Since my little brother Timmy was so into Pokemon, my parents thought: why not get him a puppy? That was a year ago. I'm gonna ask you the logic in this. A small child of questionable morals plays a game in which little monsters are bred for arena combat. So you buy him a real animal? With teeth? This is calamatous.

Within the first week he'd already dubbed the mutt "PikaPuppy" and trained it to come whenever he yelled "I choose you!" And then he began the "training," which involved a plot of our backyard marked off with string and the unholy demise of no less than a dozen of his stuffed animals before mom and dad put a stop to it.

Of course, by then, PikaPuppy was already a killing machine. He's such a mixed-up mutt I couldn't even tell you what breeds are involved -- I think at some point a St. Bernard mated with a Beagle, then their children hit up on a rich old basset hound who hadn't yet inked his will. At some point, I'm pretty sure one of this dog's grandparents was the Reverend Al Sharpton. Or maybe Randy "Macho-Man" Savage.

So now the creature is almost a year old and Pokemon are a passing fad. No, now it's all Digimon for little Timmy, Digimon 24 hours a day. This makes things no less problematic; see, you have to FEED Digimon monsters to make them grow, so he's been stuffing this thing so fulla beef and kibble that he looks more like a turkey than a dog. Just this evening I was headed out for the big date and suddenly I had this football with teeth latched onto my butt.