Winston

I have a good friend that minored in something called "Women's Studies" in college. As I think about (and, frankly, overanalyze) the term "women's studies", I find this field of study to be more and more of huge scam. It implies that women can be studied, with the intent of attaining actual concrete knowledge about women.

As I've suspected for years, there is no such thing as concrete knowledge about women. Trying to study the unknowable is really a joke. If football jocks in college have music appreciation as their blow-off class, girls have women's studies. Every textbook in one of their classes should be censored. Forget free speech... everything in that class could be responded to with "what are you talking about?" And whenever you say that to a woman, there's a heavy price to pay. So it's not free. And so it shouldn't be studied.

I say all of that because I need to setup my rant about my little brother's bulldog, Winston. I don't understand the appeal of bulldogs. The way a bulldog looks, its analogous counterpart in the human race is the 280 lb, bald, goatee-sporting, leather jacket wearing bouncer at a nightclub.



It doesn't look very cuddly. You can describe most bulldogs, and definitely Winston, as having a face that only a mother could love. He has a weird underbite and has so many wrinkles that he has well over 250% more facial skin that necessary to cover his cranium.



And yet, Winston has this animal magnetism about him that just makes girls swoon. My brother and dad took Winston to the doggie beach in Chicago a few months back, and couldn't get over the attention this pooch got! I don't understand it. If I could walk around fat, wrinkly, and lazy, and attract women at this rate, I shallow enough to admit that I'd happily trade my gym membership for hundred Happy Meals.

And, of course, I'm an "overcomplicate my life" idiot. I could probably just formulate a plan to lease Winston for a weekend from my brother. Instead, I'm trying to psychoanalyze a bulldog as a way of understanding how to grapple with the female mind.

My family's dog of about 15 years died back in March, and Winston coming around every few weeks has rejuvenated the household. But I still fail to see the charm. With most dogs, if you throw a ball, it'll chase the ball. Winston? After you throw the ball, he just looks at you with this nonchalant stare, as if to say, "Yeah. And if you had a bulldog-sized hamster wheel, you would expect me to get in and run 20 miles to nowhere, right? Moron."

This pooch knows how to settle in. 15 years of having our black laborador retriever, and not once did my family let her up on the couch. I come to visit a few weeks ago, and there are sheets covering every sit-able piece of furniture in the house... so that Winston can jump up and lounge on the couch!!!!

I was laying on the couch reading the newspaper on Saturday, and Winston just approached the couch ever so patiently. He sat like a good dog, facing me. Time goes by. I get up to use the washroom. When I return, Winston is laying, sprawled out on the couch, with his head on a pillow. I decide to mess with Winston and I start piling every blanket, quilt, pillow, and sheet on top of him. Little did I realize that Winston didn't care... as far as he was concerned, all those extra layers were just keeping him warm. He didn't get up for another half hour, until he heard my mom arrive home with dinner. My dinner, by the way.

So what is it about this dog? How in the world does this canine deserve such a posh lifestyle and gorgeous women ogling all over him?