T.A.Z.

What is it? An unknown known meaning to the normal man, this word means something to a secretive order. The Greek life at Washburn's campus is comprised of four fraternities and four sororities. What we are looking at here is the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority. A friend of mine who is a member of ZTA refuses to tell me about this meaning. While working on a project last semester I spent some time at her apartment. A picture hanging from wall showed her and some of her sorority sisters at the football stadium with the ZTA words shifted around to TAZ. After making an inquiry as to the meaning of TAZ she refused. So, now here I am. Lost without meaning.

There are however, assumptions... In 1930's the world was introduced to a spectacle of cartoon skits. The name of the show was Looney Tunes. Of course when you take a close look at the characters one of them is ironically named the Tazmanian Devil, or simply TAZ for short. Is this it? Am I getting closer?

TAZ was created by cartoonist Robert McKimson. The TAZ made his first appearance on June 19, 1954, in which he stalked the Bugs Bunny. Interestingly enough, Bugs Bunny ends up hooking TAZ up with a female devil... Since his first appearance TAZ has made many appearances in films, one being Space Jam. He even had his own movie that released some time in 1991. Most recently his offspring, an infant version of TAZ has been appearing since September 7, 2002 in Baby Looney Tunes. He also had many guest appearances Looney Tunes: Back In Action in 2003. Could this be the meaning behind TAZ.

Another potential meaning could be T.A.Z. which stands for Temporary Autonomous Zone. A book written by Hakim Bey and published twice, once in 1985 and again in 1991. This book covers such topics as: ontological anarchy, poetic terrorism, chaos myths, art sabotage, paganism, etc... the list goes on. Though little is understood of this book due to lack of information, this to could be a consideration. A more negative twist to the TAZ.

Even though yes, a person could consider the Temporary Autonomous Zone a potential meaning, I highly doubt this is what TAZ stands for. Whenever mentioned around my friend she laughs about it, almost taunting me with her knowledge of the meaning and my yearning to gain such knowledge. I will find out what TAZ means. Will I be able to tell... I don't know. I'll just take pride in knowing I have gained meaning to the word TAZ, something that has bothered me since November...

If any of you out there have suggestions as to the meaning of TAZ as in relating to the ZTA sorority let me know. I'd love to hear your comments on this. This post is basically for fun... I told her that I was going to "blog about it" and so I did. Maybe out of proportion, but maybe I'll get the answer sooner than later. So yes, ______(insert name here) you know who you are, and look what you've made me do. :P