Arnold can do pretty much anything a human can. He can write his name and change channels on the television. He watches the "CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite" to keep up with the issues. He signs checks and can adjust the TV antenna, and he is the smartest student at the local grade school. He carries his lunchbox in his mouth, and often plays practical jokes on the other students. Arnold is also artistically talented: he is working on a novel, he plays the piano, and he is an accomplished abstract painter, dubbed "Porky Picasso", whose piece titled "Nude at a Filling Station" wins first prize out of two thousand entries in a student art contest. He even works as a "paper pig" delivering newspapers, although he has a bad habit of throwing copies so hard and so badly aimed that he sometimes breaks windows.