Poorly Xeroxed fanzine defies death, finds new life on the internet
I think it was in 2005 when I first began publishing OHNO!THEROBOT, a zine originally based out of Saskatoon which would later find a home in Waskesiu and Montreal.
A perzine familiar to those in the local punk scene, OHNO!THEROBOT features short vignettes of semi-autobiographical fiction as well as loosely-veiled memoirs of Saskatoon, punk houses, roommates, bad dates and the occasional beer. Even more amazing, over the course of its run, OHNO! garnered many favourable reviews in publications such as Razorcake, Punk Planet and Maximum Rocknroll. Additionally, issue #6 was picked up for worldwide distribution by Tower Records. (A year later the international chain store would go completely bankrupt. Whoops!)
Notwithstanding an oft-sketchy handle on grammar, it’s not horrible. And despite a sporadic publishing schedule, The First Five Years actually resembles something of a mini-novel. The book was eventually self-published in a retrospective collection entitled The First Five Years in 2010. Celebrating six issues and six years of existence, the book compiles past OHNO! issues 6 through 10.
Of course, I never thought to make more than 50 copies of the thing, and the compilation has long been out of print.
Want it for free? It’s all yours, typos and all.
Click HERE to download OHNO!THEROBOT The First Five Years.
Below is a snippet from The First Five Years:
“Firebomb”
I firmly believed that every farewell should be sealed with both a kiss and a final fuck you. A relationship ousted with a whimper was sadder than a slap in the face. Besides, crawling back after saying goodbye was ultimately more depressing than faux-farewells. This is why it’s always a good idea to turn down break-up sex, which had the slimy reputation as being the best kind of sex.
Overzealous goodbyes were another reason that I loved punkhouses. When they were deemed terminated, most of the city’s punkhouses simply went up in flames, a final middle finger salute to the cops, the landlord and the scene itself. It eventually became sort of a fucked up tradition – burn what you can’t carry with you to your next life. Tellingly, gentrification, the very thing that punks despised the most, would have the last laugh. In the ashes of the punkhouses, condos were erected, and the neighbours would breathe a sigh of relief.