Cannot retrieve held items on MAC 10.6.7

I am only about 3 or 4 puzzles into the game, in the prison where you have to give your cell buddy a cigarette made out of green goo and toilet paper. Anyway, I got the toilet paper and green goo and valve handle, but no matter how much I click around in the dark space above the ceiling, I cannot get to see or access the stuff I have collected so far to use it. I CAN however get the other two hidden icons above the playing screen, the free hint and the solution book on the right. What I can't see is the stuff which is usually across from the hint stuff on the left side of the screen.

Any ideas? I can't go on because I can't solve this puzzle without the stuff.
I tried turning the HW acceleration off and on again, to no effect, also tried quitting the game and restarting. Same problem whether full screen mode or not.

SW is MAC OSX10.6.7
Here's my hw
Hardware Overview:

Model Name:   iMac
Model Identifier:   iMac11,3
Processor Name:   Intel Core i3
Processor Speed:   3.2 GHz
Number Of Processors:   1
Total Number Of Cores:   2
L2 Cache (per core):   256 KB
L3 Cache:   4 MB
Memory:   4 GB
Processor Interconnect Speed:   5.86 GT/s
Boot ROM Version:   IM112.0057.B00
SMC Version (system):   1.59f2
Serial Number (system):   QP0.....
Hardware UUID:   F75366BD-07.....