The Thousands

The state of my room is a legitimate concern. To get from one end to the other, I must to clamber over a veritable Kilimanjaro of clothes, swim through a lagoon of CDs, fend off an army of stationery and craft supplies and evade a Raiders-of-the-Lost-Ark style boulder composed of day-to-day detritus as it pursues me through a train-ticket cemetery. The question is: if this chaos is really such a blight on my lifestyle, why don’t I just man up, put aside a fortnight and tidy the joint? Truth is, I’ve got no excuses. Well, I didn’t. That’s all about to change now that I’ve acquired this little anthology of alibis from the Perth Zine Collective, penned by the procrastination-savvy Emily Boyd.

Reasons Why I Haven’t Cleaned My Room: A Series of Excuses for Persons Suffering from a Severe Lack of Room Cleaning Motivation and Intent, is a surprisingly neat local zine dedicated to the writer’s mother. Inside are 14 extremely valid reasons as to why one’s quarters might not be spotless, including the discovery of archaeological artifacts, bearded shark attacks, the reluctance to disturb copulating ants, and the deployment of personal clutter as a form of metaphorical political protest. Right on!

In fact, these excuses are so convincing that I’ve pretty much abandoned the idea of tidying up altogether. On my door is note to addressed to myself: Hey man, sorry I haven’t cleaned my room. Way too busy reading awesome zines.