I have been ensconced in bed for approximately 108.5 hours straight, excepting trips to take hot baths, and a 10 hour period of insanity on Friday, when in my delusion I fancied that SARS-like symptoms should be no impediment to working. It didn't take long for my protesting body to quickly dispel that monstrosity of a myth. Have you ever noticed how intimately acquainted with one's surroundings you become after walking through an intense and eternal exposure to a given room, such as accompanies prolonged illness? As I have laid in innocency, trying to combat the wretched parasites drawing the very life and wellbeing from my sinews, it seems the smallest details of the most incongruous surrounding objects have been defenslessly etched on my brain. I could write whole papyrus rolls about the numerous half-empty glasses of fluids lining my window sill, or about the depressingly dark and vague illustrations by one Marcus Stone in the copy of Great Expectations by my bed. Actually, the illustrations are in strange contrast to my powerlessly acute observations. While, seemingly against my will, I can recite unending details about my prison-like surroundings, Marcus Stone seems to take delight in a dismally complete denial of detail. As he paints, lines and light and shadow are after-thoughts of sorts in a free-form managerie of the bland color palette. I suppose that such an approach is befitting of Great Expectations' dark, salacious and mystery-rife setting, but I still find it discomfiting. Looking at it makes my mouth dry up like I've been chewing on a wad of cardboard, salted with a hint of sheet rock dust. I think I'll return to looking for all 7 continents in the ceiling plaster, before I die of dehydration.