>>Can you explain what you mean by "it blinks at me"? 

Does nothing.  Does not open the file. I mean, it looks at first like any other attempt to open a file.  But the result is nothing.

I attached the Mac specs below.

Here is the /tmp directory permissions

% ls -ald /private/tmp
drwxrwxrwt 19 root wheel 608 Apr 6 11:12 /private/tmp