First off, in regards to American Football... I think Matt Leinart is going to have a great career in the NFL. Maybe he won't become the next Peyton Manning or something, with insane stat-lines. I'm not going to write off any possibility of that yet, but I'll surrender the point that he doesn't have the greatest of arms. But that's not necessarily a requirement in the NFL, particularly as Leinart has more than enough of an arm.
I think what'll give Leinart a great chance for success is his head. He's smart, having showed Peyton-esque audibling during his senior year. He's accurate, although we don't know how much of his accuracy is due to the incredible talent in his receiving corps (or did he make them incredible? Only time will tell). But the biggest thing? Aside from one game so far (the one against UCLA), Leinart has never shown any sign of having no confidence. Even that last one can be chalked up to being emotional, which is allowed, even after this year's fill of emotional success games (Roger Clemens, Brett Favre, the Giants after Mr. Mara's death...). The man bounces back from "bad games" as if they never happened. And he takes care of the ball. In short, he comes into the draft being a polished, veteran quarterback, which should knock off a heck of a lot of adjustment time to the NFL. Even if he never puts up insane stats, I think he'll put up the one column that matters the most: wins.
I also think he's going to the Cardinals. With that receiving corps...
Second thought is on Christmas. I love how some Christians dislike the holiday because it's been so commercialized. Apparently a friend of mine got lambasted by another friend for calling it xmas (taking out the Christ from Christmas).
Newsflash: Ain't a Christian holiday, chaps. The actual origin can be tied back to either Scandinavian Yule (12/19), Germanic worship of Oden (roughly the 16th of December), the Roman Saturnia (the second week or so of December) or the Roman birthday of Mithra, which is, incidentally, on the 25th. Christmas became Christmas only because some pope arbitrarily called the birthday of Jesus the 25th, believed to be in order to draw in the pagan believers (look! what you're worshipping is close to ours!).
The other beef I have is that I'm celebrating (and I say I loosely, because I don't actually celebrate Christmas) "X-mas," a jolly holiday of giving, based on Santa Claus, a caucasian old fellow with a big white beard, who's wearing red and white gear, sitting on a Sleigh with a big magical sack of presents, coming out of the North Pole with his crew of little Christmas elves, pulled by a dozen(?) reindeer. Not some birthday of some religious hokey or some dealio about some Russian monk named Saint Nicholas. Keep that crucified man out of the jolly day.
The third thought is on how, when you go to bed, in the minutes you're about to sleep, it's incredible how many ideas flow into your head. I guess people call that insomnia, because you can't get to sleep, so you end up tossing in turning while trying to forcibly stop your mind from wandering everywhere. Scatterbrain. Cough, cough, that being said, it's really interesting. It's like, in those precious minutes, your brain does a hard analysis of what went through the day as well as any subconscious ideas that may have been brought up through your experiences, melds them together and gives you a heck of a lot of brainstormed ideas.
It's a real pity you can't just like, telepathically burn these ideas onto some sheet as you sleep... getting up and writing things down is a pain in the butt when you're slowly drifting off -_- So all you can do is pray that you remember, or at least tag them with other ideas so you'll bring them back en masse when you do start writing.
