The Penguin Eating Purple Jell-o
The penguin eating purple Jell-o,
He doesn’t know why he likes it so.
He’s not bothered by what the other penguins say,
He just eats all his cares away.
True story. Well, true-ish.
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Will
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Will
New Design at the Dead Pocket Shop
We have newly designed merchandise for sale at the Dead Pocket Shop! Check it out:
But, be warned: Anything you see there could be a colossal waste of time.
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Will
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Will
Carrotzilla Redrawn!
Carrotzilla has just been lovingly redrawn by Will Wood.
And if you want to use a Carrotzilla icon, download it here! It looks like this:
Just download your size:
LARGE | MEDIUM | SMALL | EXTRA SMALL
Now, put that sweater back on, Carrotzilla! No one wants to see that!
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Will
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Will
Blast From The Past: Some Will Wood Illustrations from the Year 2000!
While digging around at the DPS (looking for the lint roller) we came across a box labelled “Don’t Eat This.” We were curious, but not hungry. We uncovered some illustrations that are nearly 10-years-old now. Take a look:
We recognized this immediately as Carrotzilla! We’ve wondered where the original artwork was. Carrotzilla is a legend at the DPS. He’s been blamed for the burnt popcorn since, well, forever.
Who doesn’t love an older woman celebrating her birthday by flying on a fish? Yeah, that’s what we thought!
Cute, just cute. Mommy and baby fish. That’s just… precious. Okay, moving on…
We had a dance party a few years ago and Will came dressed as a Jive Robot. I guess this was the idea. His costume didn’t look much like this. It looked more like a flattened tomato with bifocals.
Poor fella. There’s nothing more tragic than a head on a candy dispenser.
I don’t particularly like this drawing, but I thought you might. It’s a crab with bunny ears and what looks like clown hair. What does that even mean? Looks like a reject from The Little Mermaid.
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Will
I Always Hated My Fifth Grade Algebra Teacher
I always hated my fifth grade algebra teacher.
It could’ve been a reflection of my disdain for mathematics in general, but I’m sure it had more to do with the man himself. He possessed the uncanny ability to sense social insecurity. He sniffed it out like a prize hound. And when he found it, he became a medieval torture device to the frail adolescent self-image.
He sported an obscenely dirty, awkward mustache, flecked with gray. Spit collected in disgusting strands on the ends of the whiskers. When he spoke, his face looked like a spider spinning its web. To make matters worse, he didn’t have enough hair to cover his pale, sticky-looking head. He attempted to cover the bare patch by combing the left-over-bits on the right side of his head across the top, toward the left-over-bits on the left side. This ended up looking, instead, like a hair replacement surgery gone horribly wrong, performed by an inebriated surgeon, who happened to be a chimpanzee.
His mother visited his office at the school once, to bring sugar cookies. She seemed like someone who had just stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting. No one saw the cookies, but several students overheard the mother affectionately call our teacher, “Chitlins.”
I always hated my fifth grade algebra teacher. And chitlins.
– Excerpt from “Earl’s Potato Salad” by Will Wood.
Narrated by Alex (Apple Text-to-Speech).
Sound effects and Music by Apple GarageBand. -
Will
Earl’s Potato Salad (Chapter 13)
“Seventeen years from now,” Scott Clucas thought, “I will change my name to Darius Fishbowl Rucker.” He will change his name in an attempt to evade arrest. He will be unsuccessful. “Twenty years from now,” he thought, “I will begin serving a thirty-three-year prison sentence for Unlawful Use Of A Microwave Oven.”
He was somehow certain of these two future events. There were many things about the future that he felt sure of: there are no Cool Ranch Doritos in the future and the Internet has become the primary means of human communication. The future’s not as pleasant as some would have us think.
That is, in this timeline.
Seventeen years before Scott changed my name – twenty years before he entered the Harrisburg Disney/Pepsi Correctional Facility – he woke from a coma. There was a doctor named Gary standing over him with a hypodermic needle and a wet towel. He spoke slowly into the room’s intercom.
“Nurse,” he said, “Can you phone my wife and have her bring my red sweater vest, September’s issue of Medical Monthly, and a piece of key lime pie? Thanks.”
Dr. Gary looked to be about forty-two and had longer eyelashes than a can-can girl. He stood with his weight on one leg, which suggested a lack of certainty that’s always discouraging in a medical professional.
Gradually, the coma wore off and Scott found himself acutely aware of the stark white room (maybe a laboratory) and the presence of three nurses, Dr. Gary, some guy with a mop, four corporeal spirits, and a robot that was apparently designed to take stool samples. Then came the 200 mg of Propofol and what had been heightened awareness gradually devolved into the feeling that he was made out of purple Jell-o. Wait…not purple Jell-o, more like blue lava. Blue bubbling lava…I’m in a bath…bubbles…Jell-o…mother…
“Honey?”
He heard the voice as if it was in his head. It sounds a little like Lucille Ball on steroids.
Lucille Ball had never been to Earl’s. She refused to go to the moon. Something about the atmosphere didn’t appeal to her. Lucille Ball did eat potato salad.
“Honey?”
Wait, that’s better. More like Shirley Jones.
Shirley Jones couldn’t eat potato salad, she had a severe potato allergy. One french fry could turn her eyelids inside-out and the palms of her hands glow as bright as a Hawaiian sunset. Shirley Jones had been to the moon.
“Honey?”
No, that was definitely in his ear.
“Scotty?”
Scott opened his eyes to a beautifully sterile and disgustingly floral hospital room. He knew instantly it was a hospital. No one else mounts their televisions in the farthest, highest corner of the room. And no self-respecting homeowner would design a shower curtain in the middle of their bedroom. The wallpaper was Pepto-pink with oversized chrysanthemums crawling to the ceiling to escape the overpowering smell of disinfectant and soiled bedding. The lamp shades were pink, the window shades were pink, the curtains were pink, even the doors were pink.
“Scotty, oh my gosh, scotty!”
A woman grabbed his head and pressed it into her neck. She smelled comfortable but unfamiliar. Like a house he’d never been in but felt he should live in.
“I knew you’d wake up. I just knew it,” she was crying, “They said they couldn’t be sure, but I knew it.”
The tears fell on his arm and sent thousands of goosebumps parading across his arms and down his back.
“I missed you. They said you’d be okay if you ever woke up. They said there wasn’t that much brain damage,” her eyes were opening wider without blinking, “if you woke up soon.”
“I…” Scott was at a loss for what to say.
He thought that she had to be hysterical. She was possibly one of those dangerous paranoiacs who tremble every minute with the thought that They are lurking around every corner. Or she could be one of the patients, doped up and on the loose.
He searched for the emergency call button. His right hand found it and pressed rapidly until it sang a long, loud beep.
“Scotty, what’s wrong?”
One of the pink doors swung open and Julia Child strolled in with an IV bag swinging from her ape-sized hand. Her plastic name tag gave revelation to her being there, “Marguerite, Labor and Delivery, St. Anthony Medical Center.”
“Mr. Clucas!” the walls reverberated with her voice, “You’re awake!”
Cloudy confusion spilled over Scott’s consciousness. Every thought he had reeled, every memory revolted, every chorus member in his subconscious rang out in one frenzied assault.
“Surprise, surprise, surprise!” Gomer Pyle repeated from the TV in the far corner against the ceiling.
Lucille Ball and Shirley Jones met once and formed a secret society. They wrote a list of honorary members to be inducted: Abraham Lincoln, Anne Frank, Leonardo da Vinci, Julius Caesar, Francis Bacon, Florence Nightingale, Charles Dickens, Helen Keller, Prince Albert, Oscar Wilde, Marie Curie, George Orwell, Ringo Starr, Pocahontas, and President Taft. They held one secret meeting and had an argument arose about which sandwiches to bring to the next meeting. The two never spoke again.
Scott struggled for clarity, “What was I thinking?” he gripped at the edges of sanity, “What was I doing? What was my last memory? I remember a tricycle and a lemonade stand. I remember being frightened, chased by a dog and crying.” He wrestled for a hold on memories that flitted and danced away from focus, “I remember the book report on Thomas Alva Edison.” Then he tried to recall his name, “Calvus? Cartwright? Cantaloupe?” He drew a blank, and then another, and another. “Where do I live?” Nothing. “What is my job?” Nothing.
“Who am…” the words left his lips as the edges of vision became blurry and his mind closed.
Through one of the pink doors rolled a robot that looked curiously like he was designed to extract stool samples.
“Shame, shame, shame!” Gomer Pyle again.
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Will
