It's 43 hours to the Pelican printing deadline, and your humble narrator has yet to make any move on "Killer at Large". "Killer at Large" is, or should I say was meant to be, a monthly journal of some 'zany' adventures I had been involved in. The problem is that when you're looking for some 'zaniness', you rarely find it. Just like when you're single and you hit the town looking for love, you're more likely to arrive home alone at six in the morning with a sore head and an empty wallet.

At 43 hours I begin to lament the ideas for stories that we had kicked around the Pelican office but which failed to eventuate, like spending a day drinking beer with wood choppers at the Perth Royal Show, or appearing on Channel Seven's terrible game show Initial Reaction. Shit like that just writes itself. I regret that I never chased up my leads on that old Italian guy that sells shoes outside the Hip-e Club, it would have been nice to finish off something I've started for once (Pelican, vol. 71, ed. 2, March 2000).

At 38 hours I figure that if I get together with a few friends who like to have a bit of a drink and a laugh, somehow over the night a story would come, if only I can make sure there are enough drugs to fuel the zaniness along. I acquired some LSD easily enough from a friend, but in Perth at the moment the binge drug of choice is speed. I knew from Prosh that speed did nothing for the creative juices and that trying to write coming down off speed was nearly as bad as trying to write coming down off acid, but I rationalised that common sense had no part in 'zaniness' and began calling around.

At 36 hours I arrange to meet a friend of a friend at a kebab shop. It is a suitably sleazy area where the Shoeman was last seen, but I wasn't looking for that story now. I haven't seen this friend of a friend before but I tell him that I'll be the one in the red suit. We meet and discretely go for a walk, he hands me a cassette cover containing a little bag and I hand over $100. It was going to be my money for the electricity bill, but I'm thinking I'll deal with the consequences next week. 'Enjoy your music' he says and we part ways. On the way home I check the little bag and quickly see that I haven't done particularly well out of the deal. It's a very small portion of speed, obviously cut with quite a lot of clean white powder. Unfortunately that's the way it goes in that market, there aren't any refunds.

At 35 hours when I arrive home there is, on the plus side, a shit load of booze and some of my favourite friends have begun to gather. We drink, drug, laugh and play records. At 34 hours an idea is raised to make a road trip out to Swan for the 'Springtime in the Valley' festivities. 'Yes, brilliant' I think, 'surely there would be a story in our group of sleep deprived, slightly drunk, slightly wired, slightly tripping students driving out to swan and ruffling a few feathers!' You always run into a story on a road trip, I'd learnt this from hitchhiking across the country at the end of last year.

At 28 hours my flatmate and I are infeasablely drunk and loudly explaining all manner of things to each other. We're the last two standing but are about to pass out at any second. My flatmate, incidentally, has a large assignment due in Monday. He's been working on it for the previous couple of days and slept precious little. "Why the fuck do we do this to ourselves?', he asks. At 27 hours the plans to drive out to Swan are looking shaky, I murmur to myself and crawl into bed next to my girlfriend who had the sense to go sleep about eight hours prior.

At 24 hours my girlfriend and I awoke. The springtime zaniness in the valley is now out of the question, but I'm still clinging to the idea of scaled-down springtime fun as inspiration for my article. We pack up some food and a typewriter and head down to the foreshore. As she sunbakes and I tap away on the typewriter, I feel for a moment like a real writer. I've got the setting and the mood for something to happen, I just need the inspiration. I figure that perhaps LSD is what I need to tie all my shit together. I continue tapping away but as the acid creeps it's way in, I begin to notice I'm more interested in watching the clouds and listening to kids screeching in the water than the typewriter. At 17 hours, as the sun goes down, we leave the foreshore. I have a few pages of nonsense about the sun, and a very disturbed sketch of a grasshopper, but I'm no closer to an article.

At 16 and a half hours I start reading Dr Jeckyl and Mr Hyde. I'm not sure why.

At 13 hours I sit in my room, which is actually a dank smelly shed, and begin to write rambling sentences of frustration on my flatmate's laptop. The sentences are becoming increasingly separated by the work fuck. Fuck. My room, the shed, hasn't changed much since I hurriedly moved my gear about three months ago so that some friends from Iceland could stay in my old room. I sit beside the bed in my pyjamas because they are marginally less dirty than my other clothes. I scratch the psoriasis on my head. Psoriasis is a strange psychosomatic disease, which produces a flaky scalp during periods of anxiety, stress or depression. It's only purpose, it would seem, is just so you no longer merely pull your hair out you can actually pull off bits of your scalp as well. Don't worry, it's not contagious. My dermatologist told me the best cure was to 'be cool' and he pointed at his temple. Fuck.

At 12 hours I think to myself, 'I'm not a writer, I'm a scientist'. Then I remember that I fail Physics repeatedly and realise that I'm not a scientist either. Fuck.

At 11 hours my flatmate comes home which means I can borrow his mobile. I need to return concerned calls from the Pelican office and our home phone is barred from outwards calls due to an unpaid bill. My flatmate had been at three different Sunday sessions and then ended up at Club Bay View. He passed out fully clothed in his bed, muttering 'why do I do this to myself?'

At 9 hours I've worked myself close to a breakdown. My mind is a clutter of fucked up ideas and panic. I pace around the room. I can't believe I going to write a painful article on how painful it was to write. I can perhaps find slight amusement in that at the start of the year, I suggested a great finale to "Killer at Large" would be a story about spending 24 hours in Graylands. The plan was that I would take a shitload of acid, then get my friends to whisper about me just outside my bedroom door. This would plunge me into a delusional state during which I would be admitted to Graylands. When I regained my composure I could then walk out of Graylands with a story that 'writes itself'. As I grated my head up and down the walls of my bedroom trying to think of something to write, it seemed that perhaps half of this plan might still come true. Mmmm... Graylands... pleasantly sedated.

At 5 hours till the Pelican printing deadline I come into the Pelican office with scraps of paper and half an idea to write this article. At 3 hours I have written some of what you are reading now, the rest may well have been written by the ever present Arnold, who has been saddled with this unfortunate task before, or possibly the world's angriest and frustrated man, Fancy Dave Bower.

At 10 minutes past the printing deadline I apologise once again to the editors, Gawain and Henry, for being the last thing in, leaving no time for spelling or grammar checks. As the paper heads off to the printer, I don't know whether to regret what I've written or not because I can't really remember what I've said. I just walk around the halls mumbling to anyone who will listen, 'Why do I do this to myself?'

I guess what I'm trying to say is, as students 'Why do I do this to myself?' is etched into our brains, just as 'Know Thyself' and 'Fuck all this bullshit' are etched on our University walls. Why don't we go and join the rest of the population and get a real job, with real money for real food? I don't know why we do it, but we keep doing it over and over again, and I suppose after a bit of sleep you realise that may be one day it will be all worth while.