Alberta Uber Alles

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  

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