Out of "ennui," I went to see Terminator 3 today. Not a bad movie. There's little new to say about the Terminator universe. Arnold reprises his role with tired aplomb. The big attraction of the movie is Kristinna Loken, as TX--the girl terminator! She's every nerd's dream: a blonde young goddess with a permanent toolbelt! She can reprogram cell phones, conjur a drill bit out of her finger and a power saw from her forearm! And she's indestructable, which isn't bad either. I detected a slight bit of satire in her role, as this Barbie clone mainly wanders LA coveting and consuming. "I like your clothes," she says to a middle-aged socialite before bashing her over the head and swiping them. "I like your gun," she says to a cop, after pumping up her pneumatic boobs. A woman of few words, she's all action, in a hyper Winona Ryder sort of way....

The other movie I saw recently was "28 Days Later." It's best conceived of as a "thinking man's zombie movie," or perhaps "a thinking zombie man's movie." It recalls films as diverse as "The Omega Man" and "12 Monkeys." Costing something like $9 million to make, it's already shown a profit. After reading reviews, I went to the theater prepared to be scared out of my wits! Apparently my scare-o-meter is permanently redlined from years of Twilight Zones, Hammer films and Stephen King/Dean Koontz novels. While I found the film to be mildly disturbing, and craftily artificed, it just wasn't scary. The main idea of the film was that the humans, infected with a "rage virus," were rampaging, killing each other and generally leaving a lot of litter on the streets of London. Or, was it really the virus? Or just "people killing people, as they always have." When the hero goes berserk and starts slitting throats and gouging eyes out with his thumbs, is he "infected?" Or just doing the normal Homo Sapiens thing? The point was well aimed and well intended, but overal I found the film, by the same guy who did "The Beach," to be too art-house self conscious. As, who was it, Frank Capra, once said, "If you want to send a message, call Western Union!"

Here's a letter I wrote to the San Diego Union Tribune, regarding the "death spiral" of Medi-Cal.

I read with interest your article in today's Union Tribune: "Nursing homes may have to cut corners or close". Did you know that there is a parallel crisis in the home-care nursing industry? I have first-hand experience with this, and am happy to share a bit of my story with you (perhaps it will lead to another article).

I'm a 47-year-old man with Muscular Dystrophy, and I use a ventilator (breathing apparatus) and power wheelchair. I'm also one of many patients in San Diego and throughout the state who receive nursing care in my home, under the NF (Nursing Facility) Waiver Program. This program, funded through Medi-Cal, allows patients to remain in their homes instead of being placed in nursing homes, as long as the nursing care they receive in-home is "cost-neutral" with nursing home care.

Unfortunately, the ongoing inadequacy of Medi-Cal reimbursement rates, combined with an overwhelming amount of Federal and State bureaucratic paperwork and the threat of further reductions in reimbursement rates, has led to an acute nursing shortage and the threat that people such as I will be left without care, made sicker and perhaps even die of officially sanctioned neglect. As an example, my current nursing provider, Sun Plus Home Care (on Chesapeake Avenue in San Diego) is unable to provide me with the 16 hours a day nursing care mandated by my plan of treatment. One of my nurses recently quit on short notice, and the agency is unable to replace him. This leaves me looking at 5 or more days a week with only 8 of the 16 hours per day of care I should be receiving.

The nursing agency's response to my plight is to tell me they are "trying" to fill the vacancy, while expecting me to rely on "backup" care. Backup care is required for home nursing patients in case of an emergency, but as an educated professional doing the best I can to live "the American Dream" independently, I cannot rely on my aging parents or friends to provide 5-day-a-week care.

My back is against the wall now, and there are many other home-care patients facing the same dilemma. Further cuts in the state's dismal Medi-Cal reimbursement rates will endanger the lives of me and thousands of others like me, as home-care nursing agencies are forced to stop accepting Medi-Cal patients and even close their doors, due to the unprofitability of running such an agency.

In my opinion, the state needs to quit obsessing over minor issues such as vehicle licensing fees (I too own a car, as do the nurses who will lose their jobs over these cuts) and find new solutions to the crumbling Medi-Cal system and the ever-increasing nursing shortage that Medi-Cal, Medicare, and HMOs have helped instigate. If nothing is done, we will soon be treated to the spectacle of more people dying on the streets of San Diego than the streets of Baghdad.

It's the end of the month, already! July has just flown by... I've gotten over the chaos caused by the nursing shortage, at least for now. I've moved to a new agency, Maxim. Maxim has filled most of my shifts, except for some 12-8 shifts that were left open by a male nurse who bailed out at the last moment. Sound familiar?

Tonight is the final class for "Writing the Horror Story." As a final project, I'm turning in my 4550-word, 25-page vampire story, "King of Lies." I hope Nancy likes it! As one of the assignments for the class, we had to use 10 class-generated "horror concepts" to come up with 10 story ideas. So, here are mine. The ones marked with a * are the ones Nancy said were "great" or "good."

10 Story Ideas

1. Helplessness: A man lies paralyzed in a hospital ICU. He wakes up one morning and discovers everyone gone. What happened? How does he get out? (NB: Not a zombie story!)

2. Unexplained disappearances: Passengers on an Alaska cruise ship begin disappearing mysteriously. A retired cop and his wife begin to suspect the cruise line is covering up a secret government gene-splicing project.

*3. Delusional obsession: A woman’s son is tragically killed in a distant war. One day at the mall, she meets a young man who strongly resembles her son (or does he?). She drugs and kidnaps the young man, taking him into her home, where she attempts to remake her formerly happy family life.

*4. “Just disturbing”: An Internet predator is stalking a woman. She uses her computer savvy to trace the stalker, only to discover the predator is her husband (who doesn’t know it’s her he’s stalking).

5. Contamination: A man with an obsessive-compulsive fear of touching others, suddenly and miraculously receives the gift of “laying on hands.” But when he cures others, he takes their maladies on himself.

6. The unknown: After a meteor strike in New Mexico, a young couple on vacation begin to suspect each other as not being “human.”

7. Agoraphobia: A man suffering from a debilitating, progressive eye disease begins seeing demons in large crowds.

8. Panic: Locked down in the basement under fear of an immanent terrorist strike, residents of a plush apartment building begin to turn on each other.

*9. Reincarnation: Ever since he was hit on the head with a baseball at age six, Charlie has had flashes of insight—visions—of a past world. Now as an adult he realizes that a crime unsolved in a past life might help him prevent one in his current life.

10. Secrets: A moralistic and talented doctor gets involved in a profitable, large corporation’s organ-harvesting business. When pushed to find more and rarer organs to harvest, he finds he must make a horrifying choice: sacrifice one member of his family to save the rest.