So easy a caveman...

For all you anthropological types out there, you might be interested in the movie "Quest for Fire." It's set 80,000 years in the past and follows three prehistoric tribe members in their journey to find fire. Once you get used to the "Geico" caveman makeup what unfolds is a uniquely intriguing movie that has no dialogue, only grunts and other rudimentary human sounds. The acting is so well done that it carries the story sans words. There were some genuinely comical moments in this movie to counterpart the vicious world it depicts.

Speaking of movies, if you haven't seen "Payback-the Director's cut" starring Mel Gibson, don't bother. It sucks. Hopefully, the theater version was better. If not, I can imagine a lot of pissed off moviegoers. But in the Director's cut it's as if he went back and put in every single scene he shot. It makes for an interminably long movie. I kept expecting it to end, but it kept going and going to the point that it became ridiculous. Mel Gibson's bad acting didn't help. Any wannabe directors out there? Use this movie as an example of what not to do.

Today has been terribly boring, and I've found myself slipping into self-pity. I will certainly be happy once I get out of this place. I feel like I'm serving a jail sentence. Ten more days... thank god... it's only ten more days and I'll be released. I've got to start thinking about who's going to work for me when I get home. The weekdays are covered, but I don't have anyone for the weekend that can get me in and out of bed. It was fine when I was confined, but when I get home I've got to start getting up every day.

On a completely different note, it was only a little over a week ago that I started hallucinating. My doctor had taken me off of all of my medications except for my antidepressant and my blood pressure pills. That left me with nothing for pain and nothing for muscle spasms, and I think I was going through Valium withdrawal.

It was on a Wednesday evening that the hallucinations started. I began to feel as if I had dropped some acid. The clock on the wall and some of the ceiling fixtures started folding up on themselves as if they were flimsy rubber. I even mentioned to the nurse that I was hallucinating.

I hadn't slept all of the night before, and I was going to try to get some sleep. It was about midnight and only minutes after I closed my eyes that there was this big flash of light. My eyes opened suddenly to see flames shoot out from behind the wall mounted TV. Wow, whatever was going on it certainly had my attention. I stayed awake watching CNN, and there was all this weird behind the scenes stuff going on. The real kicker was when the room started getting smaller. It didn't just appear to be getting smaller. I could actually see the room squeezing in slowly from the windows side. It was strange. What was even stranger was when the nurse came in and didn't even notice. There was a moment when I thought I might be going crazy, but then I dismissed that idea. This didn't seem like a hallucination. It seemed as if the room had actually been designed so that it could through some outside mechanism grow smaller.

All that night CNN had been televising all kinds of tricks that it could play on the audience, and having a room fold in on itself seemed to be a common theme. So when my room appeared to be folding in on itself, I expected it was the work of some outside party.

Then the TV came alive. It wasn't the TV itself but the people inside the TV. They started poking their head out and talking to me directly. Somewhere along the line I got it in my head that my brother had put this all together, and I was going to be ejected out of my bed through the entrance to the hallway to some outside room where my friends and family were gathered to greet me. I even heard my brother's voice. It was exactly the type of thing that he would do. The room, the TV, everything had been a setup. It was like a surprise party for me, but my legs hurt and I felt lousy. I didn't really feel like seeing everybody just then. I began to hope that whatever the trick was that it wouldn't work.

Everything seemed to build up to a climax -- the moment had arrived for my expulsion from the bedroom into the room beyond. There was unseen movement all around me -- people pulling strings, putting the machinery in high gear, and I actually saw an arm or a leg in my peripheral vision. A nurse came in to do something, but she hurried to get out of the way of these people behind the scenes. It all seemed so real.

Someone from the television set encouraged me to hit this button by the side of my head. I assumed it was some sort of trigger to release me from the bed so that I could shoot out into the next room. I tried repeatedly to hit with my head to no avail.

Suddenly, the moment was over. Critical Mass had passed and I had remained in my hospital bed. It was some time before I could look back and realize that it had all been a hallucination.

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