From the Ridiculous to the Sublime

For all the perfectly sensible opinions expressed about the seemingly pointless and wasted attention paid to the "melt down" of Charlie Sheen, it strikes me that, on some level, the metaphor of melt down, which was applied ubiquitously in conjunction with the personal collapse of someone who, until very recently, was the highest paid actor in Television, amounted to, in some bizarre way, an omen of the more literal meltdown that is now in process in Japan. One wonders, with more than a little trepidation, what aspect of our world will next become a feature player in the ongoing serial global "meltdowns" small and immense, ridiculous and sublime.