My moment
with Angus Oblong.
By Starla Easterly.

Claiming to have been born in 1863, the young man sitting before me says he was once named Engelbert Humperdink. He claims to have changed his name to "Angus Oblong" at the age of 14 after having been struck by lightning thrice within 2 years. "The name was bad luck," he says. “Zeus apparently wanted me dead. But so do my three ex wives.”

Oblong casually slipped out of the chicken suit (yes, a costume of a chicken!) he was wearing and said that he had just come from some kind of online chicken fetish job. I didn't inquire further. I met with Oblong over tea at a local bookstore/café (not a fuck*ng Starbucks.) where the author/illustrator was kind enough to let me interview him, agreeing that I only had a limited time in which to ask him questions. Oblong had some trouble keeping his attention on anything for more than afew seconds and asked me more than twice what colored undergarments I was wearing.

His parents, he claims, were a pair of conjoined twins (one of them black), and were employed by “Goldsmith’s Traveling Sideshow & Circus,” where his parents formed a contortionist act with their 8 “keeper” children.
“Mother gave birth like a sprinkler, and referred to the eight of us that she kept as 'her little keepers.’ The non-keepers; the other Humperdink siblings, are spread across Canada and the U.S.
It was our job as Mother's kids to help her to leave her babies on random doorsteps in nearly every town we traveled through. Setting down a baby & running back to the car is one of my earliest childhood memories,” claims Oblong.
So if your family found a newborn on their doorstep between the years of 1855 and 1984 when his birth mother was murdered by a nun, the chances are good that it the found child is related to Angus Oblong.

Together with his inferior siblings, his conjoined parents and his parakeet named Mister Squeaky Fuck, Angus traveled the U.S. and Canada with Goldsmith’s Traveling Sideshow & Circus for nearly 120 years.

At age 9 in 1945, Angus ran away from his cramped boxcar home and started his own small, but lucrative business selling stolen pets back to their owners. "Do you have any pets?" he asked me, casually sipping his tea. I lied and told him no.

He ended up in California after years of living on the streets and taking it in the butt by ugly old men for heroin money. “It could have been worse,” he says, putting ketchup into his herbal tea. “I could have liked it.”

After getting his life back together by getting a job as a taco who waved to cars in front of a clown-themed pancake house, Oblong decided to use his Buddah given talent of illustration to create deep and meaningful books for children. And of course, "The Oblongs."

He wrote a short, tragic tale of an idiot child entitled, “Stupid Betsy” and he had found his style. Quickly following Betsy were “Creepy Susie” (which was written & illustrated under the influence of a joint given to him by exotic dancer friend he simply calls Excellent Nina), "Rosie's Crazy Mother" (which is apparently based on his own childhood), “Inbred Harvey,” “Narcoleptic Scottie,” and “Emily, Amputee.” These books were published into a collection, entitled, "Creepy Susie and 13 Other Tragic Tales for Troubled Children" published by Ballentine Publishing Company in New York City.

The tales in his 2nd book, entitled, "13 More Tragic Tales for Ugly Children," include (but are not limited to) “Crossdressing Charles,” “Carl & the Crippled Black Kid with a Eyepatch” (Oblong claims this one to be a true story), and “Janet’s Butt.” The latter named after his older, hideously malformed sister, Janet Oblong.
“All of my sisters are ugly,” claims Oblong as he pulls wallet sized photos of cartoon trolls from his three inch thick wallet that more resembles a sandwich than a wallet. "See?" he says, holding up the pictures as though they were some sort of proof.

After working with some of Hollywood's worst, most arrogant television writers on his animated series, “The Oblongs,” he says he’s decided to hate people from now on. "I hate people from now on," said Oblong.

Currently he is working on a slew of new illustrated books that will never be published due to their content. He claims to be very happily married to a wheelchair bound woman named Shimmery, and together they have three human children named Pink, Bjork & Grampy. “Grampy was born dead, but we still keep him,” Oblong says with a straight face.
“He’s in a water filled jar on the mantle. His water is cloudy from the peanut butter that Shimmery puts in there for him to eat. He stinks like death but we love him. We're actively looking for someone to marry him. Preferably another dead baby in a jar, so they can relate to eachother.”

During the interview, Oblong pointed at something out of the window behind me, claiming to have just spotted a crippled albino. I turned to look and saw only walking people with all of their skin pigment. At turning back to finish the interview, Oblong and his chicken suit were gone.
If I could describe Oblong in two words they would be, Absolutely repulsive.

Starla Easterly,
staff reporter.