Anyone who followed my former blog flotsam/jetsam probably knows that I had proudly jumped on the Zune bandwagon. I’d never really been all that into the iPod, and Microsoft’s answer to the bells-and-whistles seemed to offer everything I could ever want. But then the darnedest thing happened – the November release date came and went and we Canadians were left out in the cold! For anyone following Microsoft’s recent wheelings and dealings with the entertainment industry this should come as no shock — after all, the reason 360 owners can’t download movies and TV shows outside of the US is because the big M is all about taking baby steps when it comes to securing distribution rights. A similar situation when it comes to music distribution (through Microsoft’s own Zune Marketplace) was almost an inevitability. It’s a shame, too. We may not be as big of a market as the US, but we certainly are quick to adapt new technology (we were all on broadband when most Americans didn’t even know what that meant.)

So why do I bring this up? A lot of us were expecting a Canadian release date to pop up during CES and it just didn’t happen. As I was hunting the internet for anything Zune-related today, I stumbled across an interesting little tidbit that’s both very Canadian and very Zune related. As regular readers of this blog must know, both Boo and I are proud owners of the Wii. When it’s name was first announced, everyone had a bit of a chuckle. Well it turns out that if you’re French Canadian, you can have a very similar chuckle about the Zune. From Gizmo Cafe Blog;

“Microsoft did a lot of market research before naming Zune including throughout French Canada. “Zoune” is a little used slang expression of the Quebecois kiddie vernacular used to describe the organ through which one urinates, either male or female. The pronunciation is almost identical. Apparently the word is inoffensive to the French as it is the equivalent to using the word pee-pee in English. Apparently Microsoft market research uncovered the transgression in advance but decided to say piss on it and use Zune anyway. You’ll have to excuse the snickering coming from the eastern province when Zune is finally released in the land that rules hockey.”