Jane's Walk, and what happens when I talk too much

A couple notes here before I eventually get to the next episode (first there's a Movies For the Blind episode, then taxes as our deadline is the end of April, then I swear I'm all yours!).

Remember last year when I did a show about "Jane's Walk", following Angus Skene around while he said lots of interesting things about my neighbourhood of The Annex? If not, that's what links are for. But regardless, Jane's Walk is back, with a bunch of neat guided walks on the weekend of May 3rd. Angus will be doing his thing again around here, so if you want to finally catch everything he says and watch him do his wicked chalk drawings, you can. I'll be taking my iRiver somewhere yet to be determined, and hopefully that will make for another show. But don't wait for me if you're in the city - go pick out a great walk for yourself!

Also, this Jane's Walk thing isn't even limited to Toronto! (Hard to believe, I know, that there are things not limited to Toronto...) There will be Jane's Walks in Halifax, Charlottetown, Ottawa, Guelph (I personally love that there's one in Guelph, because it's the smallest town among these and it's so fun to say), Winnipeg and Vancouver. And for some reason, there's one in Salt Lake City, Utah, bless their hearts. So get a little exercise and look at your own city from a new (or old) perspective. I guess you can do that without a Jane's Walk, really, so no excuses for anyone.

In other news, I went to a Toronto Podcasters' Meetup a couple weeks ago, had a pint and talked too much with terrific people. Since it was a podcasters' meetup, some of my talking too much has gotten on some podcasts. First, some of the blathering made it to the Audio Dessert portion of episode 99 of the Canadian Podcast Buffet, then a huge slab of it was on episode 137 of Hot Fossils and Rebel Matters (and there might be more). So if for some reason you actually want to hear me talk too much and too loud about podcasting, zoom in on those lovely shows.

(Note: the rest of this post might be self-indulgent crap bloggers do.)

One of the several funny things about that meetup started a series of events where I've learned (again) how perception and momentum can trump truth. I was talking with one of the newbies who had really energized the meetup, when I heard out of the corner of my ear a word I hadn't heard before: "communitize". I turned to Katherine Matthews, of the fine podcasts Purl Diving and Cinéfolle, who despite being sick with some cold-like thing, came from Guelph (see? fun to say!) with her partner Rob to be her intelligent and charming self.

"Did you just use the word...COMMUNITIZE?" I said in the most dramatically amazed fashion possible.

She had, and somehow this blew. my. mind. I told her that was absolutely freaking brilliant. And we went on with our lives, though occasionally I would blurt out the word "communitize" like a Doug Henning impersonator with Tourette's. Sometimes I would even include magician-like hand gestures, as if using my special powers to transform someone across the room to suddenly become embued with the light and wonder of comments and camps and forums and groups, skipping tra-la into the street making K17 calls. Hi-lar-ee-uss.

When I got home, I of course twittered about it, and of course included the thought that "communitize" is going to become a beeeg geek word, like "bacn" and "rickroll". I might have said something about it on Facebook too. A couple days later, the very esteemed and awesome (which has nothing to do with him buying me a beer at the previous Toronto meetup) Mark Blevis of said CPB, Just One More Book and Electric Sky (and other things - I ain't got all day) twittered something about me saying "communitize" and how wicked-cool that word was. I replied that, yeah, wicked-cool, but it's not my word - I got it from Katherine. Then episode 100 of CPB comes out, and Mark says the meetup host John Meadows (of On the Log) said I'd coined that term, then Mark couched it by saying he has since learned I hadn't (yes, like from me), but "I will always remember her when I think of this word".

Sigh. Alrighty.

More twittering, blog-commenting and Facebook wall-writing and statusing would follow. John graciously gave his mea culpas (I believe he had been entranced by the Doug Henning/Tourette's thing, and frankly, who could blame him?), others gave their clarifications, Mark actually found some origin for the word a couple years prior, scoobily doobily doo. So at least in writing terms, it's straight that Katherine brought up the word...well, you know...at the Toronto meetup.

If this story sounds a bit silly, excellent. As the great Newfoundland seperatist Jerry Boyle would say, you're my kind of people.

Does that make you a community? It's not my job to say. It's not anyone's job to say. Unless someone's job is (wait for it...) communitization. In which case, that person better stay away from me until he can grow a super mustache, wear a jumpsuit and learn to levitate.