MEEP!
By Carl Bussjaeger, November 16, 2009

Mass. principal bans students from saying 'Meep!'

DANVERS, Mass. – Who knew "Meep!" was a four-letter word? The utterance favored by bungling lab assistant Beaker of "The Muppet Show" has been banned at Danvers High School in Massachusetts after students said it to repeatedly interrupt school.

Principal Thomas Murray said the word was part of a disruption planned using Facebook.

The context I had for "meep" would be the old Roadrunner cartoons, or the aforementioned Beaker. Maybe I'm out of touch and this has some sinister meaning now. I thought a quick Wikipedia check might be in order (it may not be a touchstone for accuracy, but it does take the pulse of social trends):

Meep may refer to:

    * Beep the Meep, fictional alien who appeared in the Doctor Who Weekly comic strip
    * Meeps, pom-pom shaped characters who appear in Quest for Glory adventure games
    * the ghouls' form of speech in H. P. Lovecraft's 1926 novella The Dream-Quest of 
      Unknown Kadath, e.g. "an awed and half-choked meep of cosmic fear"
    * the apparent primary vocabulary of Beaker, the hapless assistant of Dr. Bunsen 
      Honeydew on The Muppet Show

MEEP, as an acronym, may refer to:

    * Mir Environmental Effects Payload, an International Space Station (ISS) Phase 1 
      Risk Mitigation Experiment

Well. That looks pretty damning.

Mr. Murray's emails address appears to be murray@danvers.org. The last report I had indicates that his spam filter may be blocking "meep". Variants such as !peeM, m@@p, and miip may be getting through. For now.

Be advised that one attorney who meeped Mr. Murray was supposedly reported to the Danvers Police Department. Mr. Murray is clearly very, very frightened of meep. Pathologically so, even.

Meep!