So yeah...

So most of this week, my computer has either been disabled, or simply turned off. The reason? While surfing on Monday, I seem to have downloaded some spyware and a virus (the New Poly Win32 virus), which has made using this computer very difficult, so this might be a truncated post. My parents, along with my grandmother and my aunt Claudia will be coming next week, and will bring with them Robert's desktop, which he doesn't need at Valpo. So I'll likely be switching computers sometime Monday or Tuesday, at which point I'll be totally up to speed with emails and IM's.

Its been an interesting week, but I want to focus on just a few issues, two from sports, and one news story.

First, golf. I watched most of the final round of the PGA Sunday, mostly in part to Phil Mickelson being involved. Like many people, I tend to prefer Phil to Tiger, for the same reason people root for John Daly, Phil is more human, more approachable than Tiger. I began rooting for Phil in 1999, when I heard a Detroit radio host criticize him for saying he would leave the US Open if his wife, Amy, went into labor. When I heard that, I immediately saw Phil as someone who actually had his priorities in the proper order, and therefore, as someone to root for. The fact that he survived being labeled, "Best Player never to win a Major," for so long, also made him human. It really shouldn't surprise anyone that he drew such crowds of vocal support Sunday and Monday, in many ways, he's closer to the rest of us than someone like Tiger.

Part of the worship of Tiger, and the subsequent derision directed at Phil for so long can be explained by the movie Searching for Bobby Fischer. Joe Mantegna's character, the father, is a sportswriter, and wants his son to have more of a "killer instinct" to have more of an all-consuming drive to win at allcosts, the same qualities he admires in the athletes he covers. Josh's mother, Joan Allen, loves that her son is sensitive to other people, and is, in many ways, a saint. She doesn't really want her son to become some cold, unfeeling chess machine. In the end, it's Mantegna's character who learns that his son, the person, is much better off being the kinder, more sensitive person, than the killer. What people admire about many athletes, like a killer instinct, like their single-mindedness, can often make them wretched to deal with outside of those arenas they are used to. They might not know how to relate to people, how to be anything but the athlete or coach. What I love about Phil is that its obvious his family is the most important thing in his life, that he'd rather be a great father than a great golfer.

The Randy Moss issue, frankly, is incredibly stupid. Personally, I'm not shocked he admitted to smoking marijuana, and frankly, neither shopuld anyone else. He hasn't been a part of the substance abuse policy, and it hasn't seemed to effect his performance on the field, so frankly, I don't see the real issue people have with him. The issue might well be why the NFL only tests once a season for illegal drugs, essentially allowing someone to smoke 11 months out of the year, except before camp.

I admire Cindy Sheehan. I can understand why, for example, she seems to have been somewhat radicalized, especially with regards to Israel. She has been, by far, the most effective messenger of the anti-war movement, one who has an incredibly powerful story. Has it helped that it is August, traditionally the slowest news month? Of course. It's helped that there is very little activity in Washington, nothing to distract the news cycle from Sheehan's protests. The President has mostly appeared cold and unfeeling, as someone more interested in working out and tooling around his Crawford mansion (a ranch is a working farm, with animals. The Bush "ranch" is not a working farm, after all, he's only there about two months a year."), then dealing with Cindy Sheehan. The Republicans can't attack her directly, though theirr proxies on radio and on Fox are doing so. It will be interesting to see what happens when Bush goes back to Washington, but right now, things at Camp Casey certainly seem to be interesting.