room

1. n. A great place to escape to. 2. A great place to use the phone. 3. A great place to be buried alive in foam chunks.

Fust

1. n.Nasty stuff you find in your belly button, under the bed, in the corners of the shower, etc.

Gleet

1. n. The food of the gods.

Grape Söder

1. n. The official beverage product of Tau Epsilon Phi. Servered in a frosty Bouncer or straight from the can. Grape Söder has been used in the ancient velkomin' dülr froshinperzons ritual since time immemorial:

Welcome to TEP, where we like to schlep Grape Söder!
Welcome to TEP, it's frosty and wet, and it's caffeine free!

Other uses of Grape Söder include:

• Replacement for sulfuric acid in car batteries.
• Antimicrobial solution for open sores and wounds.
• Head and body delousing shampoo.
• All-purpose oven cleaner.
• Pressurized nuclear reactor cooling fluid.
• Alumni.

Gruesz

1. name . Carl Gruesz, an alumnus of Xi Chapter. 2. v. To scavange useful stuff that others have thrown away from the alleys of the Back Bay or corridors of MIT. Named after Carl, the Master Grueszer. Homophony between "Gruesz" and "re-use" is apparently coincidental.

Hanging Couch

1. n. Duh. Ya gotta seeit, tho.

Honig

1. exlc.A greeting, often as an identifier in a large crowd. 2. prop. n.A former brother and famous Objectivist, David Andrew Honig, although looked upon as antisocial, has become the mascot of TEP.

Hot Cocoa

1. n. A soothing beverage made from hot, fresh milk, real chocolate cocoa powder, and a buttload of sugar. 2. n. One of TEP's oldest social institutions; at midnight on the first Tooling day of the week (nominally a Monday), TEP hosts Hot Cocoa. Many of our friends from Cambridge perambulate across the Charles (or take SafeRide) to eat sugary stuff, imbibe the chocolate nectar, and hang out. A good time to play Ridiculo-Ball and other silly games.

Musical Stairwell, The

1. n. Found between the second and third floors of TEP on the back stairwell, the musical stairwell uses infrared triggers to sense footfall and plays a cheesy synthesizer. Songs can be played on the stairwell by those with skill and long legs.

Peldge

1. n. A new replacement word for pledge, apparently self-ascribed.

Pickles

1. n. An indication of veracity added after any sentence. Its use began when TEP Alum Chris "Swifty" Hohmann so frequently imparted the world with his creative reinterpretations of reality that his brothers began to doubt that at any time he was telling the truth. Andrea Born Benco evetually found out from Swifty that a Swifty-statement could be tested with the one-word question--"Pickles?" the reply to which would also be pickles if he was indeed telling the truth.

The use of this word has caught on with other Teps. However, its usability depends on a continued respect for the eternal sanctity of the word pickles.

A few words on the subject from the Prince of pickles himself:

I am glad to see that "pickles" is still alive and well.  Who says there are
no absolute truths in the world. The wonderful thing about pickles is that
its strength lies in empirical proof. The more you use it, the stronger
people's faith in it becomes.  A useful tool for both the seeker of truth and
those that shall we say have a propensity to misinterpret the truth.  My one
word of advise is to use it and use it wisely. You only get one swing at bat.
If you misuse pickles, its powers are null and void forever more.

Here's something to think about. What if everybody abidded by the law of
pickles. Think about it. We wouldn't need juries. The O.J. Simpson Trial
would have been over a year ago.

"Mr. Simpson, did you kill your ex-wife and Ron Goldman?"
"No"
"Pickles?"
"Alright, you got me, I killed them."
Case Closed.

Sound pretty peachy to me. :)
-Swifty

PowerBall

Similar to Ridiculo-Ball (q.v.) but more violent and difficult. It uses the same cheap Star Market type ball as Ridiculo-Ball.

The rules are as follows:

• The Server takes the ball and hits it up with his or her knee. A valid serve is one which hits the ceiling of the Front Room.
• The Receiver allows the ball to bounce off of the floor, and then whacks the stuffing out of it down into the carpet. A valid return goes down into the carpet, then up and touches the ceiling, then back down to the floor (this part is not hard) where the other player must continue the volley.
• If the Reciever ever fails to return a volley, the Server gains a point. If the Server fails to return a volley, the serve passes to the other player.
• There are no out of bounds. Play off of walls, windows, pianos, and furniture is encouraged.
• Play continues until one player acquires 22 points, or dies of exhaustion. In this case the surviving player wins. Both doubles and tag team play are allowed.

Punt

1. v. To kick a football. 2. v. To blow off one's required tooling. In general use Institvte-wide.

RHI

1. TLA. Raging Hormonal Imbalance (RHI) is a devastating disease which strikes down men and women in the prime of their youth. Symptoms of RHI first appear at the onset of puberty, and can last for years or even decades in especially hopeless cases. Learn to spot the telltale signature of RHI:

• Unreasonable levels of angst at all times--even during vacations--which are compounded in the presence of happy couples.
• Fits of screaming or sheetrock wall-punching for no apparent reason.
• Excessive use of long-distance telephony in an attempt to save doomed long distance relationships.
• Instantaneous glomming on unattached (or almost unattached) individuals.

RHI falls into the category of STDs, Sexually Treatable Diseases. RHI is unique in that two cases of RHI can be cured simultaneous using relatively inexpensive techniques. The cure is, however, itself controversial; some specialists in the field have argued that the treatment is worse than the disease itself.

Ridiculo-Ball

1. n. One of the many silly center room games played at TEP. Rules change constantly, but a rough synopsis is as follows:

• Players encircle a low trash can and wield a large, inexpensive, soft, and, well "ridiculo ball." They try to get the ball into the trash can by bouncing it off the floor and into the can.
• "It" has the softball glove. "It" tries to prevent the ball from going into the trash can by hurling the glove at high velocity.
• If a player gets the ball into the trash can, there is much joy, and he or she becomes "It."
• The game ends when we get bored.

Schmedley

1.n. Schmedleys are the small finger-puppet monsters made out of rubber. Each pledge (peldge?) at TEP is given a Schmedley. Losing your Schmedley is bad. Stealing someone else's Schmedley is good.

The Spleen

1.n. The Spleen is a TEP's most important organ. While the brain is occasionally useful for passing final examinations, surviving job interviews, etc., the Spleen provides round-the-clock protection from unexpected illness. At MIT, this vital organ allows one to:

• Come within 22 feet of Charles River water.
• Smell Lobdell food and suffer only temporary disorientation.
• Watch William Shatner try to act for more than 15 continuous minutes.

We find we cannot praise the Spleen too highly. See, for example, the 1993 Crock Opera Radical Splenectomy (postscript) or Irving Q. Tepp's scholarly study of Shakespeare's use of the Spleen.

Stovall

1. proper n. TEP Alum Jeff Stovall, a.k.a. "Captain Angst." 2. n. The SI unit of Angst. Like the farad, the stovall is an unwieldy unit; the intensity of the Angst field around a regular "bad day" is in the range of microstovalls. Most human beings can only stand Angst on the order of 10 to 20 millistovalls for a few minutes before expiring. For unknown reasons, MIT students seem to be capable of surviving for up to 4 months in Angst fields as high as 300 to 400 millistovalls.

Tep-O-Phone

1. n. TEP's internal phone system. Custom built out of old key system components discarded from the Institvte, Tep-O-Phone handles the calls inside of TEP (including connections to Mr. Washer and the Ms. Dryers) and the switching of TEP's six external lines. Built by the renowned and illustrious Fred Fenning, founding member of the chapter.

Twenty-Two

myst. num. The mystical number of the most profound significance. Showing up everywhere signifying everything. Twenty-two is like, cosmic.

Whumph Bag

1. n.Large rubber bladder, with person A standing on it. Person B jumps onto the bag. Person A is propelled into the air with the greatest of whees.