A hefty and impressive repudiation of Ralph Klein’s conservative war against the people of Alberta, this is a convincing and vitriolic zine. The main article is the long story of two highly educated Edmonton residents who work as the janitors for an office, and are forced to wax spotless floors on what is a holiday for all other company employees. Meanwhile, their granny lies in a barely functional hospital and the New Brain (a right-wing thinking mechanism, newly required for all Albertan) spins the correct ideology to articulate the joyful good times of the whole situation. But hey, it’s not all heart-wrenching, some of this zine is just depressing. Explore Alberta gives you a quick guide to the province including The City State of Calgary (“sort of a Sparta for yuppies”), Banff and Jasper (“Canada’s most beautiful nature spectacles reserved for rich foreigners”), and Red Deer (“Teach your kids to beat cripples at the KKK Children’s Festival!”). All this plus Highlights of the Revolution (“Rolph then put an end to such frivolous abuses of collective wealth by shutting hospitals…”) and An Excerpt from the Alberta Welfare Application Form (“1. Have you eaten all your pets? 4. On what corner do you work the streets?”) Cold harsh satire as biting as the prairie wind, Alberta Uber Alles is a progenitor of a number of cruelly insistent political zines that are starting to crop up in Canada, urgent calls for collective action or just more whining lefties who have it too good? You decide. Zine of the month, but we wish it wasn’t….
zine 28 pages main creator: Tim Balash publisher: Wolverine Milk Press $1.50 Box A, 8702-96 Ave. , Edmonton, AB, T6C 2B2