Dear Facebook Friend who is Highly Annoyed:

No, I don’t like him either.

And yes, I wish everyone would turn away too.

And yes, I agree that cheering one the people rising  up for democracy in the Middle East seems more important, and that everyone should turn to that. And I know you didn’t say this, but it would make us all feel nobler.

And if you truly decide to abandon TV tomorrow if Charlie Sheen is again the lead story, then I applaud you for making a commitment and keeping it.

But while we may not like it, Charlie Sheen is important. He’s got 428,000,000 actual search responses on Google. He’s brought literally billions of dollars in revenue to the studio. His strange behavior instantly cost 200-300 people their jobs, plus associated losses in the surrounding economy (including Burbank, where I live and work). And he’s got serious — and interesting — problems.

We may not like it. It may offend your noble sensibilities. But Charlie Sheen is newsworthy.

My dog is like a femme fatale: beautiful, elegant, refined, and a little crazy. Can she dance merengue? Probably. But she won’t, because she’s not some cheap hustling dog like others I could mention.

This test helps you determine your knowledge of the wackiest commentators of today, Charlie Sheen, Muammar Qaddafi, and Glenn Beck. It’s amazing how interchangeable their lines are.

A couple of updates, both of them about seeming Edens that are becoming despoiled before us:

First, on my posts about Mike Daisey’s show “The Agony & The Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” which I posted about here  and here, I submit this interview with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak about the show. Wozniak was profoundly moved — and troubled — by what he saw, and is struggling with what to do about it. Which made me think of Wallace Shawn’s lifelong struggle with guilt about, well, seemingly everything. Except Wozniak seems determined to do something about it, but isn’t yet clear what that something will be.

Secondly, I direct you to another take on what I’m calling “Dark Archie,” a recent trend toward updating Archie and his Riverdale pals to the dark side, as was done with every other character in comics in the 1980’s.  Here was my initial take on that, and here was the update. Now someone provides us with this trailer of what a movie about the teenage Dark Archie might look like. With regard to Jughead, Moose, and Dilton, it all now makes so much sense.

Mike Daisey’s on-stage investigation of Apple and its impact on the world, which closes today at Berkeley Rep, continues to make waves in the tech sphere, as this piece in today’s New York Times shows. I didn’t get to see it while it was running in the Bay Area — as ideal a home for it, I think, as Hamlet found his uncle’s court to be when he wanted to see his little play staged — but I suspect I will in some place, at some time:  It now moves on to Woolly Mammoth in Washington, DC, and then Seattle Rep.

While I’m somewhat on the subject, I should note that I’m writing this from a MacBook Pro while snowbound in the mountains above Banning, California. I have a wifi signal — although it’s iffy — but my AT&T iPhone can’t connect to the cellular network. One of the regulars here asked a highly placed AT&T executive about getting cellphone coverage up here. His response, I was told:  “Get Verizon.”

Can’t swing the money to see that Broadway show featuring everybody’s favorite web-slinger? You’re in luck:  Here’s information about the five-buck Spider-Man alternative, which in addition to being super cheaper, includes beer.

And it’s asking, “Who moved my cheese?” This first “cyborg” is operated by a mouse brain — actually, a number of mouse brains stitched together. I love technology — and I’m surprised to find that this little video saddens and frightens me.

I couldn’t help thinking about the mouse’s “soul” — which I find I do believe in, as we understand it, and which is housed (or manifested) by the brain, at least while it’s “here.” (Clearly, I need to do some further thinking about this. Because I haven’t yet squared the functions of the brain with the location of “the soul,” against my other belief: in an afterlife.) In any event, watching the “cyborg” scurry about, I had the same response I’m sure everyone will: That it looked like a mouse trying to find its way out. Which made me think that that is a sad, lonely, and tortuous experience for the mouse. I say this also realizing that I’m personifying a thing that I’m not sure is “alive,” and that I’m also not sure how to define “life.” This, against the context of an often human-seeming robot beating two “Jeopardy” champs handily last week. We’re all going to have more and more of our assertions challenged by Artificial Intelligence and artificial/organic symbiosis.

Thoughts about that?

It’s not the response I would have expected from myself.