BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Relationship Stuff, and Career Aspirations
This was going to be a post with a few random notes, but as I started writing it became all about my recent and future dating activities. So it's kind of unified in theme, now. Funny how that worked. I even went back and changed the title.
It's the weekend. Late Friday night, at least. And I'm busy. Most of my weekends are busy, now that I have a new girlfriend. I'm either down at her place for a day and a half, or she's up here, and while the time is fun, it flies, and I'm certainly not online or even on the computer during that time. So when I get back on (the computer) late Sunday night, I'm going a million miles an hour to catch up on what I would usually have been doing all day Saturday and/or Sunday.
This weekend Elle's off to some family events all day Saturday, but she'd going to drive up here early Sunday morning, hopefully arriving in time to surprise me in bed. Later in the day we're doing a sorta double date with Malaya and her husband (they're approaching their first anniversary, so I suppose I should stop saying "new" husband?). Neither Malaya or her guy have met Elle, and since I've told each party a fair amount about the other, I think that curiosity is fairly high. (I knew Malaya's husband long before she ever met him, so there was never any such "first" meeting curiosity betwixt myself and he, when they were dating.) And I've not talked to the capricious young woman formerly known as the I.G. in weeks, so there's very little likelihood of Elle and she ever coming face to face.
One thing that's very odd (to me) with Elle is our mutual physical admiration. I don't just mean sex -- I mean that we are both fairly visual creatures, and we're both in better shape than any of each other's past boy/girl friends, so we tend to spend some amount of time in various states of undress, simply admiring each others physiques.
I'll spare you any overly eroticized descriptions, but she's a dancer and is fairly tall for a woman, so I'm forever getting lost tracing up and down the smooth lengths of her long, shapely legs. I'm also overly fond of her primary objects of human sexual dimorphism, as well as the curve of her upper thigh, where it tapers out at the hip and my hands naturally slide down over her smooth, flat stomach.
For her part, she is forever focusing on an unmentionable portion of my anatomy, but she also quite enamored of my shirtless upper body. And, as I said previously, she loves red hair and freckles, the later of which I have in abundance on my upper arms and shoulders.
It always amazes me that women like the male body, especially that they like body hair. It's become fairly trendy for men to shave themselves to look like overgrown altar boys, but I've yet to meet a woman who actually prefers a bare-chested man to one with body hair. And that includes the IG, who hated and waged constant war on her own body hair, and was 21 when we met; seemingly in the prime age range to believe the media hype about chest waxed metrosexuals.
Women even love hair on the legs; one of the funniest former sex stories Elle ever told me was about a guy she dated who had shaved his genitals. And not just the cock and balls, but several inches up his thighs and stomach. She said it was just a weird, deforested sight, and not at all erotic.
My experiences make me wonder who exactly is pushing the hairless man ideal? Homosexual fashion magazine photographers? (Except that gay men don't seem to dislike body hair either.) At any rate, I've not shaved my chest in years, since Malaya asked me to stop doing it since the stubble tickled her ear when she laid her head on my chest or stomach. And I'm certainly not going to start now, the way Elle loves to run her hands and finger tips over it.
Yes, that's me in a very recent photo, to the right. I thumbnailed it so anyone opposed to a topless man won't scar their beautiful eyes. Click it to see it larger. No, I don't know what's going on with my forehead there. It's an odd angle, and unforgiving bathroom lights overhead.
The picture stemmed from an amusing girlfriend interaction. I was giving my head a buzz, as I do every few weeks, and I texted Elle to tell her that she'd be seeing a bit less of me next time we met, she asked for a pic. That's what resulted, and since I may not continue to have pecs and abs forever, I figured I should immortalize the fitness moment on the blog. I'm not doing any special diet or physical training; just my usual 90 minutes 3 or 4x a week at the gym, with most of that spent on cardio. I imagine that if I concentrated more on lifting, and took some of those protein powders that are forever getting professional athletes suspended, I'd really see some upper body definition form. Perhaps someday...
I must be doing something right, since Elle is always raving about what a perfectly "manly" shape I have. The wider shoulders than waist, the muscular legs, the solid jaw and defined neck, etc. None of those are things I think of myself as a paragon of, but she certainly enjoys the visuals. Sometimes when we're lounging around she asks me to get up and walk around just so she can enjoy the view. I'm game, though it feels weird. I'm not self conscious, but I've always thought of myself as average to ugly in looks, and I was also the skinny kid. So why is this hot chick asking me to parade around for her eyes? She probably feels much the same strangeness when I ask her to parade around, bend over, pose with a saucy expression on her face, etc, for me, but she's done some modeling and has danced and sung on stage countless times, so it's less odd for her. Besides, men are usually the visual creatures in a relationship, so women are more used to being looked over and admired in private, not to mention their "every guy is looking at my boobs/ass" regular daily existence.
At any rate, her constant comments on my desirability influenced the above photo. Also, I sent it to Malaya's cell and asked her if I'd ever been in that sort of shape when I was with her. I wasn't trolling for compliments, and in fact I rather expected snark and sarcasm. But I was genuinely curious what she'd say, since she hasn't seen me without a shirt in years. (She said surprisingly nice things, and confirmed that I'd never been that muscular when in her acquaintance.)
It's hard to keep track of one's own bodily changes. I see myself every day, and muscles grow very slowly, so I can't really remember if I was bigger or smaller 4 or 5 years ago. I suppose most men around my age experience a similar transformation, though it's usually going the other way on the fitness meter. And that's probably where I'd be going, if I hadn't been single and childless and trying to date 22 y/o's over the past couple of years.
The muscles and six pack never quite got me through the door with the IG, but they certainly helped win Elle over. Or more accurately, they didn't really affect her "I like him a lot" judgment, but they did make her enjoy the "getting to know him in a physical way" process more than she might otherwise have. It's funny, since she's much more discerning in her partner selection than the (secretly slutty) IG was (that's one of the little details that came out when we argued as our friendship apparently came to an end earlier this summer). Elle has dated a lot of guys, especially in the month+ she was doing online dating before we met, but most of them were just one or two dates and not so much as a peck on the cheek. She's very often marveled at how attracted she was to me, and how the things we've been doing together are different than her usual behavior with a new boyfriend.
The irony is that the IG, while much younger and having dated far fewer guys than Elle, had sex with substantially more men, though most of them were very short term relationships she almost invariably regretted afterwards. It's ironic since she knew me much longer than most guys she went down on, and she liked me a great deal more, and often told me how much more attractive/built I was than most of her exes. (And non-exes she concealed during our time together. She just came to think of me as a friend and a big brother, rather than a boyfriend, and she liked me too much to ruin our relationship with sex. And she was right, since that would have ruined it, especially since she would have cheated on me, as she had (and will continue to do) with every other guy she's slept with. And I'm very monogamous, so we would have fought and it would have been ugly and then we'd not have been friends anymore.
Instead of that we didn't have sex, and ended up fighting about the non-sex, and it was ugly, and now we're not friends anymore. Great success!
I digress. Not that this post ever had a central theme to digress from.
Next weekend I'm going down to Elle's place on Saturday night and staying over through Sunday, and the weekend after that we're looking at some sort of getaway. Up to wine country for an overnight, down to Monterey, etc. She's got a real job doing scientific lab stuff, and she needs to tend ongoing experiments and projects almost every day (frequently including weekends) so she can't just take off a Friday and/or Monday and be gone for 4 days without a lot of advance planning, which slightly limits our ability to dash off for romantic weekends away.
I'm interested in enjoying some of those with her, though I've had to do some soul searching to feel accommodating about that sort of activity. Much less encouraging. Who doesn't like a vacation? Me, that's who. I came to this realization some months ago, and probably blogged about it then. Though I certainly can't expect anyone reading this to remember that, since I didn't, and I (theoretically) wrote it. At any rate, the realization was that most people enjoy travel and getaway activities on weekends or holidays since they work all week, and whether they love or hate their jobs, when they leave work on Friday evening, they want to not think about it until Monday morning.
That's a perfectly natural concept, it's just not one I've ever really experienced, since I've never had a M-F, 9-5 type job. I'm always working on some freelance editing project, or a website, or writing fiction, or at least I should be. So I don't have a regular schedule, which means I don't really have any regular vacations. When I'm not at home I'm always thinking about the work I should/could be doing, and since I enjoy my work and since it's got to be kept up on constantly, I usually do some hours of it every day.
In a larger sense, most people don't have anything personal tied up in their jobs or careers. They do them for the money and maybe the satisfaction, but it's not really anything personal. They're just a cog in a wheel, and if they weren't doing what they do, someone else would, with no real difference to the company or the world at large.
That's not meant as an insult; it's just the way of things. Sure, some teachers are really good and memorable to their students, and some doctors save lives, etc. But the vast majority of people are fairly faceless and highly fungible, in their careers. Usually by choice; it's certainly easier and safer to go to work and just do what you're assigned than it is to strike out on your own and take all the risks/rewards/initiative.
I'm rambling here, but my point is that I feel a more personal connection to my work than most people do. Not so much the website stuff; true, if I didn't do it much of it wouldn't get done, on my site or any other, but if a few tens of thousands of Diablo 3 fans had slightly less game info and news to read, it wouldn't really change their lives in any significant fashion. Not much more so than if their usual barrista were eaten by Shamu, and the new guy put too much/little cream in their mochachino.
On the fiction though, as terribly as I've (so far) underachieved my potential, I am the only one who can do it. True, the fantasy/horror/mystery readers of the world aren't exactly living lives of quite desperation, deprivation, and misery due to the fact that I've written about a dozen fewer books than I should have, to this point in my life. But the books/movies I have in my head aren't going to be written by anyone else, and if/when I write them, they'll be something permanent, a literary legacy, for better or for worse. And to that I feel some amount of responsibility (though not enough to do more than 1/10th as much writing as I fucking well should be doing), which makes me want/need to work on them. Even on weekends.
These thoughts came about chiefly from reading many of the online dating profiles (not Elle's, though) where the women (men too, but I seldom read those) were so gleefully up front about their desires to party and go crazy every minute of every weekend, and to get out of the city/state/country the minute their vacations arrived. I had subliminal annoyance/confusion about that for a while, until I finally realized why it bothered me. It was due to what I said above; that I feel a need/urge/responsibility to do some work every day, and it seems very weird to me that a person (most people) are the complete opposite. When they're not at work they're not working or thinking about working. In fact, they're working hard to not think about working. That's the whole point of weekend getaways and vacations and drunken nights out for most people!
Which is fine. Whatever gets them (you) through. If I had a job I didn't like and only did for the $, I'm sure I'd feel much the same way. (Though I'd probably spend those weekends and nights diving into my fiction writing as an escape. Which might actually result in more writing productivity, ironically.) But it took me a while to come to this realization, and for months I was mildly annoyed at all the dating personals written by people who wanted nothing but party/fun on weekends. "Sit down, stay home, and accomplish something with your life!" I found myself muttering. And while that reaction is perfectly rational for me, or when applied to my life, it's utterly irrelevant and misplaced when aimed at the lives of most people, who work at work, and try to have fun and forget about work when they're not at work. They're not going to write novels, or even maintain websites, and there's no benefit to them sitting home at their computers at nights. They might as well party, or travel. In fact, those are probably much more wholesome and enriching behaviors than the gaming, watching TV, reading-the-paper-and-yelling-at-their-kids alternatives.
Not that many of the women whose profiles I was viewing had papers to read or kids to yell at, but you get my drift.
Fortunately, Elle agrees and understands my psychology on this. She has a job she loves, but it's not one she can do much on when she's not in the lab. She can read scientific journals and work on grants and proposals and articles and such, but even those largely require her to be in the lab for tech work, computer access, etc. Plus she mostly does that stuff at work, to keep herself busy while she's running experiments on this and that. When away from work, shes' not a party animal (just a dancing machine), and she loves to read and engage in other quiet and solitary pursuits in her free time. So she's quite happy to set aside a couple/few hours during our planned weekends together, when she'll read, or take a walk, or window shop while I hunch over my laptop and attempt to further my literary aspirations.
That's the plan, anyway. Thus far it exists entirely in the theoretical, since we've not had any whole weekends to spend together, and when we are in each others company for a day, we can't help but interact for hours on end, often without the aid of verbal utterances. And it's not like we're eager to put a halt to that, but all things in good time, and since she's been spending virtually all of her free time in some sort of socialization, with her family, friends, or me, Elle's probably happy to plan some free time to herself, for reading or just thinking, while I'm tapping away.
Not that we'll be putting that to the test this weekend, with her early morning arrival, lunch with my friends, and then a few more precious evening hours together before she's got to drive back home to get some sleep before Monday morning work. Personally, I'm looking forward to it.
Also, I've not Twittered in weeks, but that's since I changed my phone upload over to the @Diii.net Twitter account, so I could tweet updates directly from Blizzcon. I did, about five times, during the Blizzard HQ tour on the Thursday before Blizzcon. I then completely forgot about the twitter distraction once BlizzCon began. I was on my laptop constantly at the show, usually in the press room, but I was writing content, posting news, jumping into the live chat, etc. Not burping up 140 character non sequiturs for an audience a fraction the size of that which was viewing the forums and the D3 main page. (I did text a fair amount over my phone, but those were mostly to Malaya, who was also at BlizzCon, or to Elle, who was as almost as horny and missing me as I was horny and missing her.)
After Blizzcon I remembered that any tweets sent from my phone would go to @Diii.net rahter than @BlackChampagne, but I only remembered that far enough to stop myself from sending any tweets, rather than as motivation to go into the account and change the settings back. Thus when I've thought occasionally about tweeting during the past 2.5 weeks I've just not done it, since said tweet would have gone up to the @Diii.net, where posts about my mercantile misadventures, cats, garden, and prophylactic purchases would have been out of place. At best.
I just switched my phone tweets back to BC though, so for both of you who sometimes thought about checking there, you can think about it again. It's almost sure not to entertain. If it had been working today, I'd have made two posts in the evening. Which I shall now recreate. With better grammar and punctuation than my thumbs would have provided, and likely character overflows as well.
# I'm enjoying the irony of browsing the birth control aisle in Target while women wheel screaming babies past.
# They say not to shop for food when you're hungry because you'll indulge cravings. By that metric when could I ever rationally buy these intimate items?
I've got quick notes for about 8 blog topics, so I'm just going to shoehorn several into each post this week, to get them up (instead of forever rotting on my notes page, where most of my potential blog posts have gone the past months). This time it's job applications and P.E. Obama.
So, jobs. Partially inspired by the IG and the eleventeen jobs she's had since I've known her, partially from the germination of a long time professional curiosity of mine, and largely thanks to the collapse of the US financial industry and the stock market it took with it, I'm looking for work in a bookstore. Seasonal, to make some extra cash between now and the new year, or perhaps longer, if it works out that way. It's not a career concept, at any rate.
I've applied to several local bookstores, and chains as well. My first choice was The Book Passage, a legendary Bay Area bookstore located just a few miles south on 101. They're not doing any seasonal hiring, unfortunately. Times = tough. Neither are a couple of smaller bookstores in downtown San Rafael, which leaves the big chain outlets. Borders and Barnes and Noble are the two in this area, and when I went into the Borders in SR on Friday, while doing my various back-from-vacation shopping, I was told that they don't take or accept applications in person at Borders, and can't even tell you if they're hiring. The only way you can get a job with them is to go to their website and fill out an application online, which is then transferred to the local store.
That didn't sound so bad. After all, I hate the slowness and inefficiency of handwriting, and I was dreading the physical waste of time that comes from physically filling out forms. So it was with some anticipation that I began the process on Friday night. That mood didn't last long. I'm usually a proponent of automation, but in this case it sucked. I'm talking a mouthful of sweaty digital donkey balls. Before I rant, I'll offer disclosure. Here's the Borders Jobs page where you can, "Apply for a Seller, Supervisor, or temporary holiday position." and see for yourself if I'm lying.
The first stages aren't bad. I much prefer typing my personal information over handwriting it, and the forms are pretty well laid out, aside from lacking an automatic field advance. So when you're entering your phone number, for instance, you have to hit Tab (or use the mouse) to move to the next box, when a smart form would automatically advance you to the next box when you've filled the previous one with the requisite numerals. A minor complaint, though.
Much more annoying was the inflexibility of the fields. My current employer is an internet gaming company located in the UK. Guess how much luck I had entering a non-US phone number into the form? Yes, that's right. It's impossible, since the UK number isn't divided up into XXX-XXX-XXXX like a US number. It doesn't even have 10 digits. And since the other fields for name and address only allow about 15-20 characters in each, I couldn't cheat and put the number after the name or company title. And since there aren't any boxes provided for additional information, there's basically no way to enter anything that's not a normal length/format US address or phone number.
Better yet, the entire online application never has any fields for personal input. It's 100% just-the-facts. Names, dates, locations, salary earned, etc. That's fine if you worked at a Starbucks down the street within the last couple of years. But if you've done unconventional employment, volunteered in a library, want to mention how highly computer literate you are, want to stress how much you read and have knowledge about books, that your previous job involved constant interaction with and sales to drunken football fans, etc... there's no way to do it. If I were a Borders store manager I'd hate to have to rely on that form to find my new hires, since it's so easily lied to or manipulated, and it can't do anything to whittle down the idiots and lunatics with acceptable resumes (fake or otherwise); people you'd need half a minute of face to face conversation to determine that their resume was going straight into the bin the minute they walked away -- assuming the act of affecting their departure didn't require mall security and the judicious use of a taser gun.
Needless to say, I'm bitching about this since their online application was singularly ill-suited to let me stress (what I think) are my strengths for the job. More annoying for anyone was the fact that the application only allowed me to select one location, when I'd be happy to work at any of their three stores in my general vicinity. I guess I'm supposed to fill it out again each time, for each store? On top of that, the "which position are you applying for" part was equally limiting, since it only allowed one to be chosen, and they had them needlessly segregated.
I'm trying to work in a bookstore. Ideally I'd be on the floor, helping idiots customers find their books, or recommending other books if what they want isn't available. As part of that job I assume I'd be responsible for looking things up on the inventory computer, checking in the back room, restocking shelves as necessary, etc. Or I might be working up front at the cash register, though I assume the people who do that are usually just cashiers who don't handle other bookstore tasks. I don't want to work in the Starbucks or Seattle's Best Coffee or whatever their "cafe" is called. I don't drink coffee, I don't know (or want to learn) the complicated ingredient combinations found in any of those 800 calorie desserts in a cup, and I really don't want to smell the steaming shit all day. If I wanted to work in a coffee store I'd just apply at Starbucks; there are 10 of those closer to my house than any bookstore, and they pay better too.
On the Borders application I couldn't say that. Not that I would have, at least in so many words. (One of the Barnes and Nobles I was going to apply to had no openings in the book section, but had immediate opening in the cafe. I wasn't interested, for reasons elaborated in the prior paragraph.) But I was flummoxed by the application form, which had different, overly-detailed descriptions of the job positions of customer help on the floor, store manager, assistant manager, cashier, stocker, and I think one other, something like inventory management. And no, of course you couldn't check more than one -- because there's no way the same person would want to do floor help, stocking, inventory, and maybe move up to assistant managing over time. Oh wait, that's what everyone there does now. Pity their application form has no idea of that basic fact.
All this was a pain, but I probably wouldn't have been moved to blog about it. What really put the whipped cream on the mochachino was the personality quiz I had to complete after the resume portion. Yes, really. There's a 99 question personality survey you have to fill out, which works like an idiot's version of the Myers-Briggs personality test. The test consists of 99 questions, all of which you must answer with strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree. I say it's an idiot's version of the test not since it's designed to catch idiots (though it might work for that purpose), but because it was clearly written by one.
I should have copied some of the questions down while taking it, since I knew I'd want to rant about it later. I don't care enough to go back and fill out the resume again just to get to the test, but the questions were all indirectly job-oriented, and so ham-fistedly unsubtle that I frequently eloeled while reading over them. There were 99 questions, but actually there were only about 15. They just had 7 or 8 different versions of each, slightly reworded and scattered in random order. Most of them were about human interactions, and they said things like, "I get annoyed when people ask me questions." "I find people who ask questions annoying." "I enjoy answering questions." "I dislike helping people find things." "I think people are often annoying." "I enjoy helping people find things." and so on. Keep in mind that these are to be answered on the agree/disagree metric, so they're mostly statements. And keep in mind that they were written by an idiot, so lots of them got into double-negative confusion. Statements like, "I do not dislike tidying up disordered inventory." Um... maybe?
The dumbest thing about it was how obvious the questions were, in their intent. That was what I spent my agree/disagree box clicking thinking about. How much of a brown-nosing yes-man do they want me to be? "I sometimes find other people annoying." Well obviously everyone on earth is going to say "agree" to that one, and "strongly agree" if they're honest. No one with a cerebellum in their brain doesn't find other people annoying, at least some of the time. Equally obvious is the fact that the test is written to get idiots to honest themselves right out of a job. So by that right, you should say "disagree," even though you know, and the test-reader knows, you're lying. But should you say "strongly disagree?" Would the computer scoring algorithm be set up cleverly enough to red flag people who are so obviously and blatantly lying by saying the right thing? Probably not. Probably you should go all Smithers on every single damn question. I didn't, and combined with my lack of a resume that fit neatly into their preset fields, I don't expect that I'll ever hear back from Borders.
Fortunately, B&N has 4 stores in the immediate vicinity, not even counting the ones in SF (which I didn't, since it's just such a pain to get into the city and try to park somewhere for less than your actual hourly job wage), and while they have their application online, it's just a two-page PDF you can print off, fill out by hand, and take into a local B&N. Which I did. Four times. Saturday and yesterday, before a semi-date in the evening with the IG. The B&N application is straight forward, with space to put in appropriate comments, job skills, positions you're applying for, etc. Plus you give it to a real person, in person, and if they like you enough to not reject you out of hand, they'll call you to come in for an interview. Which is what I'll be doing tomorrow afternoon at two of the stores I applied to.
I'm not exactly excited, but I would like a decent part time job for a month or so. I also look at it sort of as market research. What books do people really want, how do they ask for them, how do they make up their minds about what to buy, which types of books and covers stand out to people, how do stores stock their shelves, what factors go into the books that get better placement (I do know that the recent releases on the big tables near the entrance are allocated by publisher payment), and so on. Plus, as with all "real" jobs, the frequent boredom and misery should serve as suitable motivation to get more writing done in my "spare" time, so I can earn a living with my actual skills, doing something I actually enjoy. That's the theory, anyway.
I might let you know, or quite possibly elect to say nothing more about it until after the holiday season (and my seasonal job) comes to an end. Lest I Dooce myself right out of the job I've just narrowly obtained.
Just to cram in something totally unrelated, you might enjoy the recent Sixty Minutes piece on the Obamas. It's just an interview, basically a puff piece, but it's interesting since Barack talks so clearly and cogently about the financial crisis issue. I also liked the personal stuff afterward. I'd never seen an interview with the future First Lady, and hadn't seen she and Barack interact at all. I follow politics pretty closely, but I do it online and concentrate on policy and positions -- I don't watch TV or personality stuff. So I was curious to see Barack and Michelle talking about personal issues, and doing it side by side on camera. Their couple dynamics, the way they tease each other about certain things, their pet jokes, their inside knowledge of each other, the old story about Barack's rusted out car and crappy Washington apartment... all fascinating, since I'd never seen any of it before. I took it as two real people talking candidly about their lives in an amazing situation. I'm sure an Obama-hater could see it as artifice and carefully packaged media-friendly bullshit. YMMV.
I must admit to some love for Obama's comments on the stupidity of the BCS and the lack of a college football playoff. They were prescient, since this year, like almost every year, we're most likely not going to have a clear choice for national champion. Well, if Alabama wins out they'll be the only undefeated team with a really hard schedule, and they'll deserve to be #1. But the choice of who plays them in the final game is a total dart toss, and if they lose then the top 2 teams will be entirely arbitrary, since everyone will have at least 1 loss, and the only undefeated teams will be from minor conferences who don't have the strength of schedule to rank in the top 5.
Here's the current top 9 in the BCS standings. These are the only teams with a legitimate claim to be in the title game. The #10 team now is Ohio State and with 2 losses and a weak conference schedule they're not in the conversation.
1. Alabama 11-0 2. Texas 10-1 3. Oklahoma 10-1 4. Florida 10-1 5. USC 9-1 6. Utah 12-0 7. Texas Tech 10-1 8. Penn State 11-1 9. Boise State 11-0
Texas Tech had a chance to make it a clear #1 vs. #2, but they just lost to Oklahoma (who had previously lost to Texas, who in true rock-paper-scissors fashion, had previously lost to Texas Tech). Florida is going to play Alabama in the SEC title game, and while Alabama is ranked higher, Florida looks better. If Florida wins that one, there won't be a true national champion. Oh, the polls will crown someone, but it'll be based on opinions and arguments and sentiment, not an actual winner on the field. You know, like in every other sport known to modern man.
Obama's argument is one I've advocated myself in the past. Put the top 8 teams into a mini-tournament, and find a true champion. This year it would be tough to pick the top 8, with 9 strong contenders, but several of those teams have another game, and might drop out of the ranks with a loss. At any rate, it's far better to have controversy over #8 vs. #9 to enter a tournament in which they'd have to win three games, than over #1 for the title between teams that have never played each other at all.
The biggest stumbling block to the tournament is the entrenched bowl game system, but that seems easily overcome. Just pick 7 bowls to host the games and rotate the games each year, so in 7 years every bowl gets to host an equal number of games from each round. Or if only 3 or 4 bowl games bid high enough, those host the semis and finals, while lesser bowls host the first round games. Which would, I'll point out, feature much more highly ranked teams than all but one or two bowl games do in the current system.
Or it could be done with fewer bowl games if there were more than one round in a given location each year. There's also an objection that the teams would play too many games, but that's pretty fatuous. It's not like anyone confuses the enrollees in the semi-pro football programs at these schools with actual students, and anyway, only 4 teams would play an extra bowl game and only 2 would play 2 extra games. Plus the games take place in late December or early January, when school isn't in session or the semester is just starting. Everyone knows you miss nothing the first week of a class other than a boring hour reading over the syllabus.
The real sticking point, unfortunately, is that there's no commissioner of college football to organize things and drive through sweeping legislation. There are a bunch of banana republic conferences with their own rules and allegiances, uncooperative bowl games, TV networks with long term contracts, and plenty of people who don't really care if there's a "true" national champion, so long as the TV ratings remain high and the alumni keep giving donations for new weight rooms and "loaner" vehicles for star athletes.
