Infiltration
#10, #11 (PO Box 66069, Town Centre PO, Pickering, Ontario, Canada) www.infiltration.org $1.00 each
by William Ham
The people responsible for these ‘zines are Canadian. For the majority of our typical, less anthropologically-inclined readers, this term may be a mystery – after all, isn’t “Canada” a fictional construct, a myth specially designed by State Department officials to allow Americans to feel superior to someone without necessarily having to unleash wave after wave of surface-to-air persuaders upon them? Well, yes and no, and by that I mean I’m being indecisive. Canada is indeed a real country (though some pundits abjure the term, preferring instead to think of it as the world’s largest rec room, but for amusement’s sake, we’ll stick to the former), located directly to the north (“up” on your world map) of the United States (ask a policeman or other city official if unable to locate it). Little is known of the “country” or its indigenous people (variously known as “Canadians,” “Canucks,” and “Hey! You With the Hat!”), though a few details have been gleaned from various fact-finding and bargain-hunting expeditions:
- More than half of its land mass is uninhabited. Most of this space is used to house their enormous stockpile of vowels which “Canadians” inject willy-nilly into words like “color,” “flavor,” and “odor” to quite comical effect. Such is the surplus that “Canadians” have taken to dropping the letter “a” at the ends of simple interrogative sentences in a futile attempt to keep them from spreading.
- Canada has more “Gordon”s per capita than any country in the industrialized world.
- To confuse and bewilder interlopers, many “Canadians” have been known to lapse without warning into a bizarre and incomprehensible patois known in some circles as “French.”
- The official facial expression of Canada is the bemused smirk.
- Effective January 1, 2002, the Canadian national anthem will revert from “O Canada” to “something by April Wine.”
- Their chocolate shakes are among the thickest and creamiest in the Western Hemisphere.
- Their inhabitants emit a noxious liquid when threatened (Winnipeg only).
- Even they don’t get curling.
If the above hasn’t put you off entirely, then you may be among the hardy souls interested in braving these ‘zines, one of which (YIP) trucks in one of Canada’s primary exports (absurd humor) while the other (Infiltration) concerns itself with one of their favorite national pastimes (going places you’re not supposed to go). YIP, a twelve-page bimonthly overseen by someone named Milky Puppy (possibly a pseudonym), continues on its stated quest to mercilessly mock and belittle all things that normal (read: non-Canadian) people hold sacred, such as sex, insects, potatoes, Jell-O advertisements, and warthogs. YIP#30, by most accounts the thirtieth issue of YIP, may have over-stepped whatever bounds of propriety and decency they may still have straddled, the subject of this issue’s ridicule being (avert your eyes, ladies) the computer. Mr. Puppy and his toque-toting band of back-baconeers have clearly committed an irredeemable outrage here, and I only recommend you purchase this magazine in the hopes that all involved use their profits to fund a trip to Gatestown™, the private compound here in the States devoted to paying proper reverence and homage to the glowing oracle of our age, cleanse our hard drives of all sin and misdeeds, reorganize the desktops of our hearts to maximize performance, and decide once and for all whether one is a man or a mouse (a simple test devised by Billhovah – if you can be rolled smoothly over a one-eighth-inch thick piece of foam rubber and if double-clicking your head has any results other than mild annoyance, you are the latter). I suppose you can consider much of the pratery and jiggerypokery herein “humorous,” if you think that clutching your sides and lapsing into embarrassingly abject laughter is a beneficial thing and not the first signs of incipient abdominal splitting and knee-slappery, which I, and all right-thinking United Statesians like myself, most certainly do not.
And then there is the matter of Infiltration, a quarterly devised by one Ninjalicious (an obvious alias – his real name is Ninjatastic) to chronicle the criminal activities of young “Canadians” who, as genetic profiles have shown, are physically incapable of coming up with actual felonies to commit. (Thus the ongoing popularity of Canada’s longest-running TV “reality” show, Sidewalk Spitter Patrol.) So strong is the chord struck by this serial compendium of first-person reminiscences of loitering in air-conditioning ducts and triumphant, Kon-Tiki-esque odysseys behind slightly-ajar “roof access” doors that amoral scamps the world over have begun to share their own thrill-an-hour odysseys into realms where only the defiant and those with the proper keys dare to trespass. The exploits of the so-called “Cave Clan,” a band of intrepid subterranean adventurers from Australia (and don’t allow me to get started on that floating repository of flagitious genes and inedible sandwich spreads – country or continent, make up your infernal minds already!) figure heavily in recent editions, particularly #11, the “Storm Drains” number (replete with a glossary of “Drainspeak” in the back, much like the domestic editions of such similar epics of youthful delinquency as A Clockwork Orange, Trainspotting, and He Mocked a Mountie!), proving once and for all… that… er… well, not really proving much of anything, I suppose. But if you can sit still during Peter M. Sand’s pulse-maintaining true-life adventure, “The Holy Grail of Minneapolis Draining,” you probably weren’t stuck somewhere without an accessible lavatory, as I was.
Are these magazines dangerous? Perhaps, if the edges of the paper are drawn across the jugular vein with a particular ferocity. But are they necessary reading for all Americans eager to understand the insidious mindset of that most Canadian of North American countries? I would say so. And best of all, this needful sociological education can be had for only a dollar. (Note, of course, that that’s one Canadian dollar, which means you can write the word “money” on a piece of notebook paper or expectorate onto a coffee coupon and that will suffice.)
