All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth, and a Robotic Dinosaur
the commune's Steve Kepple has an early Christmas request 

Monday, Oct. 15, 2001
Every year when Christmas rolls around, kids everywhere are treated to the months of anticipation and hours of fun that only a really awesome Christmas present can bring. Unless they get a robot dog that’s retarded.

Last year for Christmas I got a retarded robot dog. It doesn’t do anything cool. I was hoping that my robot dog would have heat vision or at least be able to curse in French, but all it does is eat puppy food and pee on the couch. I told my mom and dad that we should check the instructions, because they probably put the batteries in backwards. That happened one year when I got the Hot Wheels Detailing Shop for Christmas and it started smoking and caught the drapes on fire. That wasn’t such a big deal though since Billy Doogan down the street got the same thing and his Hot Wheels always looked lame after that, he could never get the paint to go on smooth and all of his cars looked like they were fresh out of a burn ward. But last year I was excited about the robot dog so I thought we should check the directions. My mom and dad said that Santa hadn’t brought any directions but I think they were just afraid of being wrong again, like the year I wanted the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers video and it turned out dad got confused and got me Nightly Muff’n Pussy Rangers instead. Dad thought we should just keep it but mom made him take it back and get the right one.

So last year I was stuck with a retarded robot dog that probably had the batteries in backwards. Or maybe it’s just deflective from the factory, but something’s definitely wrong. My friend Carl Washbaum got a deflective Poo-Chi for his birthday one time and all it would do was rub it’s butt on the floor while it made the noise from electronic battleship, and mine is at least ten times more screwed up than his. I even think that mine’s getting bigger, which is definitely not supposed to happen. If it keeps this up, pretty soon I won’t be able to close the lid on my toybox.

At least Carl’s deflective Poo-Chi was fun for a while. We used to hide it under his older sister’s bed and she would run around, looking for her cell phone every time it went off. Mine just makes whining noises and chews on an old tennis shoe. And if you thought a Tamagotchi had to be fed a lot, you obviously have never owned a retarded robot dog.

My parents thought I might have fun with my robot dog if I taught it to do some tricks. Billy Doogan has a robot parrot that he taught to say “Fuck You Asshole” just like in Terminator so I thought my robot dog might be able to do some cool tricks too. But unless you consider crapping on the kitchen floor to be a real special trick, my robot dog just plain sucks at tricks. No “Simon Says”, no adapter to connect to my Nintendo 64, nothing. I did see him eat a potato beetle over by the pantry one time but I’m having a hard time figuring out how to impress my friends with that one.

It’s hard not getting your butt kicked at school when you’re missing a front tooth and you whistle when you say “Miss Spankenauber” in class. Everybody thinks you have a crush on the teacher and that means serious underwear violations. Richie Turner really does have a crush on Miss Spankenauber, but his dad brought him a GameCube from Japan last month so he’s pretty much untouchable.

If you think a lousy retarded robot dog is going to keep me from coming home with snapped underwear elastic and that it’s going to restore my status among my classmates, you’re sorely mistaken. At this point, there’s only one thing that’s going to set things right: a robot dinosaur.

A robot dinosaur would be bound to do some awesome tricks, and probably could eat other kids’ robot pets alive. Maybe even other kids. And I bet it could do my homework, too, or at least scare Miss Spankenauber into giving me less workbook pages to do every night. And I’m sure it’s got some kind of flashcard mode or some kind of educational thing going on somewhere in there, easily making it a better choice than that lame-o “LearnCo Systems Tutoring Funputer” that I know my parents have been looking at. And I’d be willing to bet you never have to mash up a heartworm pill into a robot dinosaur’s food every night.

That would be sweet.